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.

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!

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

These days I'm often called a Deviant Calvinist, but I don't really think my views do deviate from the Reformed tradition, though in some respects they may represent views that are not as popular now as they once were, or that may represent a minority report in the tradition.

We may think that our tradition is exactly the same as it has always been, but that is an illusion.

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.

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?