Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) is widely regarded as one of the major thinkers in the Christian tradition and an important and influential figure in American theology. The term ‘New England theology’ is applied to a special school of theology which grew up in New England and whose origins can be found in the works of Jonathan Edwards. This religious, theological school was at its height a little before the American Civil War, declined afterwards and rapidly disappeared after the year 1880. In theological and philosophical terms New England theology combined the Calvinism of the Westminster Assembly (1643–9) and the Synod of Dort (1618–19). Its advocates developed a more ethical conception of God, stressed a new emphasis upon the liberty, ability and responsibility of man, the restriction of moral quality to action in distinction from nature, and formulated a theory that the constitutive principle of virtue is benevolence. New England theology went through several stages, including the New Divinity (or Hopkinsianism, after Samuel Hopkins [1721–1803]), and the New Haven theology espoused by Nathaniel W. Taylor (1786–1858). The essays included in After Jonathan Edwards trace Edwards's intellectual legacies from the works of his immediate disciples to his impact upon European traditions and modern Asia. This book is a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the reception of Edwardsian ideas, dealing more specifically with the ways in which the New England theology flourished, how themes in Edwards's philosophy and theology were taken up and changed by representatives of the New England theology, and, not the least, how this school of thought influenced and shaped American Christianity in particular and American intellectual history in general.