Archive for April 23rd, 2014

23
Apr

John Alphonso Turretine (1671-1737) on Supralapsarianism

   Posted by: CalvinandCalvinism    in God who Ordains

Turretin:

Thus when the Anthropomorphitœ asserts that the Deity is possessed of a human form, because the scripture speaks of his face, his eyes, his ears and arms; Natural Theology’, at once convinces us of the delusion, teaching us that God is a being absolutely perfect, and therefore must of consequence be immaterial. In like manner, when we meet with some Divines whose principle it is, that God has formed the greatest part of mankind in order to consign them to eternal misery, for the display of his own glory; this opinion of such Divines (they are called Supralapsarians) is most convincingly refuted, by appealing to our natural sentiments of the perfections of God, more particularly, his goodness, justice and wisdom.

The scripture itself frequently appeals to there natural perceptions we have of the attributes of the supreme Being, and points out to us their great importance and excellence. Thus in the place quoted above from the nineteenth psalm, and ill many others of the Psalms and Prophets, the greatness, wisdom, power and goodness of the Deity are demonstrated from his works Agreeable to this, Job xii. i, 8, 9. “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee; or speak to the earth, &c., who knows not that in all these, the hand of the Lord has wrought this?”

John Alphonso Turretine, Dissertations on Natural Theology, trans., William Crawford, (Belfast: Printed by James MaGee, at the Bible and Crown, in Bridge-Street, 1777), 13-14. [Some reformatting; some spelling modernized; and underlining mine.]

[Credit to Michael Lynch for the find.]

[Note: Not exactly bullet-proof, but interesting nonetheless.]