William G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed

The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989, 161 pgs.

Summary: Shedd’s response to the latitudinarian, liberal, and synergistic revisions suggested to the Westminster Confession among Presbyterians in the United States in the late 1800s.

A brilliant description, definition, and defense of some of the thorny points of Calvinism: preterition, the decrees of God, infant salvation, common and special grace, and the like.

From the section on Preterition and the Divine Decrees: “It is an objection of the sceptics, and sometimes of those who are not sceptics, that this perpetual assertion in the Scriptures that God is the chief end of creation, and this perpetual demand that the creature glorify him, is only a species of infinite egotism. . .But this objection overlooks the fact that God is an infinitely greater and higher being than any or all of his creatures; and that from the very nature of the case the less must be subordinated to the greater. Is it egotism, when man employs in his service his ox or his ass? Is it selfishness, when the rose or the lily takes up into its own fabric and tissue the inanimate qualities of matter, and converts the dull and colorless elements of the clod into hues and odors, into beauty and bloom” (82-83).

From “Inerrancy of the Scriptures”:  [The inspiration] extended not on one subject only, but to all the subjects of which the sacred writers treat, and on which they profess to teach the truth. The history, chronology, topography, and physics, as well as the theology and ethics, that were composed under ‘immediate inspiration’ of God, must from the nature of the case have been free from error” (132).

Benefits: An incredibly helpful book in defending the importance of confessions and doctrinal statements and conformity to them.  His arguments on the inerrancy of Scripture are especially worthwhile. It is a good source for developing an understanding of the Arminian and Calvinistic understanding of infant salvation. Interesting discussion and rejection of universalism and postmortem salvation and sanctification.

Detriments: This is not a book to introduce someone to the Westminster Confession. It is a defense of Augustinianism as attacked by liberals and theological latitudinarianism. Shedd’s allowance for regeneration among unevangelized responsible adults is not well defended and seems untenable.