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Institutes of Elenctic Theology. By Francis Turretin, translated by George M. Giger and edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992-1997, 3 volumes, 2223 pp., $125.
This systematic theology by Francis Turretin (1623-87) is the epitome of seventeenth-century Protestant scholasticism, making it a welcome resource for students of early-modern Reformed theology. Turretin taught theology at the Geneva Academy a century after the school's inauguration under Theodore Beza (1559). Turretin's original Latin Institutio theologiae elencticae (1679-85) is offered in George M. Giger's nineteenth-century translation. The story behind Giger's translation points to the importance of Turretin's work among American Presbyterians. Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary asked Giger, from the Classics department of the University, to translate the Institutio in order for Hodge's seminary students to use it in assigned course readings. Thus the Princeton-trained ministers of that era were steeped in Turretin's theology. Robert L. Dabney, among other Reformed educators, also used the Institutes. Hodge's own three-volume systematic theology eventually displaced Turretin's work at Princeton, but Turretin's emphases were widely adopted.
Given the scope of the Institutes-and its fundamental continuity with familiar categories of Reformed theology-this review will not attempt to survey the content but will note some of its defining characteristics and assess its place in Reformed scholasticism. The work is nicely presented and James T. Dennison's editorial work is to be commended, especially as he traces many of Turretin's unattributed sources to produce an Index of Works Cited. These are linked to the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) numbers. Dennison also modifies Giger's translation by shortening sentences and by including additional paragraph breaks in order to make the text more readable. Supplementary material in volume three includes, among other resources, a brief biography of Turretin, his funeral sermon by Benedict Pictet, a bibliography and a variety of indices. The latter are helpful but uneven in their coverage.
The Institutes offer twenty theological topics, ranging from matters of prolegomena, Scripture, and trinitarian theism, to the final topic, eschatology. Turretin emphasizes the covenantal concerns of federal theology and defends a fully determinative version of predestination. His knowledge of Roman Catholic, Arminian, and Socinian theology (as well as...