Reformed Dogmatika Classics | Francis Turretin
A Curated Reading Edition
On the Atonement of Christ
Necessity, truth, and extent
“This, the common opinion of the orthodox, is our opinion.”
Francis Turretin, Chapter I
About 2 hours 47 minutes of reading, in three chapters
Why These Three
Turretin’s argument begins with the character of God. The first chapter contends that divine justice requires satisfaction for sin and that the incarnate Son alone can make it.
The second chapter explains the reality of that satisfaction through redemption, substitution, sacrifice, and reconciliation. Turretin’s aim is not to preserve a theological label, but to show that Christ truly bore the punishment due to his people and paid their debt in full.
The fifth chapter turns to extent. It defends particular redemption while preserving the free and sincere offer of Christ in the gospel. Read together, these chapters form a sustained account of an atonement that is necessary, accomplished, and effectual.
Editorial Method
The 1859 New York edition controls wording, punctuation, chapter boundaries, Greek and Hebrew type, and source-note markers. Every selected page was transcribed and collated against the page images. OCR was used only as a locator and typing aid. Longer source paragraphs are divided for screen reading only at existing sentence boundaries.
This is a curated selection, not the complete volume. Chapter III, The Perfection of the Atonement, and Chapter IV, The Matter of the Atonement, are not included. The 1859 preface, James R. Willson memoir, and Princeton Review sketch of Turretin are also omitted because they are editorial front matter rather than Turretin’s chapter text.
All source notes remain attached to their original markers. Two Chapter V notes identify the translator explicitly. The individual authorship of the remaining notes is left unresolved because the controlling witness does not establish it.
The Edition
Francis Turretin, Turrettin on the Atonement of Christ, translated by James R. Willson, new edition carefully revised by collation with the last edition of the Latin original (New York: Board of Publication of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, 1859). The hero uses an unknown artist’s Portrait of Francis Turretin from the Herzog August Library, public domain, with modern colorization.
The complete source scan, selected page images, diplomatic transcriptions, collated working texts, correction maps, note audits, and QA reports are preserved with this local project.
