[I'm often called a Deviant Calvinist] but that only goes to underline the point I'm trying to make about the need to broaden our account of the tradition!

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.

To my mind [ Jonathan Edwards] is an interesting figure because he is both a canonical Reformed thinker, and yet also someone that pushed the envelope in a number of key areas of theology.

We are still living with the consequences of that today in popular Reformed thinking from the likes of John Piper, R. C. Sproul, and Tim Keller.

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 interested in Reformed thought more broadly, I'd recommend Peter Leithart's recent book on Reformed Catholicism entitled, The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church (Brazos Press, 2016), as a thought-provoking and stimulating read that should get us all thinking about the future shape of the Church, wherever we come from.

[John] Calvin is revered as a thinker of immense importance in Reformed thought, Jonathan Edwards could say in his preface to his treatise on Freedom of the Will that he had derived none of his views from the work of Calvin, though he was willing to be called a "Calvinist" for the sake of convention.