[John] Calvin is often identified with his account of predestination. Yet that appears in the third book of his Institutes, not the first.

The confessions don't speak with one voice. They are more like a cluster of closely-related but distinct voices - a kind of choir, if you like.

The atonement chapter [from the book Saving Calvinism] shows how there are real riches in Reformed theology that most Christians today have no idea about.

For those who have only ever read about [John] Calvin, reading the man himself is an invigorating experience.

The alternative of hypothetical universalism, according to which Christ's work is sufficient for all but efficient only for the elect, was alive and well in early Reformed thought. Moreover - and importantly for our purposes - this view was not regarded as an aberration but as a legitimate position that could be taken within the confessional bounds of Reformed thought. But that means that the Five Points aren't the non-negotiable conceptual core of Calvinism after all.

What I am trying to argue here [Save Calvinism] and in other works before this one is that the Reformed tradition as I have characterized it is much broader and richer than many of us today imagine. It is not just about "Five Points," and it was never just about [John ] Calvin's thought.

Christ's work is a kind of deterrent to us, and a way of upholding the justice of God's divine government of the world.