# How to Compare Calvin, Turretin , and Hodge?



## Dachaser (Sep 20, 2018)

I have read the Institutes of the Christian religion by Calvin, and the 4 part Systematic Theology by Charles Hodge, but not anything by Turretin himself.

How would he compare to Calvin and Hodge on reading difficulty?


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## Reformed Covenanter (Sep 20, 2018)

In terms of the style of writing, Francis Turretin is not that hard to read. However, he tends to pack so much information into such a short space that it is probably not advisable to read much more than 10 pages of him a day (maybe 20 at most, at a stretch). It seems odd to allege that someone who wrote a three-volume work, consisting of more than 2,000 pages could be so concise and so thorough at the same time, yet Turretin really is quite remarkable. As far as I am concerned, his _Institutes_ is the gold standard of Reformed dogmatics.


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## Regi Addictissimus (Sep 20, 2018)

Dachaser said:


> I have read the Institutes of the Christian religion by Calvin, and the 4 part Systematic Theology by Charles Hodge, but not anything by Turretin himself.
> 
> How would he compare to Calvin and Hodge on reading difficulty?


I apologize as this is off topic but, have you read Wilhelmus à Brakel's "Christian's Reasonable Service?" I would highly commend that to you. It would be in my top picks for a desert island.

Reactions: Like 2


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## RamistThomist (Sep 20, 2018)

Calvin: Summary of Christian Faith. Very basic.
Turretin: Analytical breakdown of Roman Catholicism, Socinianism, and Arminianism from Reformed point of view.
Hodge: Turretin-Lite.


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## Dachaser (Sep 20, 2018)

BayouHuguenot said:


> Calvin: Summary of Christian Faith. Very basic.
> Turretin: Analytical breakdown of Roman Catholicism, Socinianism, and Arminianism from Reformed point of view.
> Hodge: Turretin-Lite.


Wasn't Hodge influenced by Turretin?


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## Logan (Sep 20, 2018)

I have nothing of value to add but I do think anyone in the future searching topics for a comparison on Calvin, Turretin, and Hodge, isn't going to find this one since all three are misspelled!

Reactions: Like 1 | Funny 2


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## RamistThomist (Sep 20, 2018)

Dachaser said:


> Wasn't Hodge influenced by Turrentin?



That's why I said he was Turretin-lite.

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## VictorBravo (Sep 20, 2018)

Logan said:


> I have nothing of value to add but I do think anyone in the future searching topics for a comparison on Calvin, Turretin, and Hodge, isn't going to find this one since all three are misspelled!



I fixed the title, at least....

Reactions: Like 1


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## Dachaser (Sep 20, 2018)

VictorBravo said:


> I fixed the title, at least....


Thank you. I did not know how to get back to that title to change it!


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## Taylor (Sep 20, 2018)

Reformed Covenanter said:


> In terms of the style of writing, Francis Turretin is not that hard to read. However, he tends to pack so much information into such a short space that it is probably not advisable to read much more than 10 pages of him a day (maybe 20 at most, at a stretch).



I agree with this assessment. I would add one thing: I feel that the sentence length and structure can be cumbersome in Turretin at times. I find myself having to read some sentence multiple times, omitting parenthetical asides, etc., to get the sense. Perhaps it’s the handicap of my having a severe one-track mind (i.e., I cannot handle asides very well in reading), but this has been the primary difficulty with Turretin for me.


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## Reformed Covenanter (Sep 20, 2018)

Dachaser said:


> Wasn't Hodge influenced by Turretin?



From what I recall reading/hearing, Charles Hodge wrote his _Systematic Theology_ because the level of Latin among divinity students was too poor for them to be required to read Turretin.

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## Ask Mr. Religion (Sep 20, 2018)

Reformed Covenanter said:


> In terms of the style of writing, Francis Turretin is not that hard to read. However, he tends to pack so much information into such a short space ...



A computer geek will get this:
Turretin is _compiled_ theological discourse. 

No one reads easily the output of a programming compiler as it is packed bytecodes. One usually must rely upon other tools to translate the bytecodes back to something more readily understood.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Sep 20, 2018)

Reformed Bookworm said:


> I apologize as this is off topic but, have you read Wilhelmus à Brakel's "Christian's Reasonable Service?" I would highly commend that to you. It would be in my top picks for a desert island.


Indeed and not off topic, per se, as I have always considered à Brakel to be a kinder, gentler, version of his contemporary Turretin, although he never quoted Turretin in his CRS. 

http://www.abrakel.com/p/christians-reasonable-service.html

Reactions: Like 1 | Amen 1 | Funny 1


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## RamistThomist (Sep 20, 2018)

I find Turretin's sentence structure oddly compelling. He is building up to a climax but keeps delaying the kill shot for about 8 rounds.

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## bookslover (Sep 21, 2018)

Reformed Covenanter said:


> From what I recall reading/hearing, Charles Hodge wrote his _Systematic Theology_ because the level of Latin among divinity students was too poor for them to be required to read Turretin.



However, by the time Hodge got around to publishing his 3-volume (not 4) ST (early 1870s), Turretin had already been translated into English, at Hodge's behest. The translation was available in Princeton's library for consultation (although, of course, it wasn't published until the 1990s).

Reactions: Informative 1


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## bookslover (Sep 21, 2018)

Taylor Sexton said:


> I agree with this assessment. I would add one thing: I feel that the sentence length and structure can be cumbersome in Turretin at times. I find myself having to read some sentence multiple times, omitting parenthetical asides, etc., to get the sense. Perhaps it’s the handicap of my having a severe one-track mind (i.e., I cannot handle asides very well in reading), but this has been the primary difficulty with Turretin for me.



Turretin is definitely not for beginners (I know - I'm within about 200 pages of finishing Volume 3). His style is extremely condensed and dense. You really need to come up for air every few sentences. And he cites many obscure or near-obscure persons from the centuries before his own time. Although, regarding the Catholics, his main opponent if Robert Bellarmine. But, I would not steer a beginner in Turretin's direction.


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## Dachaser (Sep 21, 2018)

Reformed Covenanter said:


> From what I recall reading/hearing, Charles Hodge wrote his _Systematic Theology_ because the level of Latin among divinity students was too poor for them to be required to read Turretin.


So Hodge would be in a sense giving to us in English the summary of what Turretin wrote in the Latin then?


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## Dachaser (Sep 21, 2018)

bookslover said:


> However, by the time Hodge got around to publishing his 3-volume (not 4) ST (early 1870s), Turretin had already been translated into English, at Hodge's behest. The translation was available in Princeton's library for consultation (although, of course, it wasn't published until the 1990s).


Logos software has the English version of Turretin now available, but was just trying to see if would be worth to purchase, as Hodge was hard for me to read and digest, and so think Turretin might be even harder .


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## Dachaser (Sep 21, 2018)

bookslover said:


> Turretin is definitely not for beginners (I know - I'm within about 200 pages of finishing Volume 3). His style is extremely condensed and dense. You really need to come up for air every few sentences. And he cites many obscure or near-obscure persons from the centuries before his own time. Although, regarding the Catholics, his main opponent if Robert Bellarmine. But, I would not steer a beginner in Turretin's direction.


I wonder if it would be good to have someone upadte his work, and eliminate those references tothose unknown persons that he was quoting, as believe that they did publish Hodge with his mumerous interactions between him and the Church of Rome was deleted out of the books.


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## RamistThomist (Sep 21, 2018)

Dachaser said:


> I wonder if it would be good to have someone upadte his work, and eliminate those references tothose unknown persons that he was quoting, as believe that they did publish Hodge with his mumerous interactions between him and the Church of Rome was deleted out of the books.



No. He didn't reference many unknown people, and part of the genius of the P&R edition is that all of the references are easily accessible (and many in English). 

The modern edition of Turretin is almost perfect with regards to formatting.

Reactions: Amen 1


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## Dachaser (Sep 21, 2018)

BayouHuguenot said:


> No. He didn't reference many unknown people, and part of the genius of the P&R edition is that all of the references are easily accessible (and many in English).
> 
> The modern edition of Turretin is almost perfect with regards to formatting.


You have persuaded me to buy this ebook and read it now.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Sep 21, 2018)

Dachaser said:


> You have persuaded me to buy this ebook and read it now.


Paper set:
https://www.amazon.com/Institutes-Elenctic-Theology-3-Set/dp/0875524567

Cheaper:
https://www.heritagebooks.org/products/institutes-of-elenctic-theology-3-vols-turretin.html

Electronic version would have to be using Logos:
https://www.logos.com/product/30296/institutes-of-elenctic-theology

Which would make the installation of Logos Basic (free!) worth the effort:
https://www.logos.com/product/136022/basic

I am not sure if the now defunct BibleWorks had it for sale, or whether Accordance has an electronic version.


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## Dachaser (Sep 21, 2018)

Ask Mr. Religion said:


> Paper set:
> https://www.amazon.com/Institutes-Elenctic-Theology-3-Set/dp/0875524567
> 
> Cheaper:
> ...


Thanks, as I have Logos bible software, so will go that route, as really like how they hyperlink to other books under the same category, in this case theology.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Logan (Sep 24, 2018)

Dachaser said:


> So Hodge would be in a sense giving to us in English the summary of what turretin wrote in the latin then?



I don't think this is strictly accurate. I've read AA Hodge's biography of his father and Calhoun's two volume work on Princeton Seminary so while I don't have time to look up the exact reference, I do remember that Hodge was professor of Systematic Theology and that Turretin was the textbook. However, Hodge's lecture notes were being copied by students and if I recall correctly, they begged him to print them to save their eyesight and time spent in copying. Plus, his Systematic Theology wasn't published until a few years before his death, so Turretin would have been used (or his lectures) for most of his tenure.

Thus if I remember correctly, the systematic theology came more out of his lecture notes (although AA Hodge says they were fresh compositions and not directly from the notes) rather than abridging Turretin. Certainly his systematic theology reflects Hodge's own thinking and structure, though no doubt influenced heavily by Turretin. But it is no mere summary of Turretin by any means, even if only for the Scottish Common Sense reasoning he employs and German and other world philosophies he critiques.

I don't remember about the condition of the student's Latin.


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## RamistThomist (Sep 24, 2018)

Hodge also took the doctrine of God in a slightly different direction. Hodge, like Dabney, was critical of the way that divine simplicity had moved in a hyper direction. By the end of the scholastic period, given the proposition that God is his attributes, we were left with

Attribute A = Attribute B = the Divine Essence.

“To say, as the schoolmen, and so many even of Protestant theologians, ancient and modern, were accustomed to say, that the divine attributes differ only in name, or in our conceptions, or in their effects, is to destroy all true knowledge of God...If in God knowledge is identical with eternity, knowledge with power, power with ubiquity, and ubiquity with holiness, then we are using words without meaning (I: 371-372).

The attributes of God, therefore, are not merely different conceptions in our minds, but different modes in which God reveals himself to his creatures...just as our several faculties are different modes in which the inscrutable substance self reveals itself in our consciousness and acts (I: 374).

Reactions: Informative 1


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## Dachaser (Sep 24, 2018)

BayouHuguenot said:


> Hodge also took the doctrine of God in a slightly different direction. Hodge, like Dabney, was critical of the way that divine simplicity had moved in a hyper direction. By the end of the scholastic period, given the proposition that God is his attributes, we were left with
> 
> Attribute A = Attribute B = the Divine Essence.
> 
> ...


Was Hodge saying here then that while we canknow God by His divine attributes, God is still more than those same attributes?


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## Dachaser (Sep 24, 2018)

Logan said:


> I don't think this is strictly accurate. I've read AA Hodge's biography of his father and Calhoun's two volume work on Princeton Seminary so while I don't have time to look up the exact reference, I do remember that Hodge was professor of Systematic Theology and that Turretin was the textbook. However, Hodge's lecture notes were being copied by students and if I recall correctly, they begged him to print them to save their eyesight and time spent in copying. Plus, his Systematic Theology wasn't published until a few years before his death, so Turretin would have been used (or his lectures) for most of his tenure.
> 
> Thus if I remember correctly, the systematic theology came more out of his lecture notes (although AA Hodge says they were fresh compositions and not directly from the notes) rather than abridging Turretin. Certainly his systematic theology reflects Hodge's own thinking and structure, though no doubt influenced heavily by Turretin. But it is no mere summary of Turretin by any means, even if only for the Scottish Common Sense reasoning he employs and German and other world philosophies he critiques.
> 
> I don't remember about the condition of the student's Latin.


Thanks for this, as I just had remembered reading someone who looked at the ST of Hodge as being his take on the theology of Turretin.


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## RamistThomist (Sep 24, 2018)

Dachaser said:


> Was Hodge saying here then that while we canknow God by His divine attributes, God is still more than those same attributes?



I don't think that was the issue he was addressing.


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## Dachaser (Sep 24, 2018)

BayouHuguenot said:


> I don't think that was the issue he was addressing.


I am not sure of what he was saying in your quote of him, what was he then really addressing?


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## Taylor (Sep 24, 2018)

BayouHuguenot said:


> Hodge also took the doctrine of God in a slightly different direction. Hodge, like Dabney, was critical of the way that divine simplicity had moved in a hyper direction. By the end of the scholastic period, given the proposition that God is his attributes, we were left with
> 
> Attribute A = Attribute B = the Divine Essence.
> 
> ...



Brother, this is such a helpful summary of this issue. Thank you.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Dachaser (Sep 24, 2018)

Taylor Sexton said:


> Brother, this is such a helpful summary of this issue. Thank you.


I am not sure what Hodge meant here, can you elaborate it for me?


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## RamistThomist (Sep 24, 2018)

Dachaser said:


> I am not sure of what he was saying in your quote of him, what was he then really addressing?



He was addressing the tendency of some scholastic theologians who make simplicity so absolute that we can't make any distinctions in God, which case Goodness = Justice = Wrath = Decision to Create the World = Decision to Destroy the World


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## Dachaser (Sep 24, 2018)

BayouHuguenot said:


> He was addressing the tendency of some scholastic theologians who make simplicity so absolute that we can't make any distinctions in God, which case Goodness = Justice = Wrath = Decision to Create the World = Decision to Destroy the World


Thanks, as that makes more sense to me .


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