Turretin to the Enlightenment

Turretin set the stage for this development with his new theological system and his reliance on rational investigation. His system of natural theology was far more extensive than that of his scholastic predecessors since he attempted to prove as much about God through reason as possible. Concerning special revelation, he used external arguments that relied upon rational proofs to establish the divine origin of Scripture and virtually abandoned the fideistic defence of the witness of the Holy Spirit. By doing so, he rationalized the process of salvation and reduced the faith to intellectual assent to the fundamental doctrines.

 

Martin I. Klauber, "From Jean-Alphonse Turretin to Vernet" in Carl Trueman and R. Scott Clark, eds., Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2006), 260