Jean Alphonse Turretin (1671-1737), son of Francis Turretin, was born at Geneva in August 1671. He studied theology at Geneva under Louis Tronchin, and after travelling in Holland, England and France was received into the "Venerable Compagnie des Pasteurs" of Geneva in 1693. Here he became pastor of the Italian congregation, and in 1697 professor of church history, and later (1705) of theology.
During the next forty years of his life he enjoyed great influence in Geneva as the advocate of a more liberal theology than had prevailed under the preceding generation, and it was largely through his instrumentality that the rule obliging ministers to subscribe to the Helvetic Consensus was abolished in 1706, and the Consensus itself renounced in 1725. He also wrote and labored for the promotion of union between the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, his most important work in this connection being Nubes testium pro moderate et pacifico de rebus theologicis judicio, et instituenda inter Protestantes concordia (Geneva, 1729). Besides this he wrote Cogitationes et dissertationes theologicae, on the principles of natural and revealed religion (2 vols., Geneva, 1737; in French, Traité de la verité de la religion chrétienne) and commentaries on Thessalonians and Romans. He died in May 1737.
Jean Alphonse Turretin (1671-1737). Four Propositions (Adapted from Concerning the Methods of Interpreting the Holy Scriptures.) The God who gave revelation in the Bible also endowed people with the rational faculty for receiving communication. Thus, the Bible is to be understood in the same way as the other communications. The Bible presumes the validity of the law of contradiction, that is, a thing cannot be both true and not true at the same time. Thus, no Biblical interpretation can be accepted as true that clashes with what is already known to be true. The Bible is a historical book. Thus, the Bible must be understood from the vantage point of its own writers rather than from the modern vantage point. The Bible is to speak for itself like any other book and the mind is subject to contradiction. Thus, the mind must come to the Bible as a tabula rasa, emptied of all cherished concepts derived from our modern view of life.