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TURRETIN’S GOD AND GOSPEL

How Classical Theism Integrates the Soteriology of the Greatest Work of Protestant Scholasticism

Directed Study
Post-Reformation Reformed Theology
Dr. Allen

MATT MARINO
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Francis Turretin (1623-1687) may have been the greatest theologian that “nobody’s ever heard
of.” Naturally a student of historic Reformed theology will know the name, and perhaps
have even read some excerpts. This is especially true about his doctrine of justification.
Turretin became professor of theology in Geneva at the Academy that was founded by
Calvin a century earlier. His most enduring work, the Institutes of Elenctic Theology, was a
series of disputations written at the request of many who wished to obtain resolution on the
main controversies of the day. The Institutes are divided into three volumes. Each volume is
divided into a series of topics, and each topic further divided into various questions. Its
form is a hybrid of the Scholastic method of Thomas with the more polemical style of
Calvin. Like the magisterial Reformer, there was also more reliance on the support of
biblical texts. We find him always clarifying: “The question is not x … but rather the
question concerns y.” But always in the background lurk the Socinians, Remonstrants,
Papists, and even occasionally the Anabaptists and Jesuits.

Controversy and structure aside, what drives the present thesis is the way in which
Turretin’s “Reformed classicalism” speaks to our present moment in theology. In the
Institutes, classical theology provides form to the gospel. By this I mean something more
than simply to say that theology proper makes soteriology. That is generally the case in all
doctrinal systems. More than that, Reformed theology in the classical mode insists that
God’s method of salvation is exactly what it is, at every point, because God is eternally who
he is. The conception that this paper will assume of classical theology, and as expressed by
Turretin, will have in view both (1) a classical theological method and (2) a classical
understanding of certain divine attributes. The three attributes in view will be among those
most maligned by theistic philosophers in recent times: simplicity, eternality, and
immutability. To defend these three classical attributes is to maintain that God is free from
the creaturely limitations of division, succession, and change. Turretin held to these as
necessary to the very existence of God. Other related attributes such as aseity, impassibility,
infinity, and pure actuality are of great interest, but will have to remain at the periphery.

With his theological method and idea of God firmly established, we will then turn to three
elements which logically follow: covenant, atonement, and justification. The way in which
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these three soteriological concepts follow the theological foundation will show us why
method is important for Turretin. There is an absolute kind of doctrine and a consequential
kind of doctrine. Some things we will find necessary to the very core of Christian truth.
Among those Turretin will divide between what is absolutely necessary, because they are in
God, and what is consequentially necessary, that which flows from God. Altogether, this
essay will be divided into the following:

(I.) Theological Method — How We Must Proceed; (II.) Theology Proper: What Must Be in God;
(III.) Covenant; (IV.) Atonement; (V.) Justification.

It may be thought that the section on theological method is extraneous to my thesis linking
Turretin’s theology proper to his soteriology; but I contend that the whole way of doing
theology within early Reformed dogmatics is necessary to review. To ground our soteriology
wholly in our doctrine of God seems increasingly arbitrary among the postmoderns. Thus
the order, no less than the substance, needs to be justified.

THEOLOGICAL METHOD

The two greatest philosophical casualties within the postmodern era have been “realism”1
and “foundationalism.”2 Everything I want to say about Turretin’s prolegomena material can
be reduced to these two old pillars of Western thought in one way or another. Granted that
various pagans have had their own version of these; nevertheless, there is a distinctly

1Without bogging the paper down in definitions, I am aware that philosophers will often categorize everyone
from Plato down to the Scholastics into categories such as “extreme realists” and “moderate realists,” and that
many Christian academics today will identify as “critical realists.” I will refrain from critique of such
categorizations, but will simply state my opinion that Augustine provides a way to an unassailable,
monotheistic realism. This is my own position, and there are very strong hints of it in Turretin, especially in
his distinction between the archetype (archetypon) and the ectypes (ektypa) — cf. Institutes. I.312
2 Likewise with the “classical foundationalism” of the Enlightenment. Its downfall was not that some truths
really are more foundational than others, but rather in its naive reductionism of knowledge to subjective
starting points — whether an axiom or a unit of “sense data” that a sufficient number of “selves” considered to
be “self-evident.” Prior to the Enlightenment, starting points were conceived as objects of knowledge
(metaphysics) rather than as performances of knowing (epistemology, subjectively defined) — so God is
foundational to the world. The attributes of God are foundational to the outward acts of God, etc.
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Christian variety of both. A concise summary of how these functioned in theological

method can be made as follows.

First, to realism, classical theology held that all created particulars are what they are because
of either (1) attributes of God or (2) ideas in the mind of God. This is monotheistic realism:
i. e. universals, such as beauty, goodness, justice, oneness, etc., are either divine attributes or
divine ideas; and the latter is rooted in the former. Psalm 19:1-2 and Romans 1:19-20, in
addition to being texts supporting general revelation, imply that created particulars receive
all of their sense from the invisible things of God. Second, to foundationalism, classical
theology proceeded as if some truths were more necessary than other truths. This was
because the objects that such doctrines were about were more necessary as being, or else
more necessary within the decree of God, than more contingent objects. This too is
scriptural. Paul’s argument to the Corinthians is a case in point. The very possibility of the
resurrection in general determines Christ’s resurrection in particular. Following from this,
Christ’s resurrection, as the firstfruit, determines our resurrections as a consequence (cf. 1
Cor. 15:12-19). Right order largely answers to rightly perceiving the order of being.

What Turretin does in the first topic, in Volume I, is to set forth two things that situate my
thesis. First, there is a true theology and a false theology, which will also imply a correct
order and an incorrect order. Second, there are two principal sources for theological
knowledge: general revelation and special revelation; and we will note that this division is not
between reason (as if that meant “autonomous reason”) and revelation (as if that meant only
the written word of God). Rather the two sources are the two fields of divine speech about
divine objects: nature and Scripture. Such a theological method is a Christian realism
because the attributes and ideas of God (universals) are that which provide meaning to all of
the things that have been made (particulars).3 These divine objects are what all the lesser
objects are about. And such a theological method is also a Christian foundationalism
because all that is in God is, to put it simply, foundational to all of the effects of God. The
effects are wholly dependent on their ultimate cause. The typical order of a systematic

3 cf. Institutes. I., especially the statement on the bottom of page 17 to the top of page 18
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theology textbook is not arbitrary. It has to do with the subject matter at the start being
determinative for that which follows. There will be overlap, but such will not disprove the
rule.

How does Turretin speak of theology, true and false? He says that a false theology is one in
which “the greater part is false and the errors fundamental.”4 This draws attention to a
theology’s scope and its critical points. As with articles, so with errors — not all are of the
same necessity. Not all will disintegrate the system as fast (or even at all). There are three
kinds of error, he says: against the foundation, about the foundation, and beside the
foundation. The first directly contradicts the essential doctrine; the second overthrows it by
implication, whether intentional or not; and the third is about a genuine non-essential. So in
the first two kinds there is a law of unintended consequences: “They who quietly rest in the
terms of an implied contradiction where there is opposition [to an essential] … are to be
regarded as overthrowing the foundation no less than those who directly attack it.”5 But the
key for true method is this: “The criteria for distinguishing fundamental and non-
fundamental articles can be derived from the nature and condition of the doctrines
themselves.”6

How we understand the scope of theology determines how well we do it. He says there are
three senses of “theology”: 1. metaphysical (“God in general”), 2. explicitly Christological, or
else 3. the whole system of doctrine concerning God, contained in revelation. This third way,
Turretin says, is the correct way to think of it because it takes in the whole and yet keeps
God at the center (or the foundation). Turretin’s method has long been criticized as the
embodiment of a general movement away from the spirit of the Reformation back to the
Aristotelianism that characterized the medieval schoolmen. If such criticisms were
consistent, they would have to say the same about everyone from Owen down to Shedd and
Berkhof. At the heart of the criticism is the notion that faith is made subservient to reason.

4 Institutes. I.4
5 Institutes. I.50
6 Institutes. I.52
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If generally revealed truths “come first” and are made a determinative factor in one’s
theological method, then the fear is that reason is the judge in matters of faith. But he says,
“we must observe the distinction between an instrument of faith and the foundation of
faith.”7 As we will see, he was not oblivious to the noetic effects of sin for thinking. For
Turretin, “Although the human understanding is very dark, yet there still remains in it some
rays of natural light and certain first principles, the truth of which is unquestionable. . . .
These first principles are true not only in nature, but also in grace and the mysteries of faith.
Faith, so far from destroying, on the contrary, borrows them from reason and uses them to
strengthen its own doctrines.”8 So general revelation is operative when studying special
revelation.

It is true that special revelation evaluates our interpretation of general revelation; but it is
also true that various intellectual derivatives of nature make sense of Scripture. In
considering whether we should even use the word “theology” he resurrects the Augustinian
distinction between sign (and word) and thing signified. For example, Christians often ask
the question, “Is it biblical?” However there are two senses of a word being “in the Bible”:
first, “as to sounds and syllables,” and second, “as to sense and the thing signified.”9
Theology, he says, is only in the latter sense. The reason for this is that theology is a science
and so treats “objectively”10 of God. That there is a thing (res) behind the words, a reality
that the words point toward, does not inherently devalue the word. He probes this further
in Question 12 where he asks: Are doctrines to be proved only from the express word or also
by good and necessary consequence? Turretin surveys the many heretics who have insisted
that a thing be shown in exact letters or word order in the pages of Scripture. It is very
telling that heretical positions so often demand exact word replication. But he replies that
the orthodox “do not seek for the very letters, but the truth.”11

7 Institutes. I.25
8 Institutes. I.29-30
9 Institutes. I.1
10 Institutes. I.2
11 Institutes. I.37
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But the moment we catch this distinction, we are acknowledging that the meaning of
scriptural propositions, no less than the meaning of doctrinal propositions, are objects
beyond the ink patterns and sound waves. These may be called “objects of reason,” not
because reason is their source but because reason is the soul’s point of contact with them.
But what elements of reason act upon the data of Scripture and nature to properly order
how to think about God and his world? Those elements — logic, science, conscience — are
products of general revelation, now in the service of more explicit and self-conscience
theologizing. As Rehnman described this rational method: “reason and nature are, according
to Turretin, perfected by the Word and by grace,” but likewise, “Supernatural truths
conform to natural truths, and, therefore, erroneous opinions can be opposed by reason.”12
Note that this is not Scripture being conformed to nature (or reason), but rather our fallible
ideas and statements about Scripture being corrected by logic, science, and conscience.

One implication for this is that natural theology is not simply about arguments for God’s
existence: though Turretin includes a section on these. Natural theology, as the name would
indicate, encompasses the study of God “in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). He
first affirms the legitimacy of natural theology, clarifying that the question is not
soteriological.13 In other words, Turretin was not resurrecting that “theology of glory”
spoken of by Luther. In a statement that may surprise today’s presuppositionalist, who has
been taught to mistrust natural theology, he states, “Our controversy here is with the
Socinians who deny the existence of any such natural theology … The orthodox, on the
contrary, uniformly teach that there is a natural theology.”14 Secondly, though, natural
theology also helps integrate the data of scripturally derived theology. Principles of reason
can be “used to exhibit the truth or falsity of conclusions in controversies of faith.”15 “The

12 Rehnman. 264
13 Institutes. I.6
14 Institutes. I.6
15 Institutes. I.31
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question is not whether reason can of itself reach into the mysteries of faith … but whether
it can judge of the contradiction of propositions.”16

Ultimately, the objects of theology are “God and divine things.” This may be viewed either
materially (thing considered) or formally (mode of considering). With Aquinas, theology
must be entirely related to God as he is in himself; against Aquinas, theology must be also
related to God as Covenant LORD. This perfectly expresses how Turretin is a compound of
Thomas and Calvin. The latter’s twofold knowledge of God affirmed this very balance: to
know God accurately as Creator, we must also know him as our Redeemer, and vice versa.
Some may criticize Turretin for being an early product of the Enlightenment: a
rationalization of the Reformed faith. It should be pointed out in response that he shows
great awareness of the relationship between one’s covenant status and epistemology. Unlike
the way K. Scott Oliphint would see this same relationship today, the covenant status of
mankind outside of Christ, for Turretin, does not vitiate the objective truth made known.17
Within his section on the covenant, he separates the general knowledge of God from the
saving knowledge, but does not thereby allow the general knowledge to be falsified.18

THEOLOGY PROPER: WHAT MUST BE IN GOD

It would come as no surprise to those who identify as Reformed today that a theologian
such as Turretin would hold to the holiness, omnipotence, omniscience, and sovereignty of
God, or that his God does all things for his own glory. What might come as more of a
surprise is how Turretin takes for granted the categories of classical theism. These are all
inherited from the Patristic and Medieval eras. Where they are defended, it is clear that the
heretical movements of the seventeenth century are the ones challenging these ideas. It
ought to give us pause to read about Socinians and their cohorts denying the same divine

16 Institutes. I.32
17 cf. Oliphint. Covenantal Apologetics. 35-36, 41-47
18 Institutes. II.213
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attributes and actions as many conservative Evangelicals do in our day, or as the most
celebrated theistic philosophers have for over a generation.

What I want to show here is that natural theology is operative when we speak about God
even from the data of Scripture. Of course natural theology is technically of the generally
revealed data — perhaps this should be called “contemplative theology”19 in this context —
however that data is functioning throughout our inferences that we often assume are taken
“from Scripture alone.” Consider Turretin’s statement about God, in almost Anselmian
language: “it is evident that nothing can be or be conceived better and more perfect. Thus
he must necessarily be infinite because an infinite good is better than a finite … he embraces
every degree of perfection without any limitation.”20 No such propositions exist verbatim in
the Bible. Yet every time we say something like “God must x” or “It is unthinkable that in
God x,” we are drawing inferences from known divine attributes to other truths. What is
crucial to the classical view of revelation is that we already know many such things a priori to
our reading of Scripture. One commentator on Turretin remarks about his view that, “if the
Christian revelation was to be intelligible, the essential nature of the divine revealer had to
be known (at least rudimentarily) prior to special revelation if that revelation should be
possible to relate or identify with God.”21 Now we proceed to those three attributes.

Divine Simplicity

Turretin gives one of the great definitions of this neglected attribute: “The simplicity of
God … is his incommunicable attribute by which the divine nature is conceived by us not
only as free from all composition and division, but also as incapable of composition and
divisibility.”22 In other words, this is not the “simplicity” or “oneness” of exclusivity, as when
the First Commandment or Deuteronomy 6:4 excludes other gods. Nor does “simple” mean

19 cf. Dolezal. All That is in God. xv

20 Institutes. I.195
21 Rehnman. quoted in Reforming or Conforming? 63
22 Institutes. I.191
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a thing that is easy to understand. Simple may be used in two senses: either absolutely and
simply (excluding all composition), or else relatively and comparatively (excluding some
composition). The most basic material elements and even spiritual beings, like angels, are
only simple in the relative sense. God alone is simple in the first.

Before he shows what follows from this simplicity, he concludes to simplicity from other
attributes: (1) from independence, since composition requires dependence on that which
composes it; (2) from unity, since oneness of the whole variety (not the exclusive variety)
negates parts; (3) from perfection, since composition requires mutability and thus dependence
on that which actuated each part’s potentiality; and (4) from activity, since the First Cause
must be in pure act, having no potentiality awaiting activation from without. Interestingly,
this fourth inference is identical to Thomas’ rationale for the simplicity of God which he
makes follow directly his five ways to show God’s existence.23 That shows us that Turretin
thinks like Aquinas about the relationship between natural theology and theology proper.

Moving the other direction, with simplicity as a premise, he says: “The infinity of God
follows from his simplicity and is equally diffused through the other attributes of God, and
by it the divine nature is conceived as free from all limit in imperfection.”24 Here again we
have one divine attribute as the conclusion of another, and then as a premise to still others.
If God is simple, then he is infinite; and if he is infinite, then no other attribute can be limited. Said
another way: every divine attribute is infinite because every divine attribute is simple. For
Turretin, natural theology was not “Chapter One” that is left behind when the “Chapter
Two” of biblically revealed theology proper begins. Inferences concerning necessary relation
come to mind precisely because we are being faithful to what is revealed.

What follows from this doctrine is that God’s essence cannot be conceived apart from his
existence, because God simply is. He is the one being for whom existence is essential. This is
part of a larger section in which “all species of composition” are ruled out. He distinguishes

23 Summa Theologica. I.Q.3, Art.1

24 Institutes. I.194
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between modes and essences on the one hand, and essential versus accidental on the other.
These two distinctions will help navigate through the mysteries of Trinity and Incarnation,
as well as the controversies surrounding God’s relationships to the creation. Two mysteries
are immediately protected by retaining divine simplicity: first the Incarnation, as it was not a
composition of the divine and human, but only, “by hypostatical union”25, a communication
of the attributes to the Person of the Son; second, the Trinity, as “Simplicity and triplicity are
so mutually opposed that they cannot subsist at the same time … [rather] simplicity with
respect to essence, but Trinity with respect to persons.”26 And again, “The personal property
of the Son does not make his essence different than that of the Father … Distinction is not
composition.”27 So this attribute of simplicity would seem necessary in order not to fall into
either Christological or Trinitarian heresy.

Likewise the decree of God is often related to simplicity in the question of whether there
are many decrees or one. There is a supposed dilemma. If there is only one decree, then it
would seem that either a diversity of things do not happen, or else, if they do, all but one
thing has happened outside of God’s decree. If on the other hand, there is more than one
decree, then the decree of God has reference to his effects, it being many as they are many.
But if the latter, then it seems to follow that the act of God is composed of parts. How does
Turretin resolve this? Although he does not directly address it in this section, he conceives
of the decree in the same way as his earlier division between the divine attributes into
subjective (in God) and objective (receiving God’s action). The Latin used for this objective
or outward sense is ad extra and is a very important distinction in the contemporary
examination of theistic mutualism. Many things that the Bible portrays as diverse in God’s
thoughts or decisions or other apparent actions are only so ad extra, rather than pointing “to
the inside” (ad intra) as if there were phenomena in God. Such would imply that “there is
more than one real entity,”28 which is another of Turretin’s descriptions of composition.

25 Institutes. I.192
26 Institutes. I.193
27 Institutes. I.194
28 Institutes. I.192
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Consequently the decree of God is singular and simple in the former sense and yet diverse
in the latter, in reference to its many effects.

Divine Eternality (or Atemporality)

Here I am only concerned with the attribute of eternity in its negative sense, and not
Boethius’ definition of God’s supreme possession of life, with all that this might entail. The
dimension of eternity that concerns Turretin here is that which transcends time. Again we
have to understand his doctrine in light of the errors of his day. Eternality is poised against
the Socinians in this work, but because of his argument with “the Jesuits” over Middle
Knowledge,29 this attribute is very relevant for contemporary renovations to omniscience as
well. He begins with this definition: “The infinity of God in reference to duration is called
eternity to which these three things are ascribed: (1) that it is without beginning; (2) without
end; (3) without succession … We maintain that God is free from every difference of time,
and no less from succession than from beginning and end.”30 Scripture supports that an
absolute eternity belongs to God (Gen. 21:33, Is. 41:4, 57:15, 1 Tim. 1:17, Ps. 90:1-2, 102:25-28,
Rev. 1:8). The challenge will be whether the theologian can show that this “eternity” is
something more than simply an aspect of time to the nth degree. Does it rather transcend
temporal succession altogether? Turretin’s argument from the Psalms and James 1:17 both
reduce succession to mutability, and so excludes it from God by relating God’s eternity to
immutability. If one is lost, so is the other.

It is important to note that the classical doctrine that God transcends time is not a denial
that he is also present to time: omnipresence. Transcendence and immanence go together in
the Christian view without reducing either. What matters is that God is not limited by the
elements of time. He further argues that “succession depends upon a beginning,” and that

29Turretin lists three Jesuit antagonists who challenged absolute omniscience, though we would recognize Luis
de Molina as the ring leader. Hence the label Molinism. As tempting as it would have been to treat his argument
against Middle Knowledge, in light of William Lane Craig’s position, I have seen fit to resist that temptation.
30 Institutes. I.202
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succession involves “change of former into latter,”31 so that it would compromise God’s
immutability. To the more recent theistic mutualists, “creation is the linchpin that requires
temporality in God.”32 That is because the attribute of Creator denotes, to their view,
something that is not essential to God and yet an aspect of God. To torture the words of
Arius, “There was when he (the Creator) was not.” But notice that this presupposes a
“before and after,” which is only to beg the question. If every unit of space or time is present
to God, then the particular effect of creation is no different. Thus it is not new to him, even
as it is a free effect of God.33 We will come back to this below concerning immutability.

What about God’s knowledge? If omniscience is a knowledge of “all things,” then each thing
in that set is a particular. So God must know that “It is 7:40 AM” as I type this. The
contemporary theistic philosopher resolves this by assuming God is in time up front and
then treats the “all things” of time as a succession in which one is experiencing the
succession, rather than God knowing perfectly of the succession (and each of its moments)
within his omnipresence. But the question of whether succession is presented in God’s
eternal mind or whether God is “in” the succession (or the succession is “in” him) is not
resolved by presupposing the latter as the only acceptable definition. That is to beg the
question. Later on he says, “The indivisible eternity of God embraces all divisible times, not
coextensively or formally, but eminently and indivisibly.”34 I used the word omnipresence
above, but Turretin uses the old world immensity to denote that which “embraces …all the
extended and divisible parts of the world (although indivisible in his nature) because
wherever he is, he is wholly.”35 At any rate, we can see the close association between
atemporality and omniscience. It seems that Turretin would agree that to lose one is to lose
the other.

31 Institutes. I.203
32 Dolezal. All That is In God. 81
33I am deliberately ignoring the next objection that will naturally arise from this: If all effects of God are
necessarily known by God, then in what sense is God “free” to do otherwise? I think there are very good
answers to this, but they would be unhelpful to explore here.
34 Institutes. I.204
35 Institutes. I.204
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The Socinians divided the decrees between those made before time and the majority made
after the creation began. But the reasons for holding to all the decrees as eternal are: (1)
Scripture expressly ascribes eternity to them (Mat. 25:34, Eph. 1:4, 2 Tim. 1:9, 1 Pet. 1:20); (2)
Scripture implies it from foreknowledge (Acts 15:18), since if the decrees are foreknown, and
foreknowledge is eternal, then so are the decrees; and (3) temporal decisions imply
deliberation. Now deliberation implies ignorance and succession; but ignorance is opposed
to omniscience, and succession is opposed to immutability and eternality. That there is an
order to the decrees does not mean that some are eternal and others not. The order is
logical and not chronological.

One last point about the essence of God in relation to all that is not God. The essence of
eternality cannot be fundamentally defined by time. Time is created, as Augustine showed,36
and so the divine essence cannot be determined by his effects. “True eternity has been
defined by the Scholastics to be ‘the interminable possession of life —complete, perfect, and
at once.’”37 Thus eternality is, most basically, qualitative of life and only secondarily
quantitative in relation to succession, and that by negation. So in the end, Turretin does
have an understanding that accords with the definition given by Boethius. If the primary
definition was not his main focus, it was only for polemical reasons.

Divine Immutability

Is God immutable both with respect to his essence and with respect to his decrees? That is
Question 11. Turretin was especially arguing against those who divorced the divine will from
the rest of the divine essence. First the attribute must be defined with respect to God. It
means not only that God does not change, but that he cannot change. Scripture teaches
absolute immutability (Mal. 3:6, Ps. 33:11, 110:4, 102:26, Jam. 1:17, Num. 23:19, Is. 46:10, Heb.
6:17); and reason confirms it since a necessary and independent being cannot change. He

36 Augustine. Confessions. XI.14.17

37 Institutes. I.203
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argues, “All causes of change are removed from him,”38 which must include error, ignorance,
or inconstancy of will. We have already introduced the objection that when God creates
anything, a new relation seems to be arising in God, or, at least, an act of the divine will has
moved in a way that it had not moved before. Turretin flatly rejects this: “Creation did not
produce a change in God, but in creatures.”39 The events of history are changing. Biblical
theology, if not balanced by theology proper, presses us to conceive of God as changing with
the narrative of Scripture.

Turretin draws a distinction common among other medieval and Reformed theologians
between the names of God and the attributes of God. The names “Creator” and “Lord” and
“Redeemer” and “Savior” are all relative terms. Properly speaking they are denoting a
relation between God and his effects and not an attribute of God which, in his essence, he
did not previously possess. On the other hand, if all of God is eternal and all of his acts are
an act of that eternity, then creation would also seem to be an eternal act. Note that this is
not the same as to say that therefore the universe is eternal. The act proper is a divine act
and thus transcends any effect. This is also no embarrassment to the classical position where
the divine will and act are not separated.

Correct understanding of immutability helps to answer the objection that the Incarnation
effects change in God’s essence. It is “not by a conversion of the Word … into flesh, but by
an assumption of the flesh to the hypostasis of the Word.” So the doctrine of the
Incarnation is supported by the antecedent truth that, “It is one thing to change the will;
another to will the change of anything.”40 God as immutable Creator is foundational to God
the Son assuming human nature. Neither the essence nor the decree were altered by the
Word becoming flesh. The Incarnation especially points to the irony of modern theology’s
attempt to make God more personal by pitting immanence against transcendence (in this

38 Institutes. I.205
39 Institutes. I.205
40 Institutes. I.205
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case, temporal change in the name of divine action). The irony is that it would no longer be
God acting in time and space if he must become in order to do so.

The challenge of Open Theism is likewise anticipated by this reasoning: “Unfulfilled

promises and threatenings do not argue a change of will because they were conditional, not
absolute.”41 When man disobeys a condition set forth by God, what would natural follow
the condition goes undone, but the decree is not overthrown. Of things that require a
condition, and yet will not be fulfilled: “since God (who has all things in his own power)
knows that such a condition will never take place (since he himself has not decreed it), he
cannot be said to have decreed anything under that condition.”42

We see a clear example here of that distinction between absolute and consequent necessity.
Many things were possible, if God had so chose, yet impossible given the decree. The
former belongs to the absolute necessity of God and the latter to the consequent necessity
of the decree. Turretin cites the example of Christ being crucified: God was perfectly free to
do otherwise, yet Christ’s not being crucified is impossible consequent to the decree. In
other words, God was free to withhold redemption from sinners, but given his decision to
save, the cross accomplished some essential ways to carry it out. Absolute necessities, in true
theology, wholly determine consequent necessities. And the practical importance of this to
what follows in this thesis is that those consequent necessities (e. g. Righteousness is
imputed through our faith in Christ’s action) are necessary precisely because of the nature
of their antecedents (e. g. God cannot accept any righteousness but a perfect righteousness).

It should also be pointed out that this distinction between antecedent and consequent
necessity is not the same as the “antecedent and consequent wills” of God posited by the
Socinians and Remonstrants. By this they held out the prospects that God set out both his
imperatives and invitations antecedently, but then followed man’s “free” response with

41 Institutes. I.206
42 Institutes. I.318
 17

either rewards or punishments.43 So the their idea of God’s consequent will is the divine
response to man’s response subsequent to the antecedent divine will. All of the Reformed
would reject this, and yet in order to do so, our fellow Calvinists will have to reply upon
classical categories applied to the decree: namely, that is it simple, eternal, and immutable.
Naturally all of this raises more questions: How then is there freedom either in God or in
the creature? Since answering these exceeds the scope of this essay, my only aim is to show
how these divine attributes, central to classical Christian theology, provide the logical
ground for God’s gracious covenant to sinners, his means of salvation in the cross of Christ,
and therefore justification by faith alone.

COVENANT

Adam was the representative head of the first covenant acting on behalf of all those who
would be born to his race. Turretin preferred to call this the “covenant of nature.” There is a
twofold foundation to the representative union between Adam and his seed: one was natural
and the other forensic.44 This is where Turretin locates the difference between natural
versus positive law: the former was inscribed on the heart and the latter was restricted to
the occasion by the words of God. In the Garden, prohibiting Adam from the fruit is an
example of the latter. Here again the thinking of Turretin will seem odd to the Van Tillian
strand of the present Reformed landscape, who have been taught to think of natural law in
the same way as natural theology — “autonomous” and “neutral” and so forth. Turretin
defines natural law as “the practical rule of moral duties to which men are bound by
nature”45 and he makes it clear that he had Romans 2:14-15 in mind.

When more recent Reformed critics have conceived of natural law, they have understood it
either descriptively (law of natural tendency), as in what sinners do in society; or even
normatively, but still subjectively (law conceived by natural minds), as in what man thinks

43 Institutes. I.226
44 Institutes. I.577
45 Institutes. II.2
 18

about right and wrong.46 This distortion of what natural law means comes down to us as
much from Barth as from Van Til.47 However these subjectivities may have bled into the
conception of natural law within modern thought, this is certainly not what natural law
meant in the Middle Ages and among the Protestant Scholastics. From a classical Christian
perspective, natural law means what God has said about right conduct in the things that have been
made. Granted that human nature is its focal point. Nevertheless its proper subject matter is
divine speech, not human opinion, much less human behavior. That the conscience is the
medium of this moral knowledge does not mean that human reason is the author or arbiter
of its content.

A further distinction was made among the Schoolmen in which natural law encompassed
the way all things in nature are. In this sense the gravity that draws objects down and the
resources that draw men to war both belong to the same “laws of nature.” Turretin
acknowledges this but says it should not be called “natural law” in the same way, since this is
better categorized under providence.48 Here we are speaking of a law of right and wrong
behavior; and this pertains to the rational creature. So he says, “But it must be drawn from
the right of nature itself, founded both on the nature of God, the Creator … and on the
condition of rational creatures themselves.”49 Right and wrong are what they are, with
respect to human relations, because of various attributes of God. The ultimate “nature” in
natural law is the nature of God himself; yet Paul implies a secondary nature (equally
objective): namely, “what the law requires” (Rom. 2:14), and that inscribed on the heart of
man. The Apostle’s parallel here between the natural law and the law of Moses explains why
so many in the classical mold held to some common field between extra-biblical natural law
and the moral law in the Bible, in spite of the fact that they are not the exact same thing.

46 cf. Frame. A History of Western Philosophy and Theology. 76, 78

47 cf. Grabill. 265
48 Institutes. II.2
49 Institutes. II.3
 19

This has direct implications for our thesis. Consider the distinction between moral and
ceremonial law. On what basis is this distinction made? We can appeal to certain texts and
work out a context from there. Turretin instead appeals to immutability. He sets up three
opinions about the commands — (1) all dispensable; (2) all indispensable; (3) partly
dispensable, partly indispensable — and then he shows how only the third view makes
sense.50 The key will be to remember a prior distinction made between the first order of
natural right (based on the nature of God himself) and the second order of natural right
(rooted in the nature of man as the image of God).51 This set up two senses of immutability:
one absolute and the other consequential, and therefore relative. Those commands which
directly reflect the nature of God are absolutely indispensable; and those which are not are
only consequently indispensable. Even in the law of Moses, murder is outlawed to Israelites
as image bearers per se; bleeding in the camp is outlawed to Israelites as a royal priesthood.
Man cannot set aside any command. To man, all divine commands (both of natural and
positive law) are absolutely indispensable; to God the natural is indispensable but the
positive are dispensable. That is why the priesthood becomes abrogated (Heb. 7:12), but the
image does not (Col. 3:10, Jam. 3:9). Turretin makes this case rest in immutability: absolute
and consequent.

Another implication of the eternal and immutable God can be seen in the nature of God’s
relationship to his own promise. Consider the “binding” of God as a party: “with respect to
God, it was gratuitous, as depending upon a pact or gratuitous promise (by which God was
bound not to man, but to himself and to his own goodness, fidelity, and truth.”52 To be sure,
other attributes of God would increase our clarity here: e. g. aseity, sovereignty, etc. But this
has immediate implications for the notion of merit. Even if we choose to see the idea of
merit in the first covenant, we must not conceive of Adam’s reward as one to which God
would have been indebted.

50 Institutes. II.9-10
51 Institutes. II.8-9
52 Institutes. I.578
 20

When we turn to the covenant of grace we see all three attributes of God reflected. This
covenant is simple (one), eternal, and immutable. Note that these attributes are used only
relatively about things outside of God, but they nevertheless reflect the absolute form of
these attributes in God. It is as if Turretin sees the New Covenant as the “covenant renewal”
not only of the Abrahamic covenant but even of the covenant of redemption in eternity, of
which the whole covenant of grace is the earthly manifestation. He sees in the LORD’s
recalling the promise in Exodus 2 and 6 One “who, with eternity and immutability of
essence, would maintain constancy and fidelity in carrying out his promise.”53

While covenant theology is a hybrid of biblical and systematic theology, the features of the
covenant of grace are naturally associated with the doctrine of salvation. Both are made to
follow from the doctrine of God in Turretin’s thought. For instance, that all the promises
are summarized in “I will be your God” follows from the simplicity of God, because there is
one substance of the promise even while many blessings in God. We see this clearly with
immutability. The immutability of election unto final perseverance follows logically from the
immutability of God’s nature and therefore of his decrees. If all divine decrees are
immutable, and election is a divine decree, then it follows that election is immutable. And
the Scriptures speak about it in this way: Romans 9:11 and 11:29, 2 Timothy 2:19, and
Hebrews 6:17-18. In that last passage, the Scripture appeals to immutability when giving
covenant assurance:

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the
unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two
unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for
refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

The nature of covenant and salvation follows the nature of God.

Turretin gives a seven-point biblical argument for the oneness of the covenant between Old
and New: First, “the Scriptures teach that the covenant of grace … is the same with the

53 Institutes. II.225
 21

covenant previously made with Abraham”54 (Lk. 1:68, 70, 72, 73, Acts 3:25, Rom. 4:3, Gal. 3:8,
17); Second, from the central promise that God will be our God and we his people — this
unites the various administrations — to Abraham (Gen. 17:7), Moses (Ex. 3:15), Israel in
captivity (Ezk. 36:28), and in the new covenant (Mat. 22:32, 2 Cor. 6:16, Rev. 21:3); Third, the
better Mediator is the same for both, in promise for those beforehand (Gen. 3:15, Is. 42:6,
49:8, Mal. 3:1), in fulfillment for those after (1 Tim. 2:5, Heb. 8:6, 9:15), but always the same
Christ for his people (Heb. 13:8); Fourth, the same condition, or “duty” — “‘Believe and thou
shalt be saved’; the other is commanded by the evangelical law — ‘Walk before me, and be
thou perfect’ (Gen. 17:1).”55; Fifth, the same spiritual promises made to both (Acts 13:32, Gal.
3:14, Ezk. 36:26-27) — the former simply under the veil of types and shadows (1 Cor. 10:1-4);
Sixth, the sacraments were the same, as to substance, in both testaments (Rom. 4:11, 1 Cor.
5:7); Seventh, “the very law of Moses … instructed them concerning the covenant of grace
and prepared and stimulated them to embrace it”56 (Rom. 10:4, Gal. 3:24).

There remains a controversy even among those who hold to a unified covenant of grace
from Old to New. This has to do with whether the legal arrangement between God and
Israel at Sinai was a republication of the covenant of works. The way Turretin frames the
question is whether there is a third covenant. Advocates of republication today could get
around this way of putting the question. For example, when Turretin argues that “Scripture
tells us of only two covenants, nowhere however of three” or else, “There can be so many
and no more covenants as there are ways and modes of obtaining happiness and communion
with God.”57 Michael Horton, for example, would be able to agree with this, while
categorizing the Mosaic Covenant in the same conditional relationship with the Adamic.58
Both say “Do this and live.” Even if Turretin’s formulation does not anticipate the
contemporary debate with specificity, there is a value to his comparison between the

54 Institutes. II.194
55 Institutes. II.184
56 Institutes. II.200
57 Institutes. II.264
58 cf. Horton. God of Promise. 35, 38, 43
 22

Adamic, the Abrahamic, and the Mosaic. There is a lost art here in our theology. As Turretin
sets forth how the Sinaitic arrangement agrees and differs with the arrangement in Eden,
and then how it agrees and differs with the one made with Abraham, what criterion can
discern between the two lists? He clearly wants his reader to see that the similarities of legal
works between Adam and Moses are more circumstantial in comparison to the more
essential similarities of promise and provided mediation between Abraham and Moses.59
There it is again: simplicity in the covenant of grace. The difference between the simplicity
of the covenant and the simplicity of its God is that, unlike God, the covenant is one in
essence and yet diverse in accidens, whereas there is nothing accidental in God.

If there is overlap between covenant and the work of Christ, it is because of this concept of
federal representation. We will see a necessity in the humanity of the Son by virtue of this
representation. Turretin argues that, “if Christ was not made like us in all things as to
identity of nature, he could not truly redeem us, since sin must be expiated in the same
nature in which it was committed.”60 Drawing a necessary link between God becoming man
and the debt that man owed is not unique to Turretin, or even Reformed thought. Anselm
had most famously argued the same. What was becoming more articulate in the seventeenth
century was the notion that this link was covenantal, and that it connected the Mediator to
both covenants: works and grace. Indeed Christ’s representation of us in grace was only
possible if he first fulfilled for us the demands of the first covenant.

ATONEMENT

This necessity begins with the nature of the Incarnation. The assumption of flesh had to be
in a certain way given the oneness of the divine essence and trinity of the persons. For
example, Turretin argues, the Father could not assume flesh. Why not? It is because, “as he
was first in order he could not be sent by anyone or act as mediator to the Son and the Holy

59 Institutes. II.262-263
60 Institutes. II.309
 23

Spirit.”61 Moreover, in disputing with the Lutherans over Christ’s ubiquity, he contends that
“either all of the properties of the divine nature were communicated [to the human] or none
because they are inseparable and really one.”62 So one reason we must reject the Lutheran
view of the Lord’s Supper is that Christ’s human nature cannot have communicated to it any
divine attribute. Since God is simple, it follows that any divine attribute communicated
would imply that all such attributes were. The divine essence cannot be divided.

More specifically to the atonement itself, it is asked whether Christ suffered in the body
only or in the soul also; and if in the soul, in the lower part only or also in the rational
faculty. The orthodox see Christ’s suffering in the whole for the reason already introduced:
man sinned in the whole. And while the bodily torment was quite real, “the sensible and
external part exposed to the eyes” is not the “most heavy and most dreadful weight of divine
wrath and the curse.”63 The unity of the soul seems to be a premise flowing through how
Turretin views Christ’s sacrifice. This unity is a classical doctrine, and yet here we see it
protecting the integrity of the heart of the gospel.

Socinians in his day denied the necessity of satisfaction for sin. Among the orthodox, two
views existed. Some, including Augustine,64 held to satisfaction on the ground that God had
decreed it. In other words, it was a consequential (or hypothetical) necessity. Others, like
Turretin, held that satisfaction was necessary given God’s justice. Two qualifications should
be made. First, he was not saying that the former position held satisfaction to be wholly
capricious, having no other reason than that God willed to do so. Those of this view spoke
of a “fitting” nature of this decree so that God’s justice would be vindicated. Second,
Turretin’s own view did not deny that satisfaction was a contingent truth of sorts. After all,
he had already said that God did not need to redeem a people at all. The absolute necessity
of satisfaction for sin takes into account the freedom of the initial decree. What the

61 Institutes. II.304
62 Institutes. II.324
63 Institutes. II.353
64 Institutes. II.418
 24

orthodox view insists, however, is that while some of the “manner of circumstances of the
punishment” may belong to “positive and free right,” yet the necessity of the punishment
itself belongs to the indispensable right of divine justice.65 In other words, God the Just may
either redeem or else not; but if he redeems sinners then he must do so in a way that makes
things truly right. That is the very meaning of atonement.

In arguing that vindictive justice belongs to the essence of God, Turretin makes the
strongest possible case for the necessity of penal substitution against those who supposed
that God can forgive apart from retribution: “For if it was free and indifferent to God to
punish or not to punish sin without compromising his justice so that no reason besides the
mere will impelled God to send his Son into the world to die for us, what lawful reason can
be devised to account for God’s willing to subject his most beloved and holy Son to an
accursed and most cruel death?”66 Now this takes care of the essence of the demand for
justice, but what of its accomplishment?

This brings us to the very nature and extent of the atonement. Drawing from his theological
method of matching the sense of words to the reality of their referents, he exposes that the
Socinians’ use of “satisfaction” regards only the positive fulfillment of God’s will in Jesus’
life, and that primarily as moral teacher and example. The orthodox mean more than this by
the word. It must encompass the “proper satisfaction made by the payment of a full price
and which meritoriously obtains the liberation of the guilty on the ground of justice.”67 All
of the main texts on the redemption and ransom price show this, for him, since a “price
indicates a relation … to distributive justice.”68 He offers six lines of argument for the
orthodox view of satisfaction, but these six categories of texts are really more like six
elements comprising the nature: 1. redemption at a price; 2. substitution; 3. sin-bearing; 4.
Godward sacrifice; 5. reconciliation procured by it; and 6. the nature of the death itself. Now

65 Institutes. II.420
66 Institutes. I.239
67 Institutes. II.426
68 Institutes. II.427
 25

there is a seventh line of reasoning, and this brings us back to our thesis: how the attributes
of God ground this gospel.

Turretin mentions three attributes by name here: justice, mercy, and wisdom. Because of the
limits of this study, the focus here will be squarely on justice. God’s justice is one, eternal,
and unchanging, and the nature of these attributes have implications for the whole work of
Christ. He asks, “What becomes of justice which not only acquits the convicted sinner (sin
being unpunished), but also bestows on him the most honorable rewards?”69 Justice is
inevitably meted out because justice is immutable. The sinner cannot hope that the Judge
will change his mind about the least sin. At the heart of this work of Christ, each aspect of
the atonement must be conceived toward its proper object: “Satisfaction has God for its
object; remission has men. Satisfaction is made to the justice of God and on that account
sin is freely remitted.”70

This points to the dimensions of the atonement that (1) relate eternity to time and (2) relate
eternity to relevant conceptions of infinity. First, the atonement relates eternity to time in
connecting the parties of satisfaction: at one point regarding the receiving satisfaction in
eternity, and at another point regarding the payment made in time and space. “He gives it as
God-man … he receives it as the Word … he gives it as Mediator and receives it as a Judge.”71
In other words, how should we understand an eternal receipt of a space-time payment in
light of the three classical attributes examined earlier? Second, and even more mysterious,
perhaps, in what sense was the ultimate suffering of Christ eternal, given the principle of the
punishment fitting the crime? Although divine infinity was not explored in this thesis, it is
common knowledge among students of Reformed theology that an “infinite debt” of sinners
is assumed to be incurred given the “infinite worth” of the God whom we have offended.

69 Institutes. II.435
70 Institutes. II.436
71 Institutes. II.436
 26

Turretin seems to assume this same necessity of an infinite punishment, even if “not infinite
as to duration,”72 at least as to an equivalent value.

It is only the second that he addresses head on. He says that “what was deficient in time is
supplied by the condition of the divine person.”73 This may be a good start to the answer,
but it only opens up another question concerning the impassibility of the divine Son. A start
to resolving can be that impassibility requires only that the divine essence not suffer as an
effect: that God have no potentiality and thus that God is not affected from beyond himself.
Divine justice is not beyond himself. However this concludes in reconciling classical theism
with the suffering of the Son, it hardly scratches the surface of what this suffering is.
Turretin’s focus seems to be that the surpassing dignity of the Son explains the sufficient
payment.

The more practical application drawn out by Turretin is the sufficiency of the atonement for
the sake of the elect: indeed the efficiency of the atonement for the elect in contrast to a
cross that pays for the sins of no one in particular, in the name of paying for everyone in
general. The fourteenth question comes right to it: For whom did Christ die? Here the
question is not the power of Christ’s death taken in isolation. None of the Reformed
dispute that the blood and righteousness of Christ is sufficient to save an infinite amount of
theoretical worlds. Rather the question regards the actual design. Amyraldianism is surveyed
but quickly dispensed with as leading to absurdities. That Christ died absolutely for the
elect, but conditionally for all, only attempts to ignore the actual design question.

All in all, there are aspects of a definite atonement that come in inseparable pairs. These are
inseparable because God is inseparable. None of these can be separated: the decree to elect
and call from the decree to include those same elect in the Son’s work, the satisfaction from
the intercession, the gift of the Son to accomplish from the gift of the Spirit to apply,
Christ’s obtaining of the church from the believer’s obtaining the salvation so derived, etc.

72 Institutes. II.436
73 Institutes. II.436
 27

Of course inseparability in these saving works is really a reflection of indivisibility in the one
who works them. To divorce any of these from each other would be to separate the
intentions and effect of one of the Persons of the Godhead from the others. The oneness of
the sacrifice is appealed to by Scripture to prove its sufficiency (Heb. 7:27, 9:26, 10:10, 12,
14),74 and it is also called an “eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). Far from being a sectarian, in
the sense of “non-catholic,” doctrine, limited atonement is actually rooted in classical divine
attributes.

JUSTIFICATION

Justification (Topic Sixteen) follows calling and faith (Topic Fifteen) because the ordo salutis
is primarily about the eternal decree and only consequently about the way that an individual
sinner is converted and experiences progress in this life. Notice about soteriology as a whole
that those attributes of simplicity, eternality, and immutability remain at the root. It
explains why the elect and reprobate cannot be anything other than what God has decreed,
as Turretin says about the impossibility that God calls the reprobate in the same way as the
elect.75 That God knows perfectly who will end in either heaven or hell is a fact of which the
theologian is conscious, and this demands a choice. At this crossroad, the theologian must
choose between unconditional election, on the one hand, or the extremes of Universalism,
Open Theism, or Annihilationism on the other. Mediating positions are a state of cognitive
dissonance that will wear off.

This same simple, eternal, and immutable quality passes on through the whole work of the
Son, so that Turretin speaks of redemption as one thing accomplished by the Son and
applied by the Spirit. The former refers to the office of Christ, while the latter are his
benefits.76 More than in any other section, Turretin employs the language of Aristotle’s

74 Institutes. II.440
75 Institutes. II.505
76 Institutes. II.501
 28

causes to make precise the doctrine. The “impulsive” or “meritorious cause”77 is the material
cause: the object that God reckons as inherently righteous. This could be misleading. Both
sides to the sixteenth century controversy could claim Christ’s own merit as that material
ground for God’s verdict. “For although they do not appear to exclude entirely the
righteousness of Christ, inasmuch as they hold that it by it he merited that God should
communicate it to us by the Holy Spirit internal righteousness and thus it is a condition of
the formal cause.”78 As to that form, whereas Rome saw justification as a moral-
transformative work, the Reformers saw it as a forensic-declarative work. Two different
formal causes issue forth into two different instrumental causes by which the recipient of
God’s grace lays claim to the “righteous” status.

Rome said that this was an infused righteousness such that it inheres in the recipient of the
Church’s sacramental grace. It was one’s own, however it may have been initiated by grace,
so that God would not call “righteous” what was not in fact righteous. The Reformers
countered that this was an imputed righteousness such that God considers righteous the
unrighteous through faith alone. Thus the Reformers saw faith as the sole, sufficient,
instrumental cause. It is important to note that Turretin does not live up to Rome’s
caricature. He even sets the bar higher: “God, the just Judge … cannot pronounce anyone
just and give him a right to life except on the ground of some perfect righteousness.”79 This
is the real starting point: the righteousness of God per se.

Revisiting theology proper he had said, “Justice is usually meant in two ways: either as “God
is in himself perfectly holy and just … Or justice is taken for particular justice, which gives to
each his due.”80 From this “arises a twofold right with regard to the infliction of punishment:
one necessary and indispensable with respect to sin itself; the other free and positive with
respect to the sinner. Justice demands that all sin should be punished, but does not equally

77 Institutes. II.637, 646

78 Institutes. II.638; cf. 649 — Whether this merit is Christ’s, “the Romanists do not dare deny.”
79 Institutes. II.637
80 Institutes. I.235
 29

demand that it should be punished in every single person sinning or at such a time and in
such a degree.”81 The justice of God, no less than his grace, is a sovereign justice. It belongs
to his “autocratic right.”82 Some may be inclined to see this as a principle of voluntarism
rather than realism. God would be deciding for the justification of a sinner by virtue of the
divine will rather than the divine intellect. Certainly God wills to justify in spite of what he
knows about the real record of the sinner; but the Reformed realist knows that while God
may be deciding mercy against the unrighteousness of the sinner, God is not deciding
against his own justice.

For the Reformers to claim that divine justice is sovereign is not special pleading. The
premises that (1) God could justify whomever he wills and that (2) none is righteous, do not imply
that he justifies without a ground in perfect righteousness. “Christ by his obedience is
rightly said ‘to constitute’ us ‘righteous’.”83 If justice was satisfied, mercy does no injustice.
Moreover, God’s ability to impute this righteousness through faith is seen by Turretin to rest
in the union we have with Christ. As our Head, “he can communicate to us his righteousness
and all his benefits.”84 So while Rome paid lip service to the highest standard — i. e. that
God could not call “righteous” what was not in fact — Turretin turns this very truth back
upon their notion of inherent righteousness: “because no one is justified by an imperfect
righteousness, since the judgment of God is according to truth.”85 Thus the perfect
righteousness of one who is both God and man is shown to be a consequent necessity to the
absolute necessity of God’s righteousness.

He affirmed Luther’s maxim that justification is “the article of a standing and a falling
church.”86 Here again the classical method confronts our generation’s antipathy to right

81 Institutes. I.236
82 Institutes. II.646
83 Institutes. II.644
84 Institutes. II.647
85 Institutes. II.640
86 Institutes. II.633
 30

order. This issue was so crucial that distinctions that our age would consider exceedingly
hairsplitting, Turretin saw as the pivot point of the whole gospel hope. Catholic theologian
Bellarmine is represented throughout as the closest to the truth, and yet when he shows
charity to the Protestants and uses the word “imputation” to consider the sola fide
perspective, Turretin must point out that he is still allowing for this righteousness to be
“offered back” to God as the fruit of our labor.87 Again our generation may find this
hairsplitting. Jesus did not. The parable of the Pharisee and tax collector has the latter going
back to his home unjustified before God (Lk. 18:14).

Turretin calls the two parts of justification (1) remission of sins and (2) the right to life.88 He
treats the imputation of righteousness as the foundation with absolution and adoption being
the two benefits flowing from it. This is that double cure that follows, as the necessary
solution, from the double curse of guilt and alienation.

Turretin is very helpful in answering those who would accept the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness but balk at the imputation of Adam’s guilt. As an increasing number of
Evangelicals are coming to Reformed theology through the New Calvinism, and therefore
apart from consistent covenantal categories, it is only natural that doctrines such as this may
seem dispensable. Paul’s analogy in Romans 5:12-21 is mined by Turretin not only for the
parallel between Adam’s unrighteous act and Christ’s righteous act, but also the parallel
between the immediate death of Adam’s race and the immediate life of Christ’s. At first
glance, it may seem as if the life and death parallel adds nothing to the question of
imputation. After all it may be argued that, “We can accept Adam’s race being born into the
sin nature, totally depraved, and destined for death apart from Christ. We can also celebrate
the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (complete with active and passive obedience). But
what do we lose if we jettison Adam’s guilt imputed and can it really be demonstrated from
Romans 5:12-21 to begin with?”

87 Institutes. II.650
88 Institutes. II.656-657
 31

In answering the fourth question he insists “sin and righteousness are contraries” and
“between death and life there is no middle ground.89 The language of Paul’s analogy is not
about the sin, righteousness, death, and life, that operate incrementally throughout the
course of earthly existence. Here we are dealing with the mountain peaks, Adam and Christ,
not primarily to hear about the long-term effects of their representative actions (although
those are implied), but about the immediate effects, upon the whole of their races.
Otherwise the analogy is incoherent. Christ’s righteousness here “does not imply the
extinction of sin, but only the pardoning of it.”90 The analogy breaks down at once if Adam’s
effects are natural but Christ’s forensic. If Adam’s work was an infused unrighteousness, why
should Rome not claim this analogy to teach an infusion the other way?

A similar one to the mystery of the atonement comes up here as well. Given that the whole
decree is inherent to God, thus simple, eternal, and immutable, When and where does the act of
justification take place? As with satisfaction, so with justification: How do they relate? On a
theological mutualist account, there is space-time experiential cause rendering an effect in
God. But the classical perspective will not allow this. Turretin speaks of “a twofold handling
of it” which distinguishes between the act of God that justifies and the experience of the
believer who becomes justified. As faith is the instrument it is only treated as a cause
“relatively and organically,”91

He describes those who “hold that justification [is] … an immanent and internal act in God.
However, as nothing new can happen to God in time, they think it was made in him from
eternity and ascribed to faith only as to cognizance and sense because it leads us into the
knowledge of him and makes us certain of it.”92 Turretin approves of the rational but will
take a different position because, he says, “The decree of justification is one thing;
justification itself another …The will or decree to justify certain persons is indeed eternal

89 Institutes. II.659
90 Institutes. II.660
91 Institutes. II.670
92 Institutes. II.683
 32

and precedes faith itself, but actual justification takes place in time and follows faith.”93
Romans 8:30 is a passage which forces him to conclude this. Here we have a good example
of how contemplative and biblical theology can work harmoniously to demand a more
rigorous, but more accurate, distinction.

The simple, eternal, and immutable character of salvation is of practical importance. This is
true of the atonement and justification. Turretin places, as if in a hierarchy, God promise in
the covenant of grace as the foundation, and Christ’s righteous action as that which grounds
the past, present, and future dimensions of our sins to that promise.94 None of this
contradicts the necessity of continuing repentance and persevering faith. Moment by
moment is the only way that we can receive the benefits of repentance and faith and thus
they remain necessary conditions. Both satisfaction for sins and justification of the sinner
must take into account future sins, or else one could only be forgiven and declared righteous
at moment-by-moment faith. Such a time-and-change-bound satisfaction and righteousness
would also implies that faith is meritorious, as the performance of it is the decisive mark
between sins forgiven and others not, between righteousness possessed and righteousness
forfeited. Justification has those attributes not simply because there is only one means by
which believers are justified by faith alone. In addition, in the life of a single believer: “It is
one thing to apply justification often and to extend it to sins of daily occurrence … another
to repeat and renew justification often. The former we grant, but not the latter.”95 What
does this mean but that justification is one, eternal, and immutable?

CONCLUSION

Right order in theology continues into his third volume which deals with ecclesiology and
the sacraments. Why is there one church? Who are its members? What are its powers?
What are the sacraments and how do they differ from the false sacraments of Rome? In fact

93 Institutes. II.683
94 Institutes. II.665
95 Institutes. II.687
 33

he opens off the question of whether knowledge of the church precedes the knowledge of
other doctrines or vice versa. So his insistence of right method never departs.

There is not much mystery as to why Turretin’s work has fallen into disuse. With the
Enlightenment came an overall secularization in the institutions and countries of the West.
The Institutes were still the standard text in dogmatics at Princeton until Charles Hodge
completed his own. A good case can be made that it should be required reading again until
he is truly surpassed by newer generations of Reformed scholars working in the same vein.
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Turretin’s Theological Anthropology”. Westminster Theological Journal (2005): 261-79
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