Richard A. Muller investigates the incidents that best illustrate the complexity and the development of the doctrine, surveying Reformed thought on predestination across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Along the way he challenges distorted assumptions about where predestination sits in a theological system, naive readings of Calvin based on the Institutes alone, and simplistic accounts of the supralapsarian and infralapsarian debate. Historical theology of the first rank, and a corrective to a great deal of confident popular writing.