The greatest systematizer, after Charles Hodge, of American Calvinistic theology between the Civil War and World War I. His father, a Congregational minister, encouraged his education at the University of Vermont and Andover Theological Seminary. At Vermont, Shedd came under the teaching of James Marsh, who encouraged him to read Plato, Kant, and Coleridge, a trio of authors that retained an influence on his theology for the rest of his life. Shedd served briefly as a Congregational minister in Vermont; he then taught English at the University of Vermont, sacred rhetoric at Auburn Seminary, and church history at Andover, before again taking up ministerial service as an associate at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York. In 1863 he became a professor of Bible and theology at New York's Union Seminary, where he remained for over thirty years.
The best-known of Shedd's many works was the Dogmatic Theology, published in three volumes 1888 to 1894. Like Hodge's Systematic Theology (1872-73), Shedd's Dogmatics defended the "high Calvinism" of the Westminster Confession against Arminianism, Roman Catholicism, and modern rationalism. Shedd was not as comprehensive as Hodge in treating the various divisions of theology, but he did incorporate aspects of modern thought in his work more than Hodge or almost any other conservative of his generation, especially ideas of historical development. He was again unusual in his reliance upon the history of Christianity as an antidote to substandard teachings, whether ancient or modern. For him, Athanasius on the Trinity, Augustine on the nature of sin, Anselm on the existence of God, and the Reformers on salvation were more than capable of spelling out the contours of orthodoxy. He felt that the Augustino-Calvinistic tradition carried ample biblical, theological, and philosophical resources to stand the test of time.
Shedd's interests extended well beyond theology to take in literature, church history, homiletics, and biblical commentary. He published works in each of these areas. He testified to his interest in the idea of organic historical development by publishing Lectures on the Philosophy of History in 1856, and by editing the complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in seven volumes in 1853.
M. A. NOLL