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Institutes of Elenctic Theology: Volume 1: First Through 10 Topics

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Francis Turretin (1623-1687) was a pastor and taught at the Academy of Geneva. An "elenctic" theology is one that trys to demonstrate the truth of a doctrine while refuting false doctrines. Volume 1 covers Theology, Scripture, God in unity and trinity, the decrees of God and predestination, creation, the providence of God, Angels, the state of man before the fall and the covenant of nature, Sin, and, finally, the free will of man in a state of sin. There is nothing else like these books in the realm of reformed dogmatics. The closest thing to them that I can think of is Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica except that Turretin upholds a sounder form of doctrine (Roman Catholics would heartily disagree with me there). Charles Hodge used Turretin in teaching Theology as did John Gerstner. Dr. James M. Boice hits the nail on the head when he says of Turretin's Institutes: "If ever a great theological work has been unjustly neglected it has been Francis Turretin's masterful volumes on the whole of Christian doctrine... I heartily commend [them] to preachers, theological students and lay persons everywhere." These are not easy reading but they are well worth your while.

Francis Turretin was a learned, pious, and brilliant man who used all of his skill to defend the Reformed doctrine of an absolute predestination on the part of God. Personally I do not think that that his defense of an absolute predestination was quite as brilliant as Jonathan Edwards' was, but his work should be read in spite of this because it covers all points of Christian doctrine in great detail and with exquisite dialectical skill, including, for instance, a rousing defense of the view that vindicatory justice is essential to God's nature, as well as one of the very best attacks on the divine command theory I have ever read. Nevetheless, I cannot agree with the unalloyed praise of this work that Reformed readers who have purchased it engage in. In spite of all his subtlety, Turretin really never answers those who hold that the Reformed doctrine entails that God is the cause of sin. He, indeed, protests that God does not efficiently move rational creatures to sin, nor does He council them to, but rather commands them not to, and he further insists that rational creatures destitute of God's efficient grace will sin "according to there very nature as finite beings" (is this not a kind of surrender to the view that rational creatures are essentially evil?). But he never really answers this question "How could a good God punish a creature for doing what he could not help but do, granted that God withdrew the grace necessary for the creature not to do it?" This becomes all the more glaring a problem in light of the fact that Turretin, in concert with Reformed Orthodoxy in general, holds that God 'secretly wills' that certain persons should sin in order to manifest the "Glory" of His punishment in damning them. Turretin gets really angry at those who accuse the Reformed of worshiping a monster, but he never really shows that they don't!! Personally Zorastrianism makes more sense to me than Turretin's version of Theism.

I will add something else--Turretin prefers to attack the Socinians, the Arminians, certain Papists etc, rather than attacking the Lutherans,though he here and there admits that the Lutherans hold doctrines contrary to the "Orthodox" (i.e. the Reformed). I think his reticence to attack the Lutherans has to do with the fact that he knows that the Church of Luther, who was the original and greatest of the Reformers, does not agree with his doctrine--indeed the older Lutherans, quite rightly, accused the Reformed of holding that God is the cause of sin and sided with the Jesuits against the Reformed on several important points of doctrine.