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

For instance, there are many mainstream Reformed theologians that deny the doctrine of "limited" atonement (the "L" in TULIP, the acrostic for the Five Points of Calvinism). These are not thinkers on the margins or troublemakers. They are leaders at the center of Reformed thinking like Bishop John Davenant.

How many people in the pews know that [ Jonathan Edwards] is both a founder of evangelicalism and, say, an idealist who denied that the material world exists?

In the chapter on the nature of the atonement [in the book saving Calvinism] I argue that it is a mistake to think that penal substitution is the only option on the doctrine of atonement.

[John] Calvin's Institutes is often called a summary of Christian piety. You can't say that about many modern works of theology. You can say it of Calvin.

There is the view I call penal non-substitution, or the penal example view. (It is also called the Governmental View in textbooks of theology.) This is often associated with Arminian theology stemming from the great Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. However, the view was taken up by [Jonathan] Edwards's disciples in New England, who developed a Calvinistic strand of the doctrine.

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!