Francis Turretin (1623–87) and the Reformed Tradition by Nicholas Cummings is a biographical study of Francis Turretin, an important post-Reformation Italian theologian, and his influence upon Reformed theology. Turretin's impact, which Cummings argues has been understudied and mischaracterized, with a large part of his works completely ignored, was in fact felt within his own seventeenth-century Geneva and within the Reformed tradition of Scotland and America during the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Cummings sees Turretin as instrumental in laying the groundwork for much of the Reformed tradition. Indeed, he argues, “to chronicle Turretin's life is to chronicle the Reformed tradition itself” (21). He served within the Venerable Company of Pastors as professor of theology and rector at the Academy, during which time he contended with Amyrauldianism and Cartesian influences in the Church. At this moment, Cummings argues, Turretin was one of the most “famous scholars of early modern Europe” (59) sought after by visiting theologians. Several misconceptions have anachronistically tarnished this reputation, one of which being the accusation that Turretin was doctrinally rigid. Cummings argues that neither Turretin's own history of being a student amongst heterodoxy, nor his treatment of Jean-Robert Chouet and his negotiated Programme support this theory (63).

Chapters 2 and 3 chronicle Turretin's life events to show him in the middle of theological conflict, proximate to deep divisions and shaping and crystallizing his idea of orthodoxy. The legacy of Reformed orthodoxy Turretin created was one that his son Jean-Alphonse Turretin, ultimately his father's successor as the “minister of the Italian congregation in Geneva and . . . the founding chair of Church History at the Academy” (150), did not continue after his death. Responding to different challenges within the Church, J. A. Turretin abandoned the Scholasticism of his father, and “rejected the doctrine of the internal witness of Scripture.” Francis Turretin's reputation within early modern Geneva, then, changed dramatically with his son.

In spite of this, Cummings seeks to show that Turretin's theological approach in his greatest work, the Institutes of Elenctic Theology, lived beyond the late seventeenth century. Chapter 4 discusses the Institutes “within its historical context and without any of the modern polemics concerning confessional priorities” (70), and also nuances Turretin's use of Scholasticism. Turretin was, Cummings argues, more concerned with Scholasticism as a means to right conclusions than as a methodology for its own sake. As Cummings explains, Turretin sought a middle place. He tried in the Institutes to establish a connection with the founders of the Reformation and of ancient Christianity, writing in his dedication that the “oldest things are most true” (82). Cummings's discussion on the nature of Scholasticism and its place within the Reformation and Reformed theology here is useful.

Chapter 5 looks at the balance of Turretin's works, sermons, disputations, and the Helvetic Formula Consensus, as Cummings argues that scholars have failed to do. Though he argues for the study of the whole of Turretin's works, Cummings admittedly only utilizes a small portion of John Calvin's works in his comparative analysis of many of the above documents. Chapters 6 through 8 are concerned with the publication and reception of Turretin's works, mainly after his lifetime. Most of his works were published in Latin during and after his life in expensive academic editions that would have limited his readership to academic theologians. His influence is traced to Scotland in a connection between Dutch Reformed theologian Leonardus Rijssenius and Turretin's Institutes of Elenectic Theology. Rijssenius seems to have been heavily reliant upon the Institutes, “though there is no explicit evidence that readers knew of Turretin's inspiration” (158). Cummings's nineteenth-century discussion focuses on Princeton theologians Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge. In the twentieth century, Cummings examines Turretin's influence upon Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck and German theologian Karl Barth.

This book will be relevant to investigations of the post-Reformation, Reformed orthodoxy, or the Scottish or American Reformed tradition. Its larger project falls within that outlined by David Crankshaw in Reformation Reputations, which seeks to trace the impact of Reformation figures through the centuries. As such, it is a useful example of an attempt to reexamine a post-Reformation reputation without historical encumbrance and to uncover Francis Turretin's legacy more fully for the current moment.