Reformed Audio Presents: Francis Turretin
"[T]he work of our conversion is a creation, resurrection, regeneration and the production of a new heart by which God not only gently persuades but powerfully effects in us to will and to do. As, however, man can contribute nothing to his creation, resurrection and regeneration, so neither can the sinner contribute anything to his conversion. He ought rather to ascribe it wholly to the grace of God." - Francis Turretin
Francis Turretin was a Swiss-Italian Protestant theologian.
Turretin is especially known as a zealous opponent of the theology of the Academy 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."
Turretin is especially known as a zealous opponent of the theology of the Academy 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."