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)