Jonathon Edwards is sometimes viewed as the last of the Puritans. This is a mistake. He was not among the “Calvinist ancients.” He is better described as the first of the “Calvinist moderns.” Edwards’ theology of experientialism helped to destroy Calvinist covenant theology in America, which is one reason why virtually all modern scholars praise him as the greatest theologian in American history: he abandoned “legalism.” He took predestination, humanistic rationalism, postmillennialism, and emotionalism, and he fused them into a non-covenantal theology. His theology was antinomian. But the biblical covenant model depends on the presence of God’s Bible-revealed stipulations. Heimert is correct: Edwards repudiated the covenant as a meaningful concept. His itinerant Arminian imitators did not even begin with the older covenant model, let alone repudiate it implicitly, as he did. Their spiritual heirs in the next generation were even more adrift covenantally in a new nation and new society. — Gary North

From page 367 of Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism by Gary North.