Stephens traces the changing conception of the person of Christ in American Protestantism from the mid-eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth century. He focuses on the various ways by which Christology found expression in the works of Jonathan Edwards, major figures of the New Divinity, William Ellery Channing, selected Unitarian leaders, Moses Stuart, Leonard Woods, Charles Hodge, John W. Nevin. He emphasizes the inherent conflict found in the variety of images of Christ, culminating in the more Christocentric theology which found expression in the work of Horace Bushnell.

A useful contribution to the study of the history of religion, to American history of that period, and to philosophy.