Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News

God is wrath? Or God is Love?

In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Puritan revivalist Jonathan Edwards shaped predominating American theology with a vision of God as angry, violent, and retributive. Three centuries later, Brian Zahnd was both mesmerized and terrified by Edwards’s wrathful God. Haunted by fear that crippled his relationship with God, Zahnd spent years praying for a divine experience of hell.
 
What Zahnd experienced instead was the Father’s love—revealed perfectly through Jesus Christ—for all prodigal sons and daughters.


In Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, Zahnd asks important questions like: Is seeing God primarily as wrathful towards sinners true or biblical? Is fearing God a normal expected behavior? And where might the natural implications of this theological framework lead us?
 
Thoughtfully wrestling with subjects like Old Testament genocide, the crucifixion of Jesus, eternal punishment in hell, and the final judgment in Revelation, Zanhd maintains that the summit of divine revelation for sinners is not God is wrath, but God is love.

• Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile
• A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel
• Water to Wine: Some of My Story
• A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace
• Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity
• Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem
• How the Bible Actually Works: In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers—and Why That’s Great News
• The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It
• Jesus Unbound: Liberating the Word of God from the Bible
• The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe