Some notes as I work through J. L. Dagg’s Manual of Theology (1857) one chapter at a time.  

Book 2: Conclusion

1. There is a war going on inside those who do not love God “between their conscience” which knows God exists and their obligation to love Him “and the depraved affections.”

2. “The mind, in its proper and healthy action, joyfully receives the doctrine [concerning God], and finds in God the object of its highest love.”

3. When the godly study God’s character, their heart will be drawn towards God with more intense affection as they see the beauty and glory of that character.

4. “Love to the true God is love to the God of holiness and justice, the God in whom every moral perfection is united; and if our love is of this kind, we shall delight to survey the glories of the divine character, and, apart from all views of the benefits received from him, shall be enamoured of his essential loveliness.”

5. True love of God is accompanied by humility. Contemplating God should lead to turning away from all admiration of human greatness. “But the strongest incentive to humility is found in contrasting our depravity with God’s holiness.”

6. “The tendency of this doctrine to exert a sanctifying influence, at the very origin of all human feeling and action, demonstrates that it comes from God.”

(Photo: Ben White)

Some notes as I work through J. L. Dagg’s Manual of Theology (1857) one chapter at a time.  

Book 2, Chapter 2: Attributes of God (Part 11 – Holiness)

1. Wisdom = God is infinitely wise.

2. What is the difference between wisdom and knowledge? “Wisdom always has respect to action.” Knowledge is the store which when it is used, “wisdom is exhibited.”

3. “Our knowledge and moral principles have much influence in directing our conduct, and that man is considered wise, whose knowledge and moral principles direct his conduct well. Wisdom is therefore regarded as consisting in the selection of the best end of action, and the adoption of the best means for the accomplishment of this end.”

4. When we say that God is wise, it is because He both “selects the best possible end of actions” and “adopts the best possible means for the accomplishment of the end which he has in view.”

5. God’s wisdom is unfathomably deep, so that even the wisest of men cannot comprehend it fully.

6. One question that baffles the wisdom of the wise is why God has permitted the entrance of sin into the world. God hates sin and has infinite power to exclude it from His dominions – why then did He permit its entrance?

Dagg in response makes a number of useful points:

“Sin is in the world; and God is infinitely good and wise… Though we may be unable to reconcile these propositions, they are both worthy to be received with unwavering faith.  No man, in his right mind, can doubt either of them.”

“The existence of sin is not to be ascribed to weakness in God.”  He could have filled the world with creatures incapable of sinning, or confirmed in holiness so they could not fall.  He could even, “on the very first appearance of sin in any one of his creatures… at once annihilated the transgressor, and have prevented the evil from spreading, to the ruin of his subjects.”

“The existence of sin is not inconsistent with the justice of God… Justice does not prevent the entrance of sin, but finds in it an occasion for its highest exercise.  This attribute is displayed awfully and gloriously in the punishment of offenders.”

“The existence of sins is not inconsistent with the goodness of God… Do not conclude that God’s goodness must necessarily exclude moral evil from the world.”  We can suppose “that he will overrule the evil so as ultimately to produce a larger amount of happiness in the universe, than would have existed had moral evil never entered.”

“Although to do evil that good may come is reprobated in God’s word, yet to permit evil, which he overrules for good, accords with his method of procedure… The crucifixion of Christ, a deed perpetrated by wicked hands, was permitted by God.  He was even delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.  This event has been overruled to good inconceivably great.”

7. “It should fill us with joy, that infinite wisdom guides the affairs of the world. Many of its events are shrouded in darkness and mystery, and inextricable confusion sometimes seems to reign. Often wickedness prevails, and God seems to have forgotten the creatures that he has made. Our own path through life is dark and devious, and beset with difficulties and dangers. How full of order out of confusion, and light out of darkness, and, to those who love God, causes all things, whatever be their present aspect and apparent tendency, to work together for good.”

(Photo: Ben White)

Some notes as I work through J. L. Dagg’s Manual of Theology (1857) one chapter at a time.  

Book 2, Chapter 2: Attributes of God (Part 10 – Holiness)

1. Holiness = God is immaculately holy.

2. Holiness is a name that includes all the moral attributes of God such as goodness, truth and justice.

3. Holiness implies perfection.

4. When you compare human beings to God, “even the purest of men have their spots.”

5. Where does reflection on God’s holiness lead.  It leads to an increase in our admiration and love for God, “adds fervour to our devotion”, and should lead to us both worshipping God and imitating Him “in our character and lives.”

(Photo: Ben White)

Some notes as I work through J. L. Dagg’s Manual of Theology (1857) one chapter at a time.  

Book 2, Chapter 2: Attributes of God (Part 9 – Justice)

1. Justice = God is perfectly just.

2. What is justice? It “consists in giving to every one his due.”

3. Justice can be distinguished into ‘commutative’ and ‘distributive’. “Commutative Justice is fair dealing in the exchange of commodities, and belongs to commerce” whereas “Distributive Justice rewards or punishes men according to their actions, and appertains to government.”

4. When we are speaking of God’s justice, we are referring to distributive justice.

5. By nature “men claim enjoyments as a natural right, irrespective of their moral character and conduct. They reject the moral government of God, and seek happiness in their own way. This is rebellion, and in this justice of God opposes them.”

6. Though it is apparent now that there is a God of justice who judges the earth, with “conscience now, in God’s stead, often pronounces sentence, though its voice is unheeded” but “the grand exhibition is reserved for the judgment of the great day.”

7. A good grasp of God’s justice should “inspire the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom” and should encourage piety knowing “that a just God sits on the throne of the universe.”

(Photo: Ben White)

Some notes as I work through J. L. Dagg’s Manual of Theology (1857) one chapter at a time.  

Book 2, Chapter 2: Attributes of God (Part 8 – Truth)

1. Truth = God is a being of inviolable truth.

2. Two aspect of God’s truthfulness is His veracity and faithfulness. “Veracity in his declaration of things as they are, and faithfulness in the exact fulfilment of his promises and threatenings.”

3. Humans make errors. “In their testimony from mistakes of facts” and “fall through inability to fulfil promises which they have made with honest intentions.”

4. God does not make mistakes because He is omniscient. God does not fail to fulfil His intentions because He is omnipotent and unchangeable.

5. The truth of God denotes “the agreement of all the revelations or manifestations which he has made of himself, with his mind and character.”

6. “We can have no knowledge of God, except by the manifestations he has made of himself. When we receive these, however made, as expressing to us the mind and character of God, we exercise faith in God. But when we close our understandings and hearts against these manifestations, or, through disrelish of them, misinterpret them in any manner, we are guilty of the great sin of unbelief, which rejects the testimony of God, and makes him a liar.”

(Photo: Ben White)

Some notes as I work through J. L. Dagg’s Manual of Theology (1857) one chapter at a time.  

Book 2, Chapter 2: Attributes of God (Part 7 – Goodness)

1. Goodness = God is infinitely benevolent.

2. When Scripture speaks of God’s goodness towards His creatures, it often uses the term ‘love’.

3. “Love is distinguished as benevolence, beneficence, or complacence. Benevolence is love in intention or disposition; beneficence is love in action, or conferring its benefits; and complacence is the approbation of good actions or dispositions.”

4. Goodness when it is exercised toward the unworthy is grace and toward the suffering is mercy or pity.

5. The pleasure which God’s creatures enjoy is a demonstration of His goodness. Humans are able to experience pleasure greater than that of animals because they can get it from “the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge”, “in the proper exercise of our moral powers” and because of our capability of “loving and enjoying God”.

6. “Pain is often experienced, but it never appears to result from an arrangement specially made for receiving it.” No organ of our body was specially designed to give us pain.

7. How do we reconcile the goodness of God with the presence of animals which have organs designed to inflict pain (fangs of serpents, stings of insects, talons and tusks and beaks of carnivorous animals) and the innumerable miseries which human society is filled? This question should not be overlooked.

8. How should we respond to the presence of pain and suffering which threaten God’s goodness?
a) Acknowledge the presence of pain and suffering.
b) Acknowledge that happiness and misery are “entwined with each other, and form parts of the same system.”
c) Acknowledge that our experience is of blessings “poured upon us incessantly; and when suffering comes, we are often conscious that is arises from our abuse of God’s goodness, and is, therefore no argument against it.”
d) Acknowledge that present suffering dos not compare to future good.
e) Acknowledge that the sufferings we experience “become an occasion for the trial of our faith.”
We should “believe in the wisdom and goodness of our heavenly Father, and believe that his ways are full of goodness, even when they are inscrutable.”

9. “It is perfectly conceivable that pain itself may, in some cases, enhance our pleasure, as relief from suffering renders subsequent enjoyment more exquisite; and, in other ways, which we are unable to comprehend, pain may produce a beneficial result.”

10. Sin is the clearly the cause of much of the suffering present in the world. Dagg speculates at this point that the pain which animals experience isn’t only caused by man’s sin. “Unless the order of things was greatly changed at the fall of man, hawks had their claws and beaks from the day they were created, and used them before man sinned, in taking and devouring other birds for food; and therefore, pain and death, in brute animals, did not enter the world by the sin of man.” I’m yet to be convinced by this view.

11. Is happiness the chief good? “When pleasure and duty conflict with each other, we are required to choose the latter… if a whole life of duty and a whole life of enjoyment were set before us, that we might choose between them, we should be required to prefer holiness to happiness.”

12. The miseries of sin are means “used by the great Father of all, in the discipline of his great family, to deter from the greatest of all evils.” Judgments and threatenings are means of sanctification and are a manifestation of God’s goodness.

13. “The goodness of God is the attribute of his nature, which, above all others, draws forth the affection of our hearts. We are filled with awe at his eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence; but we can imagine all these attributes connected with moral qualities which would render them repulsive. But the goodness of God, while it is awful and grand, is at the same time powerfully attractive.”

(Photo: Ben White)

Some notes as I work through J. L. Dagg’s Manual of Theology (1857) one chapter at a time.  

Book 2, Chapter 2: Attributes of God (Part 6 – Omnipotence)

1. Omnipotence = God is able to do whatever He pleases.

2. Our power is limited. “Many things which we attempt we fail to accomplish.”

3. “It derogates nothing from the omnipotence of God, that He does not accomplish what He has no desire or will to accomplish.”

For example:
– It is impossible for God to lie.
– It is impossible for God to deny Himself.

4. “God cannot do things which imply contradictions in themselves.”

For example:
– To make a thing to be, and not to be, at the same time.
– To make a circle to be at the same time a square.

5. To contemplate the omnipotence of God should fill us with awe and it should cause us to fear. “Let us look back to the power which brought creation into being, and forward to that display of power which we are to witness on the last day.”

(Photo: Ben White)