Dogmatic Theology

BT75.3.S44 2003
230p.5—dc21 2003054847

Acknowledgments

by Alan W. Gomes

I would like to express my gratitude to some individuals who provided valuable assistance in the production of this edition of Shedd’s monumental Dogmatic Theology.

First, I thank Russ Young, who painstakingly arranged the electronic text, including cataloging and tagging the foreign-language citations needing translation. Given the huge number of these in Shedd, this was an enormous task. He also provided valuable suggestions for notes and issues to treat in the glossaries. I thank John McKinley, who did considerable work in collating background information on many of the theologians mentioned in glossary 2. Thanks also go to Joy Mosbarger, who assisted in some of the translation of the Hebrew and French references.

Finally, I am greatly indebted to my wonderful wife, Diane, who encouraged me throughout. Her unwavering support made my work a joy.

Preface

by Alan W. Gomes

Shedd’s Value for the Modern Student of Theology

C. S. Lewis, in his essay entitled “On the Reading of Old Books,” presents a cogent rationale for why modern readers should study carefully the writings of past thinkers. According to Lewis, every age has its characteristic blind spots. These blind spots, he observes, generally differ from one age to the next. Since the misapprehensions of times past are usually not the same as our own, reading older writers can show us where our view of reality is askew. Where the past writers were themselves in error is of relatively little danger to us because the foibles of their age, being quite dissimilar to ours, appear vividly before our eyes.

Granting the wisdom of Lewis’s advice, I believe that W. G. T. Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology can serve as a powerful floodlight to lay bare some of the theological blind spots plaguing today’s evangelical church. Furthermore, a work such as Shedd’s can also reinforce and supplement our thinking even when we are on the right track.

Within the last two decades, a so-called megashift took place in evangelical theology.¹ A constellation of distinct yet related approaches falling within this megashift goes by designations such as “open theism,” “free-will theology,” “moral-government theology,” and the like. While there is certainly diversity among these systems, they share some unfortunate common characteristics. One key element is the exaltation of human freedom at the expense of the divine perfections. A faulty, sentimental, and unbiblical view of God’s love is espoused as his preeminent attribute, to which all others must be subservient. From this a number of pernicious conclusions follow. One is that God need not, cannot, and therefore did not propitiate his wrath against sin in the death of Christ. God’s justice is not punitive, and all of his interactions with his creatures collapse into his love. Some conclude further that such a God neither could nor would send his creatures to eternal perdition, however sinful and irremediably recalcitrant they may be. Instead, it is even suggested that he gives people an additional chance to repent in the afterlife and, failing that, annihilates them as a last resort rather than causing them to endure eternal, conscious punishment. Not a few within this megashift (e.g., open theists and modern moral-government theologians) so exalt human freedom and God’s “genuine responses” to us that they deny his foreknowledge of our future freewill choices.² Naturally, the doctrines of original sin and the sinner’s total inability are also jettisoned as incompatible with human freedom.

Shedd’s theology is a powerful antidote to this neo-Socinian³ and Pelagian revival. More compelling reasoning against these dangerous trends would be difficult to find. Drawing on a wealth of historical opinion coupled with cogent arguments of his own, Shedd provides some of the best refutations available against the older forms of these errors—refutations that also function quite well against their modern incarnations.

Now, we must also be thankful that evangelical scholars are producing good theological systems. Consider, for example, a fairly recent and popular systematic theology written by Wayne Grudem. There is much to like about this system. Grudem’s work contains some fine exegetical observations. It is biblically based, sets forth a high view of scriptural authority, and breathes an evangelical, biblical piety throughout. It is also clearly written and well organized. Yet, no one work can do everything equally well, and Shedd supplements Grudem’s volume very nicely because modern evangelical systems tend to be weaker precisely at those points where Shedd’s is most robust. The differences are especially evident where a doctrine benefits from careful metaphysical, abstract, and speculative consideration. Shedd’s sections on the Trinity, the two natures in Christ, the psychology of the God-man vis-à-vis his theanthropic constitution, the nature of divine justice and atonement, and the rational argument for hell are, in my view, greatly beneficial if one seeks to obtain a full-orbed grasp of these doctrines. I believe Shedd’s discussion of these and certain other topics is unequaled by anything produced by modern evangelicals and so is of enduring value to us.

While I believe that C. S. Lewis’s observation about the value of old books has considerable truth, there is also a sense in which certain old books never really become old. Elements in every work no doubt reflect the limitations of the author’s own age. But some works also have a timeless quality about them—works that, in their essence, transcend the historical circumstances of their authors. In the case of musical works this could be illustrated by Bach and Handel, and in religious literature the Confessions of St. Augustine come to mind. We call such works classics. Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology is a classic. It is a profound work that sets forth the deepest themes of religion with a grandeur and majesty of expression that has rarely been equaled and that never will be outdated. It is a work beautiful in form and substance. Careful study of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology is, I dare say, much more than an intellectual exercise: it is an esthetic experience for those who appreciate the comeliness of truth. If truth is beautiful in itself, then Shedd’s vigorous and stately prose sets before us incomparable beauty beautifully expressed.

In our hurried age it may seem as though we can ill afford the time simply to stop and ponder. We may find it difficult to justify smuggling moments from our schedule to think deeply about the modes of consciousness in the God-man or the ontological argument for God’s existence or the nature of the soul’s propagation; after all, there are sermons to prepare, term papers to write, Sunday school classes to teach, and church programs to administer. Our age greatly values the practical over the contemplative. And yet, when we look at the state of the church today, how far has our love affair with the pragmatic carried us? Is this not rather a misguided affection and one of the preeminent weaknesses of our age? We are far in advance of our ancestors in the technological power to communicate the truth to the ends of the earth, but do we excel them in our grasp of that truth? Do we convey the verities of our faith with the same vital spiritual power as Calvin and Luther and Edwards and Spurgeon and Shedd? Do we ourselves truly understand the faith “once for all delivered to the saints,” so that we might exhibit it as forcefully as they, together with all of its splendid implications?

If this age is more harried than most, then it is all the more critical that we use our time as wisely as we can. Our lives are too short and our days too compressed to spend them on the merely good: we must devote ourselves to what is best. If we would be extraordinary Christians, we must surround ourselves with the greatest minds and immerse ourselves in their thoughts. May I suggest that you do not merely read Dogmatic Theology but ponder it. When Shedd lays bare the most sublime truths in their dazzling splendor, stop and reflect and then adore the God of whom they speak.

Features of the Present Edition

Because I am convinced that Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology is a work that will repay careful study, I added several enhancements to the present edition to increase its utility to the modern student.

My historical and theological introduction contains a biographical sketch of Shedd, an overview of Shedd’s characteristics as a theologian, and a discussion of the shape of his system. I also note those aspects of Shedd’s thought that are out of the ordinary, particularly with reference to his own Reformed tradition. I consulted the views of his contemporaries in an attempt to give some indication of how Shedd was perceived in his own day.

Because Shedd’s system is often highly technical, I supply two glossaries to help the beginning student. Glossary 1 contains technical theological and philosophical terms found in the system. In defining these terms I pay special reference to how Shedd employs them, particularly noting where his usage deviates somewhat from other authorities. I also include in this glossary a brief discussion of some important “isms,” such as Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, etc., since some of these ancient movements may not be familiar to all readers. Of course, more detailed treatment of these opinions may be sought in the standard works on doctrinal history, including Shedd’s own. Glossary 2 contains brief biographical sketches of some of the theologians whom Shedd references. I omit well-known theologians like Calvin, Luther, Wesley, and Augustine, as well as the more obscure thinkers whom Shedd mentions only in passing. I include those theologians from whom Shedd drew significant insights, but who may be less familiar to contemporary students (e.g., George Bull, Abraham Calovius, Odo of Tournai).

As for the system itself, I would first like to stress what I did not do to it. This edition is not an abridgment or paraphrase. I am convinced that any attempt to abridge Shedd would be only for the worse. Therefore, the present edition contains all of Shedd, and in his own words. Nevertheless, several critical editorial improvements were made.

Because nineteenth-century stylistic standards are difficult to read and are distracting to twenty-first-century readers, modern conventions of capitalization, punctuation, italic type, and spelling are adopted throughout: in Shedd’s own text, in his citations of Scripture, and in his numerous quotations and translations of secondary sources. To distinguish clearly Shedd’s notes from my own, Shedd’s original footnotes are labeled WS. All footnotes without this label are added by me.

The original system proper was published in two volumes in 1888, with a third volume of miscellaneous and sometimes lengthy observations and quotations issued in 1894. Before the present edition, it was necessary to consult the two-volume work and also locate the relevant pages in volume 3 if one wished to discover all of what Shedd had to say on a particular topic. This arrangement was awkward, to say the least. In this edition I collated the material from volume 3 into the main body of the system by moving it to the end of each chapter where it belongs.

Another problem with the system itself is a lack of subdivisions in the original. Shedd typically wrote his doctrinal loci as extended essays on each topic. Though written in an exceedingly pleasing and flowing literary style, Shedd provides minimal subdivisions or other structural cues to guide the reader. In the present edition I provide headings to serve as signposts for the reader attempting to track the flow of the discussion or to navigate quickly to a subpoint of the topic under consideration. Unfortunately, Shedd’s mode of presentation was not always congenial to identifying such subdivisions, especially because he would often double back to reexamine or further refine a topic that he had set aside some time earlier. I believe that the utility of the present edition is increased by the addition of these headings, however imperfectly they may reflect the shape of the material in places.

One feature of Shedd’s system that modern students often find frustrating is the considerable amount of untranslated foreign-language quotations in the text. Besides biblical citations appearing in the original Greek and Hebrew, Shedd presents a large number of quotations in Latin, French, and German—sometimes only a word or phrase but in other instances as long as several paragraphs. For this edition I translated all foreign-language quotations,⁴ placing the English translation in the body of the text and relegating the original citation to a footnote.⁵ In those instances where Shedd himself provided his own translation in the text, I retain Shedd’s translations. I also translate book titles when doing so does not result in confusion.⁶ Because Greek and Hebrew script is unfamiliar to students who have not studied those languages, I supplement the original script with English transliterations.

A word is in order about Shedd’s citation of authorities. In preparing this edition I observed several instances where Shedd’s citations are inexact. Sometimes he leaves out intervening words and phrases but presents the material as though it is a single continuous quotation. After discovering this for myself I was interested to see this same characteristic noted by George Harris in his 1884 review of Dogmatic Theology.⁷ I cannot say how extensive this tendency is, as I did not make any attempt to verify all or even most of Shedd’s references. In the cases I uncovered, it did not appear that the sense of the original citation was distorted by Shedd’s arrangement. I also discovered several instances where the quotation was not located on the page or section of the work that Shedd indicated.⁸ In those cases I silently corrected the error.

It is my most sincere desire that this new edition will contribute to a renewed interest in the thought of this eminent theologian. I can do no better than to echo Shedd’s own prayer, which he wrote in the original preface to his work:

The evangelical irradiations of the sun of righteousness out of the thick darkness and clouds that envelop the infinite and adorable God are beams of intense brightness which pour the light of life and of hope into the utter gloom in which man must live here upon earth, if he rejects divine revelation. That this treatise may contribute to strengthen the believer’s confidence in this revelation and to incline the unbeliever to exercise faith in it is the prayer of the author.

A Historical and Theological Introduction to W. G. T. Shedd and His Dogmatic Theology

by Alan W. Gomes

“The three greatest theologians which the American Church has yet produced are Jonathan Edwards, W. G. T. Shedd, and R. L. Dabney, and the careful student of the writings of these great masters in philosophy and theology can discern the kinship which exists between their imperial intellects and saintly hearts.”¹ So begins Thornton Whaling in his review of Dogmatic Theology, composed five years before Shedd’s death. More a proleptic eulogy of the work’s author than a close analysis of the author’s work, one might easily dismiss Whaling’s review as a bit of well-intentioned hagiography, written to honor an eminent fellow Presbyterian in the twilight of his career.

Yet, even modern writers, and those without an apparent Calvinist or Presbyterian bias, note the intellectual eminence of Shedd and of his theological system. Monica Grecu goes so far as to declare that “as a vigorous exposition of Reformation theology” Shedd’s dogmatics ranks “second only to the work of Jonathan Edwards.”² Other sentiments along these lines would not be difficult to produce. Regardless of Shedd’s exact location in the constellation of American theological luminaries, it is certainly reasonable to rank Dogmatic Theology as one of the finest works of systematic theology ever produced by an American theologian. Any unbiased reader studying the writings of Shedd in general and Dogmatic Theology in particular senses that he or she is in the presence of a commanding theological, philosophical, and historical intellect, graced with an ease of literary expression and lucidity rarely found in writers of this genre.

Biographical Sketch

William Greenough Thayer Shedd was born 21 June 1820, in Acton, Massachusetts.³ Both of Shedd’s parents hailed from “distinguished New England lines of descent.”⁴ His father, the Rev. Marshall Shedd, served as a Congregationalist minister. His mother, Eliza Thayer Shedd, was the daughter of Obadiah Thayer, a merchant of the East India Company and a man of means and sincere faith. Young William’s maternal grandfather in particular would do much to encourage his academic and spiritual attainments.

In 1831 the Shedd family moved to New York and settled on the Thayer estate in Lake Champlain. Four years later William matriculated at the University of Vermont. There he came under the influence of James Marsh, professor of philosophy and enthusiastic disciple of the great Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A man of evident piety and erudition, Marsh left a lasting imprint on the young Shedd, imbuing him with a love of philosophy and literature, particularly toward writers of a Platonic bent. Marsh also had a keen interest in the theologians and philosophers of the seventeenth century and conveyed this enthusiasm to his pupil.

Upon graduating from the University of Vermont in 1839, Shedd took a teaching position in New York City, which he held for one year. During this time he made a public profession of faith and began attending a Presbyterian church. Sensing a call to the ministry, he entered Andover Seminary in 1840, where he studied theology under Dr. Leonard Woods, an advocate of Old School Presbyterian theology. Shedd found the Old School theology most congenial and remained its advocate throughout his entire distinguished career.

Shedd completed his seminary training three years later (1843), whereupon he accepted the call to pastor the Congregational church in Brandon, Vermont. Two years into his pastorate an opportunity to teach English literature opened up at his alma mater. As Grecu observes, “Shedd was among the first generation of American scholars to teach formally that discipline in American colleges.”⁵ He taught in this capacity for seven years, from 1845 to 1852. In 1852 he left the University of Vermont to become professor of sacred rhetoric and pastoral theology at Auburn Theological Seminary. He held this post for only two years.

Shedd next accepted the chair of church history at Andover in 1854, a position he held for eight years. At Andover he served alongside the Rev. Dr. E. A. Park, professor of systematic theology and an advocate of the New School wing of the New England theology. Despite their theological differences, Shedd enjoyed congenial relations with the venerable Dr. Park. At the same time, Shedd forthrightly represented the “elder Calvinism,” which manifested itself especially “on one of the questions oftenest in debate in New England—namely, the nature of sin, and particularly of original sin.”⁶

It was during his time at Andover that Congregationalism, though not hostile to Calvinism, grew less committed to its distinctive doctrines. This culminated in the Declaration of Faith, which the National Congregational Council ultimately adopted in 1865.⁷ Shedd, disaffected with this latitudinarian drift, migrated to the Presbyterian church, accepting the call to become associate pastor of the Brick Church in New York City in 1862, which he copastored with Dr. Gardiner Spring. As John DeWitt describes it, “He felt entirely at home in the Presbyterian Church. Not only was he a high and pronounced Calvinist; but he believed that a Church should be organized by and committed to a system of religious truth; and that in its organization it should provide adequate means to secure the fidelity of its teachers to the system.”⁸

The academy beckoned yet again. Shedd ended his joint pastorate after just over one year to join the faculty of Union Theological Seminary as professor of New Testament literature, a chair he held from 1863 until 1874. When Henry Boynton Smith, professor of systematic theology, was forced to resign due to illness, Shedd moved to this position, which he held from 1874 until his retirement in 1890.⁹

Two years before his retirement, Shedd published his greatest work, Dogmatic Theology. The system was initially released as two volumes. During his retirement Shedd worked on miscellaneous publishing projects, most notably the production of the supplemental, third volume to his Dogmatic Theology in 1894. Also during his retirement, he provided significant input in two debates that were agitating the Presbyterian church: the charge of heresy against Dr. Charles Briggs occasioned by his inaugural address and the proposal to revise the Westminster Confession in a more latitudinarian direction. In both instances, Shedd—not surprisingly—championed the conservative cause in arguing for the removal of Briggs and in opposing the revision of the Westminster standards.¹⁰

Shedd did not long outlive the publication of his magnum opus. Shedd died in November 1894, not long after the appearance of his supplemental volume to Dogmatic Theology. He left behind his wife, four children, and an enduring literary legacy as the author of one of the finest theological systems ever produced.

Shedd’s Writings

Based on a perusal of the academic posts that Shedd held, it is clear that he was a man of wide-ranging learning—a true man of letters. His professorships required expertise in literature (both sacred and profane), rhetoric, pastoral theology, biblical studies, secular and church history, and, of course, systematic theology. As one would expect, Shedd’s literary output reflected his varied interests. His writings included not only his own original contributions but also translations and editorial work. What follows is a list of his major works, arranged chronologically:

translation of Franz Theremin, Eloquence a Virtue; or, Outlines of a Systematic Rhetoric (1850)

edition of Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1852)

Lectures upon the Philosophy of History (1856)

Discourses and Essays (1856; enlarged in 1862)

translation of Heinrich Ernst Ferdinand Güricke, Manual of Church History (1857)

History of Christian Doctrine, 2 vols. (1863)

edition of Confessions of Augustine (1864)

Homiletics and Pastoral Theology (1867)

Sermons to the Natural Man (1871)

Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: A Miscellany (1873)

Theological Essays (1877)

Literary Essays (1878)

Sermons to the Spiritual Man (1884)

Doctrine of Endless Punishment (1886)

Dogmatic Theology, 2 vols. (1888)

Calvinism: Pure and Mixed: A Defence of the Westminster Standards (1893)

supplemental volume to Dogmatic Theology (1894)

In keeping with the task at hand, we shall now focus our attention on Shedd’s crowning achievement: his Dogmatic Theology.

Dogmatic Theology: General Characteristics and Observations

It is generally agreed that Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology is his magnum opus. It is plain that his prior works were preparatory for it. Compiled and written at the close of his life, it shows the mature fruits of his reflections in his variegated fields of expertise. Manifold literary and classical allusions, pastoral insights, references to doctrinal history, and critical observations of the philosophies of his day abound. Nor are such references sprinkled throughout merely to provide an affected display of erudition. Shedd draws these varied sources into dialog, integrating them organically into the fabric of the system and pressing them into the service of unfolding and illustrating historic Christian orthodoxy.

Literary Quality of Dogmatic Theology

Perhaps the feature of Dogmatic Theology that stands out immediately is its striking literary quality. Shedd was a master wordsmith, one who deliberately and painstakingly cultivated the craft of writing. DeWitt correctly states that Shedd’s “most noticeable gift was the gift of literary expression, and the strongest of his early intellectual affections was his affection for literary form.”¹¹ Shedd studied the art of rhetoric, canvassing the subject both theoretically and practically. He immersed himself in the best writers and used them as models, while at the same time developing his own distinctive style. Shedd’s writing is not flowery or ornate, but is precise, concise, and, in its way, dignified, lofty, and majestic in expression.¹² Shedd’s incredible literary gift stands out all the more in comparison to other works of systematic theology, a genre not generally associated with flowing style.

A large number of literary and classical allusions appear in Dogmatic Theology—many more than one would typically find in a work of systematic theology. As Edward Morris observes, “Hardly any contemporary treatise can be named which brings us into direct contact with such a wide variety of authoritative testimonies, ancient, medieval, modern—pagan and skeptical as well as Christian.”¹³ For example, Shedd cites poets such as Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. He also quotes the standard Latin authors, such as Cicero, often in the original. His use of these authorities serves typically, as T. E. Peck observes, to illustrate the consensus populorum, that is, the commonly acknowledged opinions of humankind.¹⁴ In this he is likened to Hugo Grotius, who was one of the first to use the ancients for this purpose in an extensive way.¹⁵

In one respect the literary quality of Dogmatic Theology yields one shortcoming for a work of systematic theology. Specifically, Shedd’s system suffers from a kind of architectonic deficiency. Shedd wrote his doctrinal loci as extended essays on each topic. Unlike a more conventional systematic theology, Shedd provides minimal subdivisions or other structural cues. Though Shedd was profoundly influenced by Scholastic theology as to the substance of his views, there is nothing of the organizational clarity that is a noteworthy virtue of the Scholastic method. As noted in the preface, this edition attempts to correct this deficiency to some degree. Unfortunately, Shedd’s mode of presentation was not always amenable to clear subdivisions, most notably because he would often double back to reexamine or further refine a topic that he had set aside some time earlier.

Historical Sensibilities of Dogmatic Theology

Another feature of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology is its thorough grounding in the history of Christian doctrine. Shedd had much to say about the importance of history for the modern task of theology.¹⁶ As one who previously taught and wrote on the history of doctrine, Shedd was well suited to bring historical elements to bear in his own systematization of Christian doctrine. For Shedd history served dogmatics at a much deeper level than merely providing a fecund source of illustrations and cautionary tales. Rather, Shedd had a deeply developed philosophy of history that converged on a profound level with the dogmatic enterprise.

Shedd viewed the historic development of the church’s theology after the analogy of a living organism, a vital entity that develops and matures according to the genetic pattern contained in germinal form at its earliest stages: “The true history of anything is the account of its development according to its true idea and necessary law.… The history of a tree is the account of its spontaneous and inevitable evolution out of a germ. The process … is predetermined and fixed.”¹⁷ In the case of church history, the germ is the deposit of truth, once for all delivered in the Scriptures. The history of the church represents the outworking and unfolding of that germ—the full details, implications, clarifications, and significance of which were not fully comprehended at its inception.¹⁸ According to Shedd, “the history of Christian doctrine is the account of the expansion which revealed truth has obtained.”¹⁹ In Shedd’s mind the task of sacred historiography is, as Henry Warner Bowden notes, to trace “the genesis of religious doctrines to their grounding in Scripture.”²⁰

There are several important, interrelated consequences of Shedd’s organic theory of historical development vis-à-vis the production of a contemporary systematic theology. First, theological system is developed not in isolation from the past but in a living, vital continuity with it. The contemporary theological system, if it be an explication of biblical revelation, will show a strong family resemblance with the theologizing of the past, in keeping with the ongoing, organic, evolutionary process of theological development. As Shedd put it simply, “The work of each generation of the church joins upon that of the preceding.”²¹ Practically speaking, this means that a true theological system will not contain radical departures from the church’s past theological reflections. At most the modern system will more fully unfold, defend, and explicate what already existed in the past in a less developed or possibly inchoate form.

Second, the systematic theologian imbued with the historical mind will avoid a provincial frame of reference but will have a “catholic” or “ecumenical” sensibility in the best sense of these terms. He will distinguish the novel, fanciful conceits of his own age from the mind of the church throughout all ages.²² As Shedd put it, “If an author in any department gets into the eddies of his age and whirls round and round in them, he knows little of the sweep of the vast stream of the ages which holds on its way forever and forevermore” (p. 38). It is this broadness of perspective that enabled Shedd to appreciate as legitimate those branches of the Christian tradition with which he did not see completely eye to eye. Though a convinced Calvinist, Shedd believed there was much of great value in the Arminian wing of Christendom, precisely because they, too, share as part of their common inheritance the great verities of the church throughout the ages.²³

Third, Shedd’s view of organic historical development naturally leads him to favor the orthodox Reformation and post-Reformation writers over the writers of earlier periods, since the Reformation represents a positive advance in theological clarity and comprehensiveness.²⁴ Shedd’s enthusiasm for and frequent citation of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century divines is manifest throughout his works and particularly in Dogmatic Theology (see discussion on p. 25). Yet, this tendency should not be overstated. When expounding certain doctrinal loci he takes earlier writers as his point of departure—writers whom he regarded as having been uniquely raised up by God to develop a particular doctrine to its final form or at least nearly so.²⁵ Thus, while Shedd had a profound respect for the progress of dogma and the preeminence of the Reformed tradition to which he had given his allegiance, he also recognized particular individual intellects in the outworking of doctrinal history whose work could not be fundamentally surpassed.

Speculative Character of Dogmatic Theology

One noteworthy characteristic of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology, especially compared to modern evangelical systems, is its speculative character. This is in keeping with the intellectual proclivities of its author. DeWitt describes Shedd as “by far, the most speculative Calvinistic theologian the American Church has produced.”²⁶ Likewise, Morris declares, “It is doubtful whether we have ever had in this country since Edwards a theological writer in whom this philosophic bent is so strongly developed.… The more difficult or obscure the doctrine, the more certain is he to address himself with special zest and power to its solution.”²⁷

Shedd was not content merely to reproduce historic, orthodox formulas but sought to explore the inner logic and the underlying principles behind the doctrines he treats. Contemporaries of Shedd noted this tendency,²⁸ and it is observed by modern writers as well, both critically²⁹ and appreciatively. Sensitive to this observation in his own day, Shedd himself stated in the preface to Dogmatic Theology, “The charge of Scholasticism, and perhaps of speculativeness, will be made. The author has no disposition to repel the charge.”

Certainly it is clear that Shedd is in his element when discussing doctrinal topics that tend, by the nature of the case, toward speculativeness. This is particularly evident in his treatment of the ontological argument for the existence of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the hypostatic union. Yet, this tendency is manifest throughout all of the doctrinal loci and not merely in those that normally conduce toward such an approach. For example, when discussing soteriology and anthropology Shedd muses at length about the nature of moral freedom, the faculties of the will, the distinction between the volitionary vs. the voluntary, the nature of self-determination, etc. On the atonement and the cognate doctrine of eternal punishment he attempts to probe the abstract characteristics of justice in their relation to the moral constitution both of God and of the rational creature. In short, Shedd does not merely collate the biblical data on a particular doctrine (though he does that as well), but he seeks to get behind the truths enumerated in Scripture so as to better understand and display the inmost form of the doctrine.

At the same time, it is certainly possible to overstate Shedd’s delight in abstract speculation, as some do. Shedd’s philosophical reflections are, for the most part, tethered to the Scriptures. In contrast, he recoiled at the unbridled abstract conjectures of the German liberal mind, which appeared to him to delight in speculation for its own sake (p. 905). The mind is developed and enlarged, Shedd believed, only by focusing on real objects of contemplation. Shedd also cautions against vacuous ruminations that lack altogether a practical aspect to them.³⁰ In his Sermons to the Spiritual Man he warns against any approach to the faith that is devoid of genuine, practical Christian feeling.³¹ The study of Christian truth, even in its speculative mood, should stimulate reverence and piety.

Scriptural Character of Dogmatic Theology

Granting the two salient tendencies thus noted, namely, a significant historical orientation and a strong speculative bent, one might question whether history and philosophy furnish the materials of dogmatics rather than the Scriptures. Indeed, Bernard Munger in his unduly censorious critique of Shedd, accuses Shedd of starting with certain philosophical notions about God and then, almost as an afterthought, “the written revelation is fitted into this [philosophical] framework.”³² Even when Shedd employs biblical vocabulary, Munger charges Shedd with forcing its meaning into the grid of his preconceived philosophical notions.³³ In light of this, Munger goes so far as to question “the genuineness of his orthodoxy.”³⁴

Munger’s characterization does not at all fairly describe Shedd’s approach. Shedd’s system is thoroughly Protestant and accordingly places Scripture as the principium cognoscendi (the source of knowledge) for theological formulation. It is one thing to say that Shedd attempts to show the inner rational harmony of the faith with reason and quite another to say that he places reason in a magisterial role, as a rationalist might do. Shedd himself repelled as a shortsighted “vulgar error” the criticism that careful historical and philosophic consideration of a doctrine occurs only “at the expense of that of the Scriptures.” Indeed, Shedd argues, “scientific and contemplative theology is the child of revelation. It is the very word of God itself as this has been studied, collated, combined, and systematized by powerful, devout, and prayerful intellects” (p. 38).

The simplest way to demonstrate the scriptural character of Dogmatic Theology is simply to read it and note the significant amount of detailed exegesis that occurs throughout. Shedd as the professor of biblical literature is evident at most every turn. Not all modern exegetes will find Shedd’s conclusions compelling at every point—though a good deal of tight exegetical work does appear in Dogmatic Theology, work that is solid by any measure. But whether Shedd’s exegesis is in all instances convincing can hardly be the issue, for no systematic theology, however biblically grounded, will compel the agreement of all minds. The point is that Shedd’s handling of the sacred text is reverent, careful, and thorough. His actual use of Scripture is precisely what one would expect from his high theory of Scripture’s inspiration, inerrancy, and primacy. Morris is correct when he observes that for Shedd the Bible served as the “final support and confirmation of his teachings.”³⁵

Should one object that Shedd’s dogmatics was heavily influenced by the Protestant Scholastic theology of Francis Turretin, John Owen, and the Westminster divines and is, in consequence, fundamentally a deductive rationalistic system, we shall cheerfully allow the former while denying the latter. Shedd’s theology is indeed, as he himself owns, Scholastic—if not architectonically, at least in spirit and substance. But the myth that the Protestant Scholastic theology was rationalistic is thoroughly exploded by the best modern historiography.³⁶ Rather, Shedd, precisely insofar as he follows the trajectory of orthodox Protestant development, always makes certain that his musings, even at their most speculative, always run back to the divinely revealed principium cognoscendi.

Theological Influences on Dogmatic Theology

Shedd was forthright in acknowledging his debt to certain theological writers. As he himself admits, “If this treatise has any merits, they are due very much to daily and nightly communion with that noble army of theologians which is composed of the Élite of the fathers, of the Schoolmen, of the reformers, and of the seventeenth-century divines of England and the Continent” (p. 38). Who, specifically, were the soldiers of this “noble army”?

The writers on whom Shedd drew for developing his own theological system are in many instances those whom he singled out for special treatment in his History of Christian Doctrine. Specifically, “the writings of Athanasius, Augustine, and Anselm have yielded much solid and germinant material.”³⁷ This is in keeping with his primary doctrinal concerns. The following remark of Shedd, though written in the preface to his history of doctrine, could be stated with equal truth about his Dogmatic Theology: “I have felt a profound interest in the Nicene trinitarianism, the Augustinian anthropology, and the Anselmic soteriology, and from these centers have taken my departures.”³⁸ Since these are likewise the centers of his Dogmatic Theology, it is natural that Shedd would gravitate toward the writings of these theologians in the production of his dogmatic system.

The above description does not tell the whole story, as will become clear when we examine the shape of Dogmatic Theology in the next section. For one thing, Anselm’s influence on Shedd extended beyond soteriology to theology proper, as shown in Shedd’s extended treatment of the ontological argument for the existence of God. Second, Shedd prominently features Reformation and post-Reformation Protestant writers, not only in the expected places of soteriology, hamartiology, and bibliology, but across the various loci. (For instance, he cites Bull at length in his section on the Trinity.) As noted earlier, he seemed to find the writers of the seventeenth century especially agreeable.³⁹ Citations abound from eminent divines such as Owen, Charnock, Turretin, Howe, Bull, Waterland, and a host of others. Shedd shows the greatest affinity of all for the Westminster standards, among the preeminent confessional statements of the seventeenth century.⁴⁰ It was to this doctrinal statement that he gave express allegiance and for the integrity of which he contended to the last.

In contrast, Shedd does not tend to cite contemporary theologians a great deal, even those within his own tradition. Peck points out that Shedd mentions H. B. Smith and R. L. Dabney in his literature review but does not appear to make any actual references to them in the body of his work.⁴¹ Though himself a New Englander, he does not draw upon the more recent modifications of Calvinism by Smalley, Hopkins, the younger Edwards, Emmons, and Dwight. He does make quite a few references to Hodge, “sometimes for adverse criticism,”⁴² though a number of favorable citations to the great Princetonian appear also.⁴³ Nor does he show much interest in non-American theologians, with the possible exceptions of Müller and Dorner, toward whose ideas he was not altogether favorable. Clearly it is to the older theologians—ancient, medieval, and Reformation—that Shedd found himself drawn, to whom he turns again and again “as to familiar friends and counselors.”⁴⁴

Theological Shape of Dogmatic Theology

Having looked at the general tendencies of Shedd as a theologian and the overall tenor of his Dogmatic Theology, let us now consider the specific shape of this system.

Distribution of Topics in Dogmatic Theology

Granting the observations that were made in the previous section about the centers that Shedd took as points of departure, it should come as no surprise that one discovers considerable unevenness in the distribution of topics in Dogmatic Theology. On the one hand, as Morris observes, “Topics of great moment in a complete theological system are only named or suggested.”⁴⁵ For instance, Shedd devotes a scant two pages to the doctrine of heaven and has no real distinct section on ecclesiology or the kingdom of God. On the other hand, his sections on vicarious atonement, the Trinity, and hell are each the length of a small monograph—and in some instances actually began their life in that form before their collation into the system.

Most reviewers of Dogmatic Theology notice this aspect of the work, sometimes harshly.⁴⁶ Some attribute the unevenness to his speculative tendency, noted earlier. From this they conclude that Shedd “is prone, in some directions at least, to neglect too much relatively, and to discuss too slightly those aspects of divine truth, more simple and more practical, in which the thought of the Church is especially interested and unified.”⁴⁷ Yet, one might well ask why Shedd should devote his attention to the simpler and more practical aspects of the faith when that task could be and had been done effectively by others. Perhaps Shedd recognized where he was able to make his most potent and unique contribution and chose to focus his energies there.

Other more practical considerations may also have played a role in defining the shape of the system. One appears to be Shedd’s apologetic concerns in light of late nineteenth-century culture. Morris suggests that Shedd may have felt that the particular forms of infidelity in his day mandated that more time be spent on certain issues. For example, the doctrine of hell, unlike the doctrine of heaven, was under considerable assault.⁴⁸ Morris also suggests that Shedd regarded certain topics as central and strategic for supporting the edifice of the Christian faith. Shedd may well have reasoned that if he could establish solidly the particular doctrines he selected for emphasis, the remainder would more or less take care of themselves.

Doctrinal Loci of Dogmatic Theology

We shall now move through the doctrinal loci and highlight the noteworthy features that occur. It will not be necessary or expedient to say something about all of the loci but only those where some salient characteristic merits comment.⁴⁹

Part 1: Theological Introduction

Shedd begins his system with theological introduction or prolegomena. This is subdivided into three chapters: theological method, divisions and subdivisions of theology, and theology’s nature and definition. A few features stand out as prominent. One is his rejection of the so-called christological method of organizing a theological system.⁵⁰ This he rejects because Christ, being but one person of the triune Godhead, cannot be the organizational principle for an entire system. Instead, Shedd believes that “it is preferable to construct theological science upon the Trinity—to begin with the trinal nature and existence of the Godhead and then come down to his acts in incarnation and redemption” (p. 44).

One feature of his prolegomena that some consider “unusual”⁵¹ is the claim that more certainty can be had in theology than in the natural sciences. As Shedd put it, “There is no science so rightly entitled to be denominated absolute and metaphysically certain as theology” (p. 58). This is because the laws of the physical universe are not absolute but contingent; it is quite conceivable that they could be other than they are. The laws of the moral universe, on the other hand, are absolute; they could not be otherwise in any possible world. Further, Shedd argues, our knowledge of them is direct and intuitive, unconditioned by the sensuous modes of perception that characterize our apprehension of physical phenomena. In short, unlike the natural sciences, the objects of theology and morals are in themselves absolute, and our knowledge of them is more certain.

Another noteworthy element is his explicit methodological requirement that theology begin with exegesis and only then move to a rational defense of the doctrines so elicited.⁵² This is important in light of the earlier observation that some charge Shedd with placing the Bible in a subordinate position to speculative reason (see p. 23).

Part 2: Bibliology

Shedd’s section on bibliology covers the expected topics of revelation, inspiration, authenticity, credibility, and the canonicity of the Scriptures. The treatment is relatively brief. In what he does cover, Shedd places greater emphasis on historical lines of evidence in contrast to more subjective tests. The argument from the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit, which is prominent both in Calvin (e.g., Institutes 1.7.4) and in Shedd’s beloved Westminster Confession (e.g., 1.5), was little exploited by Shedd himself.⁵³

Shedd’s view of inspiration also includes the Bible’s inerrancy, a position that was losing favor among many of Shedd’s contemporaries.⁵⁴

Part 3: Theology (Doctrine of God)

In Shedd’s section on the doctrine of God (theology proper), he covers the nature and definition of God, the innate idea and knowledge of God, arguments for divine existence, Trinity in unity, divine attributes, divine decrees, creation, providence, and miracles.

Shedd gives considerable attention to the ontological argument for God’s existence, mentioning other forms of argument only in passing.⁵⁵ He believes that Anselm’s version of this argument is unassailable, if only its full import be properly understood.⁵⁶ Shedd argues vigorously that one of the main reasons that the ontological argument has not commended itself to many astute minds (e.g., Gaunilo, Kant, Coleridge, and others) is because of a failure to recognize that it is not mere “existence” but “necessary existence” that is predicated of the being “than which no greater can be conceived.”⁵⁷ While he grants Kant’s contention that existence is not the predicate of a thing, necessary existence is, and it is on this that the force of the ontological argument hangs. Whether one is ultimately convinced of the ontological argument’s efficacy, Morris is correct when declares Shedd to be “unsurpassed” in setting forth the position: “The case has never been, nor is it easy to see how it ever can be, more skillfully stated.”⁵⁸

Shedd’s chapter on the Trinity is lengthy and detailed, comprising 55 pages in this edition. In certain respects it contains material that is standard fare in most systematic theologies. For example, the biblical exposition of the doctrine, while breaking no new ground, is cogent and capably stated. It is when Shedd turns his attention to the more metaphysical aspects of the doctrine, such as the intratrinitarian ontology—including paternity, filiation, spiration, and eternal generation—that his speculative bent shows itself in full flower. It should be noted that this part of his system is attacked as entailing overly Scholastic refinements with but marginal biblical support.⁵⁹ While there may be some limited basis for these complaints, it seems to me that the problem, if indeed it exists at all, is much overstated. First, while one might correctly argue that revelation does not furnish copious information on trinitarian ontology, the Bible nevertheless does present some significant data in this regard, and Shedd explores carefully what the Bible does say. Second, taking the revealed data as a starting point, the truths that Shedd extrapolates from these are fair deductions from the facts of the case.⁶⁰ And finally, it is clear from reading Shedd’s exposition that his development of the doctrine, precisely insofar as it is patristic and Scholastic, provides a bulwark against the most virulent enemies of the orthodox doctrine, such as Arianism, Socinianism, and pantheism.

Concerning the divine attributes Shedd’s treatment is predictably conservative. Following, more or less, the order of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 4), he discusses the standard list, such as omniscience, omnipotence, eternity, immutability, holiness, goodness, etc. What stands out in particular is the emphasis he gives to God’s holiness.

In his earlier Theological Essays, Shedd declared: “The truth is, that it is the divine essence alone, and not any one particular attribute, that can be logically regarded as the unity in which all the characteristic qualities of the deity center and inhere.”⁶¹ Yet, in another place he appears to put holiness—and justice, its cognate—at the head of the list: “Justice … is the fundamental of all fundamentals, whether the being of the Creator or of creation is contemplated. Justice is the deepest of all the deep teachings of God, underlying the whole Godhead and forming the equilibrium of the divine character.”⁶² Dogmatic Theology likewise shows this tendency to make all of the divine attributes equal to one another (in the interest of maintaining divine simplicity) but at the same time making divine justice “more equal” than the others. The centrality of justice in Dogmatic Theology is clearly evident in the considerable attention he pays to it, both in the extent of the treatment and in the intensity with which he canvasses the subject. In particular, Shedd argues at length that God must be just, though he may or may not show mercy toward the sinner. That is, God must punish sin—either vicariously or on the person of the sinner him/herself. In contrast, while God, being merciful, must feel a sense of compassion toward the sinner, his actual exercise of mercy toward particular individuals is strictly optional. This view of divine justice looms large in his later discussions of predestination, the atonement, and hell.

On the divine decrees, Shedd presents a classic Reformed position of the infralapsarian/sublapsarian type.⁶³ He holds to the doctrine of the permissive decree with respect to sin. He includes an enlightening discussion on the distinctions between fate, compulsion, and necessity and defends the Reformed position against mischaracterizations in this regard. He presents a fine comparison between the Arminian and Reformed views of election and answers the common objections marshaled against the Reformed position. There is nothing here to distinguish Shedd’s views from mainstream, infralapsarian/sublapsarian Calvinism, other than the exceptional clarity of his presentation. What is remarkable, though, are the criticisms it evoked. Shedd is charged with advancing predestination in its “most rigid” form, both by older and by more recent reviewers.⁶⁴ This charge is certainly without foundation. Within the confessionally Reformed camp, Shedd’s infralapsarian/sublapsarian perspective is the more moderate of the Reformed options, and his presentation of the doctrine is considerably more guarded and nuanced than what one finds in Zwingli or even in Calvin. Some of those who assail Dogmatic Theology on this point are not amenable to Reformed doctrine per se; their distaste for the Reformed doctrine that Shedd presents is in one sense not difficult to understand. What is unusual, though, is the charge that Shedd’s exposition of the doctrine conduces to greater rigidity than what one finds in the Reformed tradition generally; if anything, the opposite is true. In other words, a weakness of some critiques is that they abstract Shedd from his tradition and speak as though doctrines that simply are confessional Reformed theology are somehow novel to Shedd. Then, compounding the error, they wrongly characterize Shedd’s doctrine as “extreme” and “rigid,” most likely drawing this erroneous conclusion from the consistency and vigor of his presentation rather than from anything truly radical in the doctrinal content itself.⁶⁵

Part 4: Anthropology

Shedd’s section on anthropology covers the subtopics of man’s creation, his primitive state, the human will, his probation and apostasy, and original sin. There is much of interest in these chapters, but what especially arrests the reader’s attention is Shedd’s spirited defense of traducianism as an explanation for the propagation of the soul, the related thesis of a realistic theory for the guilt of original sin, and a detailed discussion of the nature of the will, with the important distinction between the voluntary and the volitionary.

Reformed theologians generally favor a creationist position on the origin of the soul, while the Lutherans usually opt for the traducian model.⁶⁶ Therefore, in this section Shedd felt “constrained to differ from some theologians for whom he has the highest respect and with whom he has in general a hearty agreement” (p. 37), that is, within the Reformed tradition. But he believes it is necessary to register his opposition, because he felt that apart from a traducian understanding of the soul’s origin it is not possible to establish our realistic participation in Adam’s sin (i.e., which we committed while in our “race-form” of existence). In turn, in his view the realistic theory of original sin presents the only explanation for our guilt in Adam that does not violate our deepest intuitions of justice and of the nature of guilt.⁶⁷

Stated in the barest outline, Shedd—in common with all who hold the biblical doctrine of original sin—believes that the Scriptures teach that we are guilty for the sin of our first parents. That is, Adam and Eve’s very act of rebellion is chargeable to all their progeny. Among other passages cited, Rom. 5:12 is discussed at length in this connection. But guilt cannot be charged where there is no participation in the crime. Since the Scriptures teach that there is guilt, there must be participation. Granting that we were not coconspirators in Adam’s crime as individuals—for we did not yet exist as individuals—we must have participated substantially, existing in Adam in seminal “race-form.” Because the entire substance of all who would become individuals was at that point resident in Adam and Eve whole and entire, their entire progeny were able to participate and in fact did participate in this act of rebellion; this participation would not have been possible after the substance became differentiated and parceled out in the propagation of individual children. After Adam and Eve produced their first offspring, the entire substance of humanity was no longer contained in them, explaining, at least in part, why it is that the subsequent sins of Adam and Eve are not charged to their offspring. I say “at least in part,” because one is still faced with the question of those sins that Adam and Eve committed following their violation of the probationary statute in the garden but before the conception of their first child. Shedd argues that in addition to the ontological necessity of race identity in Adam and Eve, which was requisite for their progeny’s participation in the deed, there was also something unique about the probationary statute itself that would account for why the violation of it and not the commission of other sins would be charged to posterity.⁶⁸

Shedd finds strong support for his view in Augustine and in some of the medievals, most notably Odo of Tournai, whom he cites at considerable length. He also quotes Edwards as an authority, though he makes some significant departures from him in places. As noted earlier, he respectfully but strongly registers his disagreement with others of his tradition who favor a representative theory, including the eminent theologian Charles Hodge.

On the subject of the will, Shedd shows a strong affinity with Edwards, whom Shedd references a great deal and whose thinking on the matter Shedd attempts to refine. Shedd believes that an important distinction must be made between the voluntary and the volitionary; this thread runs throughout his discussion. The voluntary refers to the inclinations and dispositions of the heart, while the volitionary refers to the discreet acts of choice performed by the willing agent. The essence of Shedd’s position may be summarized as follows. Adam, before the fall, had holy inclinations. He was not created neutral or in a state of moral equipoise, but was positively inclined toward the good. However, Adam’s will was mutable. He could, through an act of volition, choose to sin. This he in fact did, and through this act of pure self-determination he set in motion a new set of inclinations, namely sinful ones. After the fall, Adam could not reverse his inclinations back to holy ones through any self-actuated volitionary actions, any more than a person could restore sight to himself after deliberately putting out his eyes. Nor could his posterity so change themselves, who, as noted above, participated in the sinful act and are therefore partakers in its ensuing pollution. While Shedd allows that a person has some or even considerable control over specific choices (volitionary acts), he or she is powerless to set in motion a fundamentally new set of inclinations, namely, from a sinful disposition to a holy one. He illustrates this with an analogy from the Gulf Stream. The volitionary acts are like the waves that play upon the surface, while the fundamental inclinations of the heart are the currents that lie deep beneath: “Both of the former are the movement of the will, as both of the latter are the movement of the ocean. But as the surface undulations have no control over the central current, so the superficial volitions have no control over the inclination” (p. 529).

Practically speaking, it follows from Shedd’s view of the will that all attempts at reforming the depths of the human heart through moral activity are doomed to failure. However, what human beings can no longer do for themselves, God can and does do in the regeneration of the sinner. Regeneration is completely the act of God (monergism), who sovereignly changes the inclinations of the heart. Once God sets in motion new, holy dispositions, the volitions adjust themselves accordingly.

Part 5: Christology

Shedd’s section on Christology is subdivided into five chapters: Christ’s theanthropic person, his divinity, his humanity, his unipersonality, and his impeccability.

Shedd’s Christology is very traditional and is heavily influenced by his study of the church fathers and the Protestant Scholastic theologians. He holds clearly to the view that the second person of the Trinity—the Logos—is the “root” of Christ’s person, on whom an “impersonal” human nature is grafted.⁶⁹ That is, Christ’s human nature has no independent subsistence apart from its assumption by the second trinitarian person, who personalizes it.⁷⁰ In accounting for the sinlessness of Christ’s humanity, Shedd, citing a number of patristic authorities, argues that the human nature he derived from Mary was cleansed supernaturally by the Holy Spirit, so that the taint of sinfulness (concupiscence) was removed, making this nature pure and holy and therefore suitable for assumption by the Logos.

Shedd’s chapter on Christ’s unipersonality is of great interest and merits special mention. More than most modern theological systems, Shedd muses at length about the psychology of Christ’s theanthropic person. In Shedd’s view, the God-man has two forms or modes of consciousness, where each nature “furnish[es] the materials of consciousness” (p. 651). In the single self-consciousness of the God-man, there is, for example, both an infinite, omniscient mode of consciousness and a finite, sequacious form of consciousness. Shedd, speaking along the lines of some of the Alexandrian fathers, presents the analogy of body and soul in a human being. According to Shedd, in human beings each substance (body and soul) furnishes the materials of consciousness that are proper to it. Yet, in spite of the disparate nature of the substances, the individual experiences these psycho-physical events in a unified, single self-consciousness. This explanation provides an analogy of how different substances (divinity and humanity) provide different forms of consciousness, which exist as a single self-consciousness in the person of the God-man (p. 651).

Also of great importance is Shedd’s lengthy discussion and defense of the God-man’s impeccability. His defense of this is quite in keeping with the earlier point that the Logos is the root of the God-man’s person. Granting that the actions of Christ’s humanity are the actions of the Logos-person operating through the impersonal human nature that he assumed, any sin on the part of the God-man would be preeminently chargeable to the second trinitarian person—which is, of course, unthinkable. Shedd’s discussion of the psychology of temptation and the distinction he draws between being sinfully tempted and innocently tempted will certainly repay careful study.

Part 6: Soteriology

Shedd’s section on soteriology is subdivided into chapters on Christ’s mediatorial offices, vicarious atonement, regeneration, conversion, justification, sanctification, and the means of grace. By far the bulk of this section is devoted to a discussion of vicarious atonement; in comparison, the other subdivisions of this section are but lightly treated.

Shedd’s chapter on vicarious atonement is a virtual monograph in its own right. It is one of the clearest, fullest, and most forceful expositions in the entire Dogmatic Theology.⁷¹ Shedd’s preoccupation with God’s holiness and the related issue of justice was noted above. The implications of this for Shedd’s view of atonement are evident at every turn. God, by virtue of his holiness, must punish sin. He must punish it either in the person of the sinner or in his substitute. The atonement is truly penal in character and is offered on behalf of the offending sinner. It is a true satisfaction of justice, so that God may now forgive without doing violence to the demands of his own holy character.

Shedd, in line with the Reformed tradition, holds to the doctrine of so-called limited atonement. Yet, Shedd does a better job than many of his tradition in providing a fuller account of the atonement’s universal aspects (p. 750). Here Shedd makes a helpful distinction between limited redemption and universal atonement. The actual redemption of particular sinners is indeed limited by divine decree, in the sense that God gives faith only to the elect so that they might savingly appropriate satisfaction for their sins. Thus, only the elect are actually redeemed by Christ’s work, and this by the intention of God, who bestows the gift of faith sovereignly at his pleasure. At the same time, Christ’s work of atonement is universal in scope in that it is adapted to provide the cure for human sin and will save any and all who should believe in it.⁷² Further, it is incumbent on all men to embrace it if they would be saved. Their failure to do so is chargeable directly to their own recalcitrance and not because God placed some additional barrier in their way. As a thing good in itself, God would delight in all sinners—elect or not—repenting of their sins and turning to Christ.⁷³ It does not follow that because God refrains from performing a special work of grace in the hearts of the nonelect that God does not so delight nor that God is in any way the efficient cause of their unbelief. Their unbelief is self-caused, and God’s failure to overcome their resolute resistance through a work of efficacious grace, which he is not required to do in any event, does not change that fact.

Shedd’s distinction between universal atonement and particular or limited redemption runs parallel to the oft-repeated and well-established distinction between the universal sufficiency of Christ’s death compared to its particular efficiency for only the elect. However, the way in which Shedd develops the view, as noted above, may be helpful in dispelling some of the misconceptions surrounding the Reformed view.

Part 7: Eschatology

As with most theological systems, Shedd ends his with a treatment of eschatology. This is divided into chapters on the intermediate or disembodied state, Christ’s second advent, resurrection, final judgment, heaven, and hell.

Perhaps in no section is the imbalance in treatment more evident than here. Whereas Shedd provides but a scant two-page sketch of the doctrine of heaven, he devotes 56 pages to the doctrine of eternal punishment. As suggested earlier, this may be explained by Shedd’s deep interest in divine justice and by his desire to counter the specific forms of infidelity prevalent in his day.

As with his section on vicarious atonement, Shedd’s chapter on hell is a monograph in its own right and was published two years earlier as such.⁷⁴ It contains some of the most cogent reasoning against universalism, conditional immortality, and annihilationism ever written.⁷⁵ Indeed, according to one anecdote, the famous Henry Ward Beecher originally agreed to write a rebuttal to an article Shedd had written in defense of the traditional doctrine. Upon receiving the proof sheets of Shedd’s article, Beecher reconsidered. He telegraphed the editors, saying, “Cancel engagement, Shedd is too much for me. I half believe in eternal punishment now myself. Get somebody else.”⁷⁶

Shedd presents historical, biblical, and rational arguments for the traditional, biblical doctrine of hell. While the historical and biblical arguments are capably presented, it is the rational arguments that especially arrest the reader’s attention. Shedd argues that sin is punishable only insofar as one is guilty for it, and one is guilty only insofar as sin is a self-determined act. Now, to let sin go unpunished is to degrade human dignity, whereas to punish it highlights the dignity of human freedom.

If one grants that the guilty ought to be punished but not eternally, Shedd responds that guilt, by the nature of the case, “never ceases to be” once it is incurred: “The lapse of time does not convert guilt into innocence, as it converts moral infirmity into moral strength; and therefore no time can ever arrive when the guilt of the criminal will cease to deserve and demand its retribution. The reason for retribution today is a reason forever” (p. 915). In this sense human justice does not mete out exactly the punishment that sin deserves in its reference to God, because “earthly courts and judges look at the transgression of law with reference only to man’s temporal relations, not his eternal” (p. 917). Another factor is that human courts are not purely retributive; they must take into consideration other factors, such as the functioning of human society. Eternal punishment, on the other hand, is purely retributive, unmixed with other considerations. Shedd cites a number of other differences between the divine and human exercise of penal retribution. Consequently, crimes against the state are not punished eternally, even though the transgressor, once guilty, never ceases to be so.

Shedd also points out that the gravity of the offense is related to the dignity of the object against whom it is committed. Shedd uses the illustration of torturing a human being, which is worse than torturing an animal because greater dignity and worth attend a human being than a brute. He also illustrates the point by observing that to steal from one’s own mother is a more heinous offense because of who she is in relation to the offender. Even so, to sin against an infinitely holy God, to whom we owe complete allegiance, is an offense of infinite gravity, requiring unending punishment. The infinite gravity of the offense is shown, further, in the “stupendous self-sacrifice” of God in providing vicarious satisfaction. Shedd states, “It is incredible that the eternal Trinity should have submitted to such a stupendous self-sacrifice to remove a merely finite and temporal evil” (p. 925). Shedd concludes that “the doctrine of Christ’s vicarious atonement, logically, stands or falls with that of endless punishment” (p. 925).

Shedd also observes that the wicked in hell are not repentant. They certainly bewail their wretched condition, but they do not seek to make God their portion or grieve over their sin in terms of how it offends a holy God. Consequently, it is not as though the wicked in hell would wish to be in the presence of a holy God, for they continue to love themselves and not him.

Shedd provides many more arguments than these for the rationality of eternal punishment. Those cited above are given merely to illustrate the kind of reasoning advanced in defense of the traditional doctrine.

Preface

by William G. T. Shedd

The immediate preparation of this treatise began in 1870, when the author was called to give instruction for a year in the department of systematic theology in Union Theological Seminary. The work was resumed in 1874, when he was elected to this professorship, and was prosecuted down to 1888. But some general preparation had been made for it by previous studies and publications. The writer had composed a history of Christian doctrine in the years 1854–62 (which was published in 1863) and also a volume of theological essays containing discussions on original sin and vicarious atonement and a volume of sermons to the natural man predominantly theological in their contents. The doctrinal system here presented will be found to be closely connected with these preceding investigations; and this will explain the somewhat frequent references to them as parts of one whole. Dogmatic history is the natural introduction to dogmatic theology.

The general type of doctrine is the Augustino-Calvinistic. Upon a few points, the elder Calvinism has been followed in preference to the later. This, probably, is the principal difference between this treatise and contemporary ones of the Calvinistic class.

Upon the subject of Adam’s sin and its imputation, the author has been constrained to differ from some theologians for whom he has the highest respect and with whom he has in general a hearty agreement. In adopting the traducian theory of the origin of the soul, in the interest of the immediate imputation of the first sin, he believes that he has the support of some of the more careful students of Scripture and of the deepest thinkers in the history of the church. This theory, however, even when adopted has not attained much explication. Some further development of it has been attempted; with what success, the reader must judge. The doctrine of the Trinity has been constructed upon the Nicene basis, but with more reference to the necessary conditions of personality and self-consciousness and the objections to the personality of the infinite introduced by modern pantheism. In respect to the ontological argument for divine existence, the author is in sympathy with the a priori spirit of the old theology. The statement of the doctrine of the decrees and of regeneration is founded upon the postulate that all holiness has its source in the infinite will and all sin in the self-determination of the finite.

It will be objected by some to this dogmatic system that it has been too much influenced by the patristic, medieval, and Reformation periods and too little by the so-called progress of modern theology. The charge of Scholasticism, and perhaps of speculativeness, will be made. The author has no disposition to repel the charge. While acknowledging the excellences of the present period in respect to the practical application and spread of religion, he cannot regard it as preeminent above all others in scientific theology. It is his conviction that there were some minds in the former ages of Christianity who were called by providence to do a work that will never be outgrown and left behind by the Christian church; some men who thought more deeply and came nearer to the center of truth upon some subjects than any modern minds. Non omnia possumus omnes. No one age or church is in advance of all other ages or churches in all things. It would be difficult to mention an intellect in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries whose reflection upon the metaphysical being and nature of God has been more profound than that of Anselm, whose thinking upon the Trinity has been more subtle and discriminating than that of Athanasius, whose contemplation of the great mystery of sin has been more comprehensive and searching than that of Augustine, whose apprehension of the doctrine of atonement has been more accurate than that formulated in the creeds of the Reformation.

In drawing from these earlier sources, the writer believes that systematic theology will be made both more truthful and more vital. Confinement to modern opinions tends to thinness and weakness. The latest intelligence is of more value in a newspaper than in a scientific treatise. If an author in any department gets into the eddies of his age and whirls round and round in them, he knows little of the sweep of the vast stream of the ages which holds on its way forever and forevermore. If this treatise has any merits, they are due very much to daily and nightly communion with that noble army of theologians which is composed of the Élite of the fathers, of the Schoolmen, of the reformers, and of the seventeenth-century divines of England and the Continent. And let it not be supposed that this influence of the theologians is at the expense of that of the Scriptures. This is one of the vulgar errors. Scientific and contemplative theology is the child of revelation. It is the very word of God itself as this has been studied, collated, combined, and systematized by powerful, devout, and prayerful intellects.

In closing up the labors of forty years in theological research and meditation, the writer is naturally the subject of serious thoughts and feelings. The vastness and mystery of the science oppress him more than ever. But the evangelical irradiations of the sun of righteousness out of the thick darkness and clouds that envelop the infinite and adorable God are beams of intense brightness which pour the light of life and of hope into the utter gloom in which man must live here upon earth, if he rejects divine revelation. That this treatise may contribute to strengthen the believer’s confidence in this revelation and to incline the unbeliever to exercise faith in it is the prayer of the author.

Union Theological Seminary

New York, May 1, 1888

Preface to Volume 3

The two volumes of Dogmatic Theology published in 1888 aimed to state and defend the Augustinian and elder Calvinistic theology. The great difference between this system and the several schools of modern Calvinism and also Arminian theology consists in the doctrine of the self-determined and responsible fall of mankind as a species in Adam. This makes original sin to be really and literally guilty and condemning in every individual who is propagated out of the species, instead of only nominally and fictionally so. It also makes the origin of sin and the consequent ruin of the race of mankind to occur at the beginning of human history. The destiny of man was decided wholly in Adam and not at all in the subsequent generations of individuals propagated from him. Individual life and individual transgression, which in modern theological systems are largely employed to explain the problem of original sin, become of no consequence. They are only the necessary effect of the real cause—the voluntary determination of the race in the primitive apostasy, of which St. Paul gives a full account in Rom. 5. Schleiermacher presents an example of this tendency to explain generic sin by individual transgression. In his Glaubenslehre §71 he argues elaborately to convert the original sin propagated from Adam into individual transgressions committed by the posterity. The former, he contends, is guilt only as it is subsequently adopted by each man in separate and conscious acts. “It is impossible,” he says, “that innate and inherited corruption should be guilty and condemning, if it be torn from its connection with the personal transgressions of the individual.”

The purpose of this supplementary volume is to elaborate more carefully some of the difficult points in specific unity, partly by original explanations by the author and partly by extracts from that class of theologians who have advocated it. The volume contains an amount of carefully selected citations from works in the ancient, medieval, and Reformation periods and also from the English and Continental divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that are not easily accessible and are an equivalent for a large library of treatises beyond the power of most clergyman and students to possess or have access to. The original matter connected with this endeavors to clear up the obscure features of an actual existence in Adam and a responsible agency in him.

The divisions of the supplement are the same as those of the Dogmatic Theology, and the heads under them indicate the pages in the dogmatics which find an explanation or a citation in the supplement.¹ The author believes that the value of the two volumes of Dogmatic Theology will be substantially increased by the supplementary volume.

New York, September 1894

¹1. Robert Brow, “Evangelical Megashift: What You May Not Have Heard about Wrath, Sin, and Hell Recently,” Christianity Today (19 Feb. 1990): 12–17.

²2. They deny God’s foreknowledge because they reason that if God knows the future with certainty then the future will happen just as God knows it will. But if the future will happen just as God knows it will, this seems to them incompatible with the genuine freedom of our choices.

³3. See Socinus in glossary 2.

⁴4. In a small number of cases I relied on an existing translation, which I note accordingly.

⁵5. When a foreign-language citation occurred in one of Shedd’s own notes and consisted of only a single word or a common phrase, I simply added the translation with no attribution to me; my lengthier translations added to Shedd’s own notes are preceded by the initials AG.

⁶6. For instance, if a work is known exclusively or even predominately by its original language title I left it untranslated.

⁷7. “Dr. Shedd has not always been careful to verify his references. In some instances, when he quotes at secondhand, he repeats the mistake of the book in which he found the quotation. He often gives the substance of a citation, omitting words and clauses, yet makes the whole an unbroken sentence, and encloses it in double quotation marks. The Westminster Confession is often treated in this way, so that those who are familiar with the exact phraseology are disturbed by the unaccustomed arrangement of words. When only the sense of a passage is given the signs of precise citation should not be used. A quotation is made from Dr. Schaff’s article on ‘Hades’ in which a sentence is taken from a division marked (c), another from an earlier division marked (3), yet the latter follows the former in a continuous sentence which is designated by quotation marks.” George Harris, “A Review of Dogmatic Theology by W. G. T. Shedd,” Andover Review 11 (1889): 178.

⁸8. In my translation of foreign-language passages I typically translated what was before me, assuming it to be correct. However, when I had some reason to suspect a problem in the citation, I sought the original text for comparison. It was in a few of these instances that I discovered the faulty citations I noted.

¹1. Thornton Whaling, “Review of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology,” Presbyterian Quarterly 9 (1895): 323.

²2. Monica M. Grecu, “William G. T. Shedd,” in American Literary Critics and Scholars, 1850–1880 (ed. John W. Rathbun and Monica M. Grecu; Dictionary of Literary Biography 64; Detroit: Gale, 1988), 217.

³3. For the reader’s convenience I collated the most salient facts of Shedd’s life from several biographical resources on Shedd. I drew specifically and primarily on the following works: John DeWitt, “William Greenough Thayer Shedd, D.D., L.L.D.,” Presbyterian and Reformed Review 5 (1895): 295–322; Grecu, “William G. T. Shedd”; Edward E. Hindson, “Introduction,” in Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology (repr. Nashville: Nelson, 1980), 1.iii–vi; Bernard Vernon Munger, William Greenough Thayer Shedd: Reformed Traditionalist, 1820–1894 (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1957); Mark A. Trechock, Orthodoxy for a Critical Period: Five Case Studies in American Protestant Theology, circa 1870 (Th.D. diss., Iliff School of Theology, 1987); Cyril J. Barber, “Foreword,” in a combined edition of Shedd’s Theological Essays and Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (repr. Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1981); and M. Eugene Oosterhaven, “Introduction,” in Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology (repr. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1953), 1.1–6. The interested reader may also wish to consult Paul P. Faris’s essay on Shedd in Dictionary of American Biography (ed. Dumas Malone; New York: Scribner, 1935), 17.56–57; and the essay in Encyclopedia of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Encyclopedia, 1884), 825.

⁴4. Grecu, “William G. T. Shedd,” 215.

⁵5. Ibid., 214.

⁶6. DeWitt, “William Greenough Thayer Shedd,” 304.

⁷7. Ibid., 310.

⁸8. Ibid.

⁹9. Ibid., 321. However, as DeWitt points out, Shedd continued to teach for another year as Union Seminary arranged for his successor.

¹⁰10. See the following works by Shedd: Calvinism: Pure and Mixed (New York: Scribner, 1893); Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (New York: Scribner, 1873); and Proposed Revision of the Westminster Standards (New York: Scribner, 1890).

¹¹11. DeWitt, “William Greenough Thayer Shedd,” 299.

¹²12. As Whaling (“Review of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology,” 324) states, “We believe no American writer in the field of philosophy or theology has excelled him in the clearness, force and beauty of his style, and in a certain subtle, vital quality hard to describe, but easily recognized in the products of some minds.”

¹³13. Edward Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” Presbyterian Review 10 (1880): 356.

¹⁴14. T. E. Peck, “Review of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology,” Presbyterian Quarterly 3 (1889): 290.

¹⁵15. Ibid., 290.

¹⁶16. He treats this most explicitly in his Lectures upon the Philosophy of History (Andover: Draper, 1856), though he enunciates his convictions throughout his writings.

¹⁷17. W. G. T. Shedd, “The Nature, and Influence, of the Historic Spirit,” in Theological Essays (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1877), 105, 250.

¹⁸18. Henry Warner Bowden, “W. G. T. Shedd and A. C. McGiffert on the Development of Doctrine,” Journal of Presbyterian History 49 (1971): 251.

¹⁹19. W. G. T. Shedd, History of Doctrine (New York: Scribner, 1863), 1.23.

²⁰20. Bowden, “W. G. T. Shedd and A. C. McGiffert,” 251.

²¹21. Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1.23.

²²22. Cushing Strout, speaking of Shedd’s view, makes this point lucidly: “Without historical culture the mind never achieved communication; isolated, it became the easy prey of strident passions and temporary fashions. The historically oriented mind seized the present in its deeper meaning and maintained its balance by its sense of tradition. Thus partisan eccentricities of individual minds would be tempered by contact with the ‘general mind.’ ” See Cushing Strout, “Faith and History: The Mind of William G. T. Shedd,” Journal of the History of Ideas 15 (1954): 158.

²³23. See Alan W. Gomes, “William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1820–1894) on Evangelical Unity: Some Prescriptions—Theoretical and Practical,” Presbyterion 29/1 (Spring 2003): 9–26.

²⁴24. Grecu (“William G. T. Shedd,” 215) makes a closely related point in terms of how Shedd would value the moral quality of literature: “He felt that Christian eschatological views had profoundly affected and altered the human view of history by establishing a universal history of substitutionary atonement and subsequent redemption. Hence, history could be seen as a continuum progressing toward morality in which the major way-stations were paganism, Romanism, and finally the Reformation. It stood, then, that post-Reformation literature would also be morally superior. Shedd’s exemplar was Milton.”

²⁵25. “There were some minds in the former ages of Christianity who were called by providence to do a work that will never be outgrown and left behind by the Christian church; some men who thought more deeply and came nearer to the center of truth upon some subjects than any modern minds.… It would be difficult to mention an intellect in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries whose reflection upon the metaphysical being and nature of God has been more profound than that of Anselm, whose thinking upon the Trinity has been more subtle and discriminating than that of Athanasius, whose contemplation of the great mystery of sin has been more comprehensive and searching than that of Augustine, whose apprehension of the doctrine of atonement has been more accurate than that formulated in the creeds of the Reformation” (pp. 37–38).

²⁶26. DeWitt, “William Greenough Thayer Shedd,” 315.

²⁷27. Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 361, 364–65.

²⁸28. E.g., DeWitt, “William Greenough Thayer Shedd.” Morris (“Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 360): “A third admirable characteristic of the Dogmatic Theology appears in the continuous and careful effort to secure a solid basis in reason and the nature of things, as well as in external authorities, for the several doctrines advanced.”

²⁹29. E.g., Munger, William Greenough Thayer Shedd.

³⁰30. Shedd, “The Method, and Influence, of Theological Studies,” in Theological Essays and Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (repr. Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1981), 31.

³¹31. Shedd, Sermons to the Spiritual Man (New York: Scribner, 1884), 6–7.

³²32. Munger, William Greenough Thayer Shedd, 205–6.

³³33. Ibid., 206.

³⁴34. Ibid., 209.

³⁵35. Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 359.

³⁶36. See Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993).

³⁷37. Shedd, History of Doctrine, 1.vi–vii.

³⁸38. Ibid., viii.

³⁹39. See, e.g., Shedd’s Homiletics and Pastoral Theology (New York: Scribner, 1867), 16–17, in which he compares the theologians and writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with those of the eighteenth and nineteenth.

⁴⁰40. As Peck (“Review of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology,” 288) observes, the Westminster Standards “are cited on almost every page.” Morris (“Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 360) counts “no less than sixty distinct references” to the Presbyterian creeds. If anything, that number strikes me as low.

⁴¹41. Peck, “Review of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology,” 289.

⁴²42. Ibid., 289.

⁴³43. Shedd states, “While dissenting from the views of Hodge on the nature of the union between Adam and his posterity and of the imputation of the first sin, the writer has the most profound respect for the opinions of this learned and logical theologian. With the exception of the elder Edwards, to no divine is American theology more indebted” (p. 462 n. 99). In addition to the two topics mentioned, Shedd could well have added Hodge’s apparent denial of Christ’s impeccability to this list, concerning which he states, “It is remarkable that a theologian of such soundness and accuracy as the elder Hodge should deny the impeccability of the God-man” (p. 660 n. 4).

⁴⁴44. Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 356–57.

⁴⁵45. Ibid., 367.

⁴⁶46. Harris, a contemporary of Shedd, censures his uneven distribution of topics, which he believes arises, at least in part, from an undue individualistic emphasis (“Review of Dogmatic Theology,” 179): “The church is looked on merely as having the sacraments, and the sacraments are considered as means of grace to the individual. The final consummation and triumph of the kingdom of God makes no distinct part of the eschatology.… Heaven, to which a chapter of two pages is given, is a place in which the blessedness of the believer is realized.… I cannot refrain from expressing the conviction that a system is radically defective which has no place for the doctrine of the kingdom of God on earth and in heaven, nor for the church of Christ.”

⁴⁷47. Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 364–65.

⁴⁸48. Ibid., 367–68.

⁴⁹49. My purpose in this section is not to defend Shedd’s views, though I do note some instances where I believe he is misunderstood by other reviewers. Nor is the task here to explain his arguments in great detail. Rather, I present Shedd’s conclusions on some important issues, especially where his take on a particular matter is unique or otherwise noteworthy. While I provide some indication of how Shedd arrived at his conclusions, the reader should certainly not conclude that there is no more to Shedd’s argument than what is presented here. Glossary 1 may assist the reader in following this section at certain points.

⁵⁰50. The christological method of organization was used by Henry Boynton Smith, Shedd’s predecessor at Union Seminary.

⁵¹51. Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 361.

⁵²52. “The first step to be taken is to deduce the doctrine itself from Scripture by careful exegesis; and the second step is to justify and defend this exegetical result upon grounds of reason. Christian theology differs from every other branch of knowledge by being the outcome of divine revelation. Consequently, the interpretation of Scripture is the very first work of the theologian. When man constructs a system of philosophy, he must look into his own mind for the data; but when he constructs the Christian system he must look in the Bible for them. Hence the first procedure of the theologian is exegetical. The contents and meaning of inspiration are to be discovered. Christian dogmatics is what he finds, not what he originates” (pp. 47–48).

⁵³53. Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 359.

⁵⁴54. See, e.g., Harris’s criticism (“Review of Dogmatic Theology,” 177) of Dogmatic Theology on precisely this point.

⁵⁵55. Munger (William Greenough Thayer Shedd, 62 n. 6) points out that Shedd gives “one paragraph each to the moral argument and the historical argument; two pages each to the cosmological argument and the teleological argument; and twenty pages to the ontological argument.” Of course, this could be explained in part by the complexity of the ontological argument. Another factor is the controversy surrounding this argument and the objections to it that required answering. Finally, and perhaps most obviously, the ontological argument fits with Shedd’s speculative bent, and Shedd tends to give extended attention to what he finds important and of interest to him.

⁵⁶56. He regards the modified versions of it that appeared subsequent to Anselm (e.g., Descartes) as weakening it.

⁵⁷57. “A contemporary of Anselm, the monk Gaunilo, … raised the objection which has been repeated over and over again: the idea of an object does not involve its existence. We have the idea of a tree, but it does not follow that there is an actual tree. We have the idea of a winged lion, but it does not follow that such a creature actually exists. The reply is that the ideas compared are not analogous in respect to the vital point of necessary existence, but are wholly diverse. One idea is that of perfect and necessary being, the other that of imperfect and contingent being. What is true of the latter idea is untrue of the former and vice versa. The idea of a tree implies contingency, that it may or may not exist; that of the absolutely perfect being implies necessity, that he must exist. From the idea of the tree we cannot prove actual objective reality, because of the element of contingency; but we can from the idea of God, because of the element of necessity. If the idea of a thing implies that it may or may not exist, it does not follow from the idea that the thing does exist. But if the idea of a thing implies that it must exist, it does follow from the idea that the thing does exist. This objection, therefore, to the ontological argument breaks down because the analogy brought in to support it is a spurious one.… Analogical reasoning is valid between things of the same species, but invalid if carried across into another species. Gaunilo, arguing against Anselm, urged that the idea of the ‘lost island’ does not imply that there is such a thing. Anselm replies that if Gaunilo will show that the idea of the ‘lost island’ implies its necessary existence, he will find the island for him and will guarantee that it shall never be a ‘lost island’ again” (p. 204).

⁵⁸58. Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 362.

⁵⁹59. Peck (“Review of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology,” 291) states, “It is a revival of old Scholastic speculations for which no man was ever the wiser, except so far as they served to produce a more enlightened conviction of his own ignorance.” Similarly, Morris (“Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 364) opines: “We assuredly can know nothing by mere speculation, however interesting or profound such speculation may be.”

⁶⁰60. Some criticize, e.g., the doctrine of the Son’s eternal generation from the Father as a case in point. But as Shedd points out, the Bible describes the members of the Trinity by the titles Father, Son, and Spirit, and it follows that there must be something about these persons that warrants such designations. Now, it is impossible to conceive of the father/son relationship apart from some concept of generation. And if there is generation and if the Son is the same ontological being as the Father, who is eternal, then the generation must be an eternal generation. No doubt this is a deduction that goes beyond any given biblical text, but it follows inexorably from the nature of the case. Therefore, the theologian is not remiss in drawing deductions from the revealed data when the seeds of that deduction are found in inchoate form in the revealed data.

⁶¹61. Shedd, “The Atonement a Satisfaction for the Ethical Nature of Both God and Man,” in Theological Essays and Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy (repr. Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1981), 273.

⁶²62. Munger, William Greenough Thayer Shedd, 78; citing Shedd, “College Education” in Bibliotheca sacra and Theological Review 7 (1850): 140.

⁶³63. For a description of the different options within Reformed theology on the order of the decrees, see infralapsarianism, sublapsarianism, and supralapsarianism in glossary 1.

⁶⁴64. For example, Munger (William Greenough Thayer Shedd, 94) states, “Concerning the divine foreordination of everything which comes to pass, Shedd only reproduced the most rigid Calvinist tradition.”

⁶⁵65. For example, Harris, who clearly opposes Reformed theology generally, commits this error. In his review of Shedd he attacks monergism generally (“Review of Dogmatic Theology,” 176), but from the wording one would think that this criticism terminates on Shedd in particular, as if the doctrine were somehow peculiar to him. Even more puzzling are the criticisms of Morris, a fellow Presbyterian who repudiates Shedd along the same lines. For example, he criticizes Shedd for being a monergist, for advancing a “rigid” doctrine of predestination, etc. (“Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 381). When reading Morris’s critique (378–83) it is very clear that the doctrines in which he believes Shedd has “gone too far” are merely the standard tenets of Morris’s own professed tradition.

⁶⁶66. See traducianism in glossary 1.

⁶⁷67. “To make the eternal damnation of a human soul depend upon vicarious sin contradicts the profound convictions of the human conscience” (p. 448).

⁶⁸68. Harris (“Review of Dogmatic Theology,” 171) regards this schema as a manifest evasion: we are guilty for Adam’s sin either by virtue of our specific, unbroken unity in Adam and our actual participation in the sin, or we are constituted guilty by a positive divine decree, but not both. While Harris rejects all theories that charge us as guilty for Adam’s sin, he regards Shedd’s version as “the most fanciful of all.” In fairness to Shedd, the simplest response to Harris might be—on Shedd’s terms—that undifferentiated existence in Adam and Eve would be a necessary condition for the participation in their guilt, with its concomitant transmission to their individuated posterity, though it might not be a sufficient one, if God so decreed it. That is, God could not impute guilt where there is no participation, though he might refrain from imputing guilt even where there is participation (e.g., when the entire race was still in Adam prior to their generation of offspring). Whether Shedd would opt for such an explanation is difficult to say.

⁶⁹69. See anhypostasis and enhypostasis in glossary 1.

⁷⁰70. Harris (“Review of Dogmatic Theology,” 169), in his sometimes astute though highly negative review, appears to have misunderstood Shedd at this point. He presents Shedd as teaching that the two natures in Christ combine to form a person. This is not Shedd’s position. Shedd believed that the second person of the Trinity assumed a human nature, not that two unpersonalized natures formed a theanthropic person.

⁷¹71. “The chapter on this subject [atonement], which is much the longest chapter in the two volumes, if it were taken out from its connection, and printed as a separate monograph, would be recognized as worthy of a place among our best discussions of the topic” (Morris, “Dr. Shedd’s System of Theology,” 379).

⁷²72. “A substituted satisfaction of justice without an act of trust in it would be useless to sinners. It is as naturally impossible that Christ’s death should save from punishment one who does not confide in it as that a loaf of bread should save from starvation a man who does not eat it. The assertion that because the atonement of Christ is sufficient for all men therefore no men are lost is as absurd as the assertion that because the grain produced in the year 1880 was sufficient to support the life of all men on the globe therefore no men died of starvation during that year. The mere fact that Jesus Christ made satisfaction for human sin, alone and of itself, will save no soul. Christ, conceivably, might have died precisely as he did and his death have been just as valuable for expiatory purposes as it is, but if his death had not been followed with the work of the Holy Spirit and the act of faith on the part of individual men, he would have died in vain. Unless his objective work is subjectively appropriated, it is useless so far as personal salvation is concerned. Christ’s suffering is sufficient to cancel the guilt of all men and in its own nature completely satisfies the broken law. But all men do not make it their own atonement by faith in it by pleading the merit of it in prayer and mentioning it as the reason and ground of their pardon. They do not regard and use it as their own possession and blessing. It is nothing for them but a historical fact. In this state of things, the atonement of Christ is powerless to save. It remains in the possession of Christ who made it and has not been transferred to the individual. In the scriptural phrase, it has not been ‘imputed.’ There may be a sum of money in the hands of a rich man that is sufficient in amount to pay the debts of a million debtors; but unless they individually take money from his hands into their own, they cannot pay their debts with it. There must be a personal act of each debtor in order that this sum of money on deposit may actually extinguish individual indebtedness. Should one of the debtors, when payment is demanded of him, merely say that there is an abundance of money on deposit, but take no steps himself to get it and pay it to his creditor, he would be told that an undrawn deposit is not a payment of a debt” (p. 726).

⁷³73. “The Christian gospel—the universal offer of pardon through the self-sacrifice of one of the divine persons—should silence every objection to the doctrine of endless punishment. For as the case now stands, there is no necessity, so far as the action of God is concerned, that a single human being should ever be the subject of future punishment. The necessity of hell is founded in the action of the creature, not of the Creator. Had there been no sin, there would have been no hell; and sin is the product of man’s free will. And after the entrance of sin and the provision of redemption from it, had there been universal repentance in this life, there would have been no hell for man in the next life. The only necessitating reason, therefore, for endless retribution that now exists is the sinner’s impenitence. Should every human individual, before he dies, sorrow for sin and humbly confess it, hades and gehenna would disappear” (p. 930).

⁷⁴74. See Shedd, Doctrine of Endless Punishment (New York: Scribner, 1886).

⁷⁵75. I believe that Peck is correct when he states (“Review of Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology,” 292), “It [Shedd’s chapter on hell] is the ablest argument for ‘endless punishment’ we have ever met with, and a crushing refutation, even upon rational grounds, of the whole tribe of universalists, restorationists, future probationists, etc.”

⁷⁶76. This story is recounted by Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: Judson, 1907), 1052–53.

¹1. The reader is reminded that the supplementary material that Shedd published in volume 3 is in this reprint edition collated into the main body of the theology by moving it to the end of each chapter to which it belongs.