For instance, the notion of non-penal substitution. This idea, found in the work of the nineteenth century Scottish Reformed theologian John McLeod Campbell and based upon his reading of the letter to the Hebrews in particular, is that Christ offers up his life and death as a penitential act on our behalf, rather than as a punishment in our stead.

I'm sometimes asked about my productivity, which I find a bit embarrassing to be honest. I don't really have a particularly interesting answer to this question.

I do think that I have been fortunate to make friendships with other scholars, and form reading groups where ideas are exchanged and papers are read. That is a real boon, and it is something I think every scholar or writer can benefit from.

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.

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.

[John Calvin's] treatment of the person and work of Christ, of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, of prayer and liturgy, of the sacraments, and of the way in which we have an in-built sense of the divine that we suppress to our great sorrow - these are all immense contributions to Christian thought. The same could be said of his commentaries, which are still regularly consulted by biblical critics today.

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.