Daily Log

Tuesday, December 15

Students, using their notes from Monday, took a brief quiz over resources of the King County Library System; we then graded the quizzes in class.

We then (re)turned our attention to "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," analyzing the metaphors and similes Jonathan Edwards uses to drive home his single, repeated theme: how we sinners are saved from hell, if at all, only by the freely given grace of God. All the central metaphors (fiery pit, flood, straining bow) all show God's hand as the only force holding back the destructive power of nature which impels us to eternal damnation. We compared Edwards's perspective on Man, Nature and God to T. Jefferson's in the Declaration of Independence (p. 116) where man is not saved from (his) nature by grace, but where nature (through the use of man's reason) is the vehicle for understanding God's handiwork, and therefore God himself.