Francis Turretin

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Woodcut of Francis Turretin
Woodcut of Francis Turretin

Francis Turretin (also known as François Turretini) was the grandson of Francesco Turrettini, who left his native Lucca in 1574 and settled in Geneva in 1592. Francis was born to Benoit Turretin at Geneva on October 17, 1623 and died there on September 28, 1687. He was educated at Geneva, Leiden, Utrecht, Paris, Saumur, Montauban, and Nimes. Returning to his native city, he was made pastor of the Italian church there in 1648, and professor of theology in 1653. He is the father of Jean Alphonse Turretin.

Turretin is especially known as a zealous opponent of the theology of Saumur (embodied by Moise Amyraut and called Amyraldianism), as an earnest defender of the Calvinistic orthodoxy represented by the Synod of Dort, and as one of the authors of the Helvetic Consensus, which defended the formulation of double predestination from the Synod of Dort and the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Among his writings, which are chiefly dogmatic in character, special mention should be made of his Institutio Theologiae Elencticae (3 parts, Geneva, 1679-1685), which is dogmatic theology written in a polemic or argumentative fashion and which became a standard text in Reformed Christian circles. At Princeton Seminary it was only replaced as a textbook by Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology in the late 19th century.

Turretin greatly influenced the Puritans, but until recently, he was a mostly forgotten Protestant scholastic from the annals of church history, though the rough English translation of his Institutes of Elenctic Theology is increasingly read by students of theology. John Gerstner called Turretin "the most precise theologian in the Calvinistic tradition."

This article includes content derived from the public domain Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1914.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Translated by George Musgrave Giger, edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. (1992). ISBN 0-87552-451-6
  • Justification an excerpt from Turretin's Institutes (2004). ISBN 0-87552-705-1
  • The Atonement of Christ. Translated by James R. Willson (1978). ISBN 0-8010-8842-9

[edit] External links