Francis Turretin (17 October 1623 – 28 September 1687; also known as François Turrettini) was a Genevan-Italian Reformed scholastic theologian. Turretin is especially known as a zealous opponent of the moderate Calvinist theology of the Academy of Saumur (embodied by Moise Amyraut and called Amyraldianism). He 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. Life Francis was the son of Bénédict Turrettini, and like his father, was born in Geneva. Their ancestor (Bénédict's father), Francesco Turrettini the elder, had left his native Lucca in 1574 and settled in Geneva in 1592. Francis studied theology at Geneva (1640–1644), Leiden (1644), Utrecht, Paris (1645–1646), Saumur (1646–1648), Montauban, and Nîmes. In Paris he also studied philosophy under Roman Catholic Pierre Gassendi. Returning to his native city of Geneva, he was made pastor of the Italian church there from 1648 to 1687, of the French congregation from 1653 to 1687, and professor of theology at the University of Geneva in 1653. He is the father of Jean-Alphonse Turrettini, who would do much to dismantle the theology his father promoted. Works His Institutio Theologiae Elencticae (3 parts, Geneva, 1679–1685) is an example of Reformed scholasticism. The Institutes uses the scholastic method to dispute a number of controversial issues. In it he defended the view that the Bible is God's verbally inspired word. He also argued for infralapsarianism and federal theology. The Institutes was widely used as a textbook, up to its use at Princeton Theological Seminary by the Princeton theologians only to be replaced by Charles Hodge's Systematic Theology in the late 19th century. Of his other disputations, his most important are De Satisfactione Christi disputationes (1666) and De necessaria secessione nostra ab Ecclesia Romana et impossibili cum ea syncretismo (published in 1687). He wrote the Helvetic Consensus, a Reformed confession written against Amyraldianism, with J. H. Heidegger in 1675. 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. John Gerstner called Turrettini "the most precise theologian in the Calvinistic tradition." Free Choice Along the lines of Reformed theology, Turretin argues that