Introducing... Francis Turretin

I have been researching the doyen of Reformed Scholastic theologians, Francis Turretin, for a course called Reformed Greats. Of course, Richard A Muller's writings have been my constant companion on the journey.

Descended from Italian stock, Francis Turretin was the son of a leading Swiss theologian, Benedict Turretin, who had himself been a proponent of the kind of Calvinism formulated at the Synod of Dordt. Though he was educated in a variety of European faculties – Leiden, Utrecht, Paris, Saumer, Montaubon and Nimes – Turretin was a man of Geneva through and through. He was born and died in the city, and spent the greater part of his career there.

Appointed the pastor of the Italian congregation in Geneva in 1647, he became a professor of theology in 1653. He was a co-sponsor of the Helvetic Formula Consensus (1675), in which the views of Moses Amyraut were rejected – and which all candidates for the ministry were required to sign. His major work, the four volume Institutes of Elenctic Theology were published in 1688.

Turretin provides a great example of a rigorous attempt to think through the prolegomena to theology - a topic the Reformers had somewhat neglected. What kind of thinking is theology? It can be considered either systematically as a discipline or, more subjectively, as 'a habit residing in the intellect'. Systematically, theology can be classified as doctrine. But Turretin insists that the types of mental disposition or habitus need an analysis. The question is: what habit of mind leads to the due reception of the doctrine of the church for our salvation?

Turretin outlines a trio of mental dispositions - knowing, believing and supposing. For each habit or disposition there is an appropriate act of assent. If assent depends on reasoning, then the habit in question is scientia; if it depends on testimony, then the habit is fides; if it is a question of opinion or probability, the opinio. (I am cribbing from Muller here).

Theology appears to depend for assent on testimony, and so its habit is that of fides. Theology is only roughly similar to scientia-type disciplines - it has a supernatural basis stemming from divine revelation, and it mixes both pratical and theoretical knowledge in a way unlike the intellectual disciplines.