[John Calvin] writes clearly, directly, without artifice, and gets straight to the practical heart of the matter.

[Calvinistic tradition] has fashioned and shaped my thinking since I was a teenager.

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.

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.

The book [Saving Calvinism] argues in each case that the Reformed tradition is broader and deeper than we might think at first glance - not that there are people on the margins of the tradition saying crazy things we should pay attention to, but rather that there are resources within the "mainstream" so to speak, which give us reason to think that the tradition is nowhere near as doctrinally narrow as the so-called "Five Points of Calvinism" might lead one to believe.

Reading [John] Calvin is a breath of fresh air.

The expansion I have in mind isn't the same as distortion. Of course, there are those who say their views represent Reformed thought, but what they end up with is a caricature of what Reformed thinking is really about. I hope I am not one of those people, but readers [of the Saving Calvinism] will have to make up their own minds on that score!