In mainstream Calvinism, Christ’s death is a “limited atonement” efficacious only for the elect, redeemed by irresistible grace before departing this world. Classic Calvinism asserted that as descendants of Adam, thus tainted with original sin, the human race deserves damnation by a holy God who nonetheless offers unconditional “election” in redemption, an eternal salvation made possible by the sinless sacrifice of Christ’s death on the Cross and resurrection for the sins of the world. “In Adam’s fall we sinned all,” the New England Primer of 1690 began, teaching Puritan children the alphabet with biblical soberness. For decades it was required reading for high school English classes, students less terrified although no less totally depraved than his initial hearers, encapsulating the doctrines set forth by John Calvin, the reformer of Geneva, Switzerland. The Enfield sermon is better known as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” surely the most famous and widely circulated sermon Jonathan Edwards ever preached. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: His wrath towards you burns like fire he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight you are 10,000 times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.Įdwards’ words sent such terror into the hearts of his totally depraved audience that he was at times unable to make himself heard over their screams and cries for God’s mercy.

In the year 1741 at the Congregational Church in Enfield, Conn., Jonathan Edwards, pastor of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Mass., declared:

The sinful king by claire