[1] Turretin is especially known as a zealous opponent of the moderate Calvinist theology of the Academy of Saumur[2] (embodied by Moise Amyraut and called Amyraldianism).

Their ancestor (Bénédict's father), Francesco Turrettini the elder, had left his native Lucca in 1574 and settled in Geneva in 1592.

Francis studied theology at Geneva[2] (1640–1644), Leiden (1644), Utrecht, Paris (1645–1646), Saumur (1646–1648),[3] Montauban, and Nîmes.

"[citation needed] Along the lines of Reformed theology, Turretin argues that after the fall human beings did not lose the faculty of will itself.

For example, treating upon the compatibility of moral necessity, Turretin asserts, despite the fact that a will can be rendered "slavish" if determined by habit to a manner of action, that "this servitude by no means overthrows the true and essential nature of liberty" (Institutio theologiae elencticae, 10.2.8).

[5] Turretin's doctrine of freedom appears to be similar to that of Scotus in that both of them endorse Aristotelian logic: the distinction between the necessity of the consequent (necessitas consequentis) and the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae); the distinction between in sensu composito and in sensu diviso.

It is not Scotus's notion of synchronic contingency but Aristotle's modal logic which is incorporated into Turretin's doctrine of freedom.