What Makes Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God so Effective?

This is the ultimate fire and brimstone speech. It is framed as a series of logically ordered talking points as it attempts to explain why one should awake and "fly from the wrath to come." Ultimately, however, it falls into logical fallacies, and its effect relies less on a valid intellectual argument and more on an emotional reaction from the audience.�
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"Begging the Question" is a logical fallacy wherein the speaker asks a question of a point that is already assumed to be established. Edwards does this at the beginning of his piece, "There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into Hell at any moment." If one accepts this as true, the rest of Edward's sermon flows logically out of this assumption. If any part of this is untrue, the entire argument falls apart.�
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Much more fatal to his argument than his initial begging of the question, however, Edwards violates his own assumptions. Edwards paints God as omnipotent and able to visit the torments of hell on anyone with only a simple thought. Edwards' God is an Old Testament God whose greatest pleasure would be to throw all of unworthy humanity into a great burning fire. He is barred from doing this, however, by Christ's sacrifice. Ultimately, Edwards' omnipotent God is not. He has limits. The statement, therefore, that, "There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into Hell at any moment," is untrue. This unbalances the rest of his argument.�
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Given these�fallacies, why was this sermon so successful? Edwards' audience can be assumed to have had at least a nodding familiarity with logic and rhetoric via Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Even if one accepts for the sake of argument that Edwards' audience was unsophisticated, this doesn't explain why evangelists even today enjoy great success from cribbing from Edwards.�
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Part of the answer lies in the timing of the piece. The colonists in New England were, at this time, 120 years removed from the Pilgrims. These 120 years had dulled the horror and pain of the Pilgrims' destitute hand-to-mouth existence, and all that remained was a picture of a lost golden age where simple family values and an unquestioning faith in God allowed the society to succeed. Edwards' audience judged themselves against this generation and found themselves lacking; one way they could compensate was by adopting the simple childlike faith of their forefathers.�
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A receptive audience, however, is not the only reason for the success of Edwards' sermon. Much of the credit goes to the structure of the sermon. Edwards starts with a series of short points. Each point builds on the previous one, and the explanation for each point grows longer. It is the textual representation of a spiral staircase. Additionally, each point states a portion of Edwards' case. The first point, "one that stands in slippery places is liable to fall," leads directly to, "The reason they do not fall is that it is not God's appointed time." This leads to the point of the sermon that, "There is nothing which keeps wicked men…out of Hell, but the mere pleasure of God."�
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Edwards is not above using fear. He paints vivid images of sinners walking across an open well on a rotting covering. He uses images of "dry stubble before devouring flames" and "waters [of God's wrath] constantly rising." No one is safe from this wrath, not even Edwards' audience. In one of the many passages designed to shake his congregation's feeling of security, he says, "some persons that now sit here…should be there [Hell] before tomorrow."�
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Perhaps the ultimate reason for Edwards' success is the dual nature of Americans. Americans seem to have a sadomasochistic attitude towards success. In general, Americans strive incessantly to achieve success, and then spend the rest of their time feeling guilty about being successful. While this dichotomy is responsible for some of the great things about America (the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps, welfare), if taken to too far an extreme it can lead to some of the worst things about America (McCarthyism, the KKK, the continued political influence of self appointed moral judges). Edwards' skill in using this dichotomy ensures the continued popularity of his sermon.