In many ways the book [Saving Calvinism] is trying to argue for a more popular audience things I've said in some more scholarly works, namely, that the Reformed tradition is broader and more variegated than is often reported today, and that we need to recapture something of this in order that we don't end up unnecessarily narrow in our doctrine and in order to keep some perspective.

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

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

There is no such thing as a stationary tradition. Traditions are always developing, living things.

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 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!