13 Facts About Francis Turretin

Francis Turretin was a Genevan-Italian Reformed scholastic theologian.

Francis Turretin was 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 predestination from the Synod of Dort and the verbal inspiration of the Bible.

Francis Turretin was the son of Benedict Turrettini, and like his father, was born in Geneva.

Francis Turretin studied theology at Geneva, Leiden, Utrecht, Paris, Saumur, Montauban, and Nimes.

Francis Turretin is the father of Jean-Alphonse Turrettini, who would do much to dismantle the theology his father promoted.

Francis Turretin's Institutio Theologiae Elencticae is an example of Reformed scholasticism.

Francis Turretin wrote the Helvetic Consensus, a Reformed confession written against Amyraldianism, with J H Heidegger in 1675.

Francis Turretin greatly influenced the Puritans, but until recently, he was a mostly forgotten Protestant scholastic from the annals of church history, though the English translation of his Institutes of Elenctic Theology is increasingly read by students of theology.

Along the lines of Reformed theology, Francis Turretin argues that after the fall human beings did not lose the faculty of will itself.

For example, treating upon the compatibility of moral necessity, Francis Turretin asserts, despite the fact that a will can be rendered "slavish" if determined by habit to a manner of action, that "this servitude by no means overthrows the true and essential nature of liberty".

Francis Turretin defines freedom with the notion of rational spontaneity.

Francis Turretin develops the discussion on necessity and relates it to his argument about human freedom of choice.

Francis Turretin's teaching of contingency emphasizes the sovereign act of God in the process of conversion, whereas Scotus's contingency theory blurs it.