W. G. T. Shedd (1820-1894)
William Greenhough Thayer Shedd was a 19th century American Presbyterian theologian. Originally from Acton, Massachusetts, Shedd taught for most of his career at the Union Theological Seminary in New York.
His work reveals a sharp mind familiar with a wind range of academic disciplines, though his theology was staunchly Reformed and evangelical.
He was an orthodox voice who argued for the doctrine of eternal punishment in his work The Doctrine of Endless Punishment (1885) and who argued against proposed revisions to the Westminster Confession of Faith to soften its Calvinist and predestinarian teachings, in Calvinism: Pure and Mixed.
Shedd's magnum opus is his brilliant work of systematic theology, Dogmatic Theology (1888), which was originally published in three volumes.
I first came across Shedd's systematic theology in the early 1990s and found explanations of a number of doctrines both clear and convincing as I read them in a theological library and was able to find a set to buy in a second hand bookshop. Much later, a new printing of the work was issued and I recommend it highly.
His work comes from a similar place on the theological spectrum from the Hodges at Princeton, but Shedd does not follow Hodge in all matters and I think is sometimes a clearer writer, though Charles Hodge often goes into subjects in greater detail than Shedd. More on Hodge later in this serious probably.
Any work you find by Shedd, whether his books of sermons, his commentary on Romans, or his theological works is well worth reading if you come across it. His writings on everlasting punishment in hell remain some of the key texts in the debate even now, whether the relevant chapter in Dogmatic Theology or his earlier work on the same subject.
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