In 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Rooted in a (mis)understanding of divine wrath, Edwards imagined God as an angry monster dangling miserable human sinners over the fires of hell like spiders over a flame. Brian Zahnd eloquently refers to this type of preaching as “Evangelism by terrorism. Conversion by coercion” (3). It would be nice to dismiss this twisted theology as an historical curiosity, but it thrives today. Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God is Zahnd’s unapologetic rebuke of penal substitutionary theory, divine violence, and the sort of dispensationalism that expects Jesus to return on “on his flying white horse and kill two hundred million people” (179).

This book resonated with me for a couple reasons. Like Zahnd, I was that child reading and rereading Revelation during lengthy church services. My eschatological upbringing was informed by regurgitated versions of Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth theology as filtered through Left Behind paranoia. Larry Norman encapsulated the terror of this sort of theology in song.

The Father spoke, the demons dined.
How could you have been so blind?
There’s no time to change your mind.
The Son has come and you’ve been left behind.
(”I Wish We’d All Been Ready”)

The other reason I connected with this book is because Zahnd and I both followed a similar route out of this theology. I can’t think of another book I’ve read where I’ve also read every footnoted reference! C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Hans Urs von Balthazar, Jürgen Moltmann, Saint Augustine, Abraham Heschel, Henri Nouwen, and Stanley Hauerwas have all informed my spiritual journey in profound ways. It was thrilling to read how Zahnd combined the insights of these inspiring theologians in such simple yet beautiful prose.

The wages of sin is death—but God is love.
War is hell—but God is love.
Violence is human—but God is love. (203)

Zahnd, Brian. Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News. Crown Publishing Group, 2017.