Reading different theological perspectives. Historical readings express their authors' perspectives, including Arminian and Reformed or Calvinist traditions. Inclusion does not make an author's position settled CTS doctrine. Read with Scripture and the assigned material. A supported answer from another evangelical perspective should be assessed on its reasoning, not penalized simply for differing from the author. If an automated score rejects such an answer, ask CTS for review.

Master’s Assigned Readings (all five)

M.Div. and Th.M. students read all five assigned selections and take their separate exam after activation. The test page states the current rule; valid earlier completions remain valid.

Optional Honors (choose three)

Honors is optional on every track. Certificate and Associate students may read three honors selections without a required-reading exam. Honors does not replace either master’s exam.

The Master's textbook test: read Manual of Theology (selections) — John L. Dagg, then take its test: twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once. Correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. It is separate from the reading test on the five digests below: passing one does not pass the other. On the M.Div. and Th.M. tracks both tests are being introduced; each test's page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take them, and a pass is kept in your record.

The Master's reading test: separate from the honors invitation below. Honors asks you to read any three of these digests; the Master's test covers all five. It has twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, four from each reading, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once; correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. You may try again after a short wait. The test is being introduced: its page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take it, and a pass is kept in your record.

Honors option: Complete any three of the five readings below. These readings supplement the course and do not replace its units or examinations.

On this site: Each of the five readings is a Chapala Theological Seminary digest, written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French here on the site — every one opens directly from this page, with nothing to download. Each card names the work its digest is made from.

Selected: 0 of 3

Reading 1 · The Existence of God

There Is a God

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book II, ch. 1, “Existence of God”

Dagg, the first Southern Baptist systematic theologian, gathers four witnesses that God exists: our moral nature, which cries out for a perfect moral governor; the world as effect of a Great First Cause, full of marks of design; the common consent of humanity; and Scripture, which dispels all doubt. The only real cure for atheism, he says, is “a new heart.”

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

There Is a God: Dagg’s Four Witnesses

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the opening chapter of Dagg’s doctrine of God, where conscience, creation, the common voice of humanity and the Bible all testify that God exists

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book II, chapter 1, “Existence of God.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Manual of Theology, Book II, ch. 1
Primary source
1857
John L. Dagg

A word before you read. John Leadley Dagg (1794–1884) wrote the first full system of doctrine by a Southern Baptist. This chapter does not try to argue an unbeliever into faith from nothing. Dagg writes for believers, to “confirm” a faith they already hold, by gathering four kinds of evidence into one place. Read it as a pastor’s summary of the reasons Christians have long given, not as the last word of philosophy. Dagg is one historic Baptist voice; CTS presents his views as his own, not as the agreed position of every Baptist.

1.A Pastor-Theologian of the Founding Generation

Dagg was born in Middleburg, Virginia, in 1794. He was converted as a young man, began preaching in Virginia, and in 1825 became pastor of the Fifth Baptist Church in Philadelphia, the city where American Baptists had formed their first association in 1707. Weak eyesight and other physical limits pressed on him all his life, and his voice eventually failed for regular preaching. He turned to teaching, first in a school for young women in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and then, from 1844, as president of Mercer University in Penfield, Georgia, where he also taught theology. Mercer bore the name of Jesse Mercer, the great Georgia Baptist leader. One year after Dagg arrived, in 1845, Baptists of the southern states met in Augusta, Georgia, and formed the Southern Baptist Convention. Dagg belonged to that founding generation. His Manual of Theology (1857) and its companion, A Treatise on Church Order (1858), gave its churches their first comprehensive textbook of doctrine. Its theology stands in the line of the Philadelphia Confession of 1742, the Baptist form of the great Puritan confessions, and it is warmly Calvinistic, yet plain and devotional in tone. Dagg opens the whole work by insisting that religious truth must be studied “with a view to the improvement of the heart.” That aim shapes this chapter too.

2.Not a New Truth

Dagg begins with a surprising admission. The existence of God, he says, “is not now to be demonstrated as a new truth.” Every page before this one has assumed it. He gathers the proofs here only “for the sake of systematic arrangement,” and because a clearer statement of them strengthens faith. This tells us something about Baptist theology in his day. It was not a speculative system built by a philosopher in a study; it was a pastor’s ordering of what the church already believed from Scripture. Dagg’s chapter heading is simply “There is a God,” followed by texts from Genesis, the Psalms, Mark, 1 Corinthians and Hebrews. The Bible is the frame; the arguments that follow serve it. Dagg then lists four witnesses: our moral nature, the existence and design of the world, the common consent of humanity, and divine revelation. Each one adds its voice, and together they make a strong case.

3.The Witness of Our Moral Nature

Dagg starts not with the stars but with the conscience. We are made for “moral government.” Conscience governs us from within, and the moral judgments of others press on us from without. We are also social beings, like birds in flocks or bees in swarms, and human society cannot survive without moral restraint. Remove it, Dagg warns, and the earth would become a “Hell,” ruled by brute force and cunning. For this reason even the worst civil government has been preferred to “wild anarchy.” Yet no human government satisfies us. Conscience stings, public opinion shames, and the ruler “brandishes his sword,” but people remain wicked, often without punishment. Our nature cries out for a perfect governor: one who knows every crime, has power to judge it rightly, and is near enough that “in him we live, move, and have our being.” That idea, Dagg says, is exactly what the words “There is a God” express. Without it our moral sense makes no sense. So he concludes that religion is “the perfection of morality,” and its first doctrine is that God exists.

4.The First Cause and the Marks of Design

Next Dagg turns from the conscience to the mind. Reason traces the chain of cause and effect link by link and asks what the whole chain hangs on. It finds no rest until it admits an eternal, self-existent being, the “Great First Cause.” Then Dagg gives most space to the argument from design, which had been made famous in English by William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802). “Contrivance implies a contriver,” he writes. The examples pour out: sunlight that warms and lights the world; the eye, built according to the laws of optics like a telescope; rain, seed, blade and ripening grain; the hen caring for her chicks; bones, muscles, heart, blood and lungs. Here Dagg the scholar becomes Dagg the worshipper. To the devout heart, he says, the universe becomes “a grand temple,” and every place becomes an altar for the sacrifice of praise. Many today would discuss design with the tools of modern science, and some Christian thinkers doubt how much such arguments can prove. But Dagg’s point is practical: the evidence meets us “daily, and hourly,” in ordinary things.

5.The Common Consent of Humanity

The third witness is what older writers, following Cicero, called the consent of the nations. Dagg notes that peoples have lived without books, science or arts, but almost never without the idea of an invisible power and some form of worship. This marks human beings off from every other creature. Then he offers a neat argument. However this universal belief arose, it points to God. If it comes from an ancient revelation handed down by tradition, that revelation came from God. If it rises naturally in the human mind, then what nature universally teaches may be received as true. Missionaries who carried the gospel to West Africa and Latin America in the generation after Dagg often found exactly this: peoples who already knew there was a high God, even when they did not know His name or His Son. Paul made the same appeal at Athens in Acts 17.

6.Revelation Dispels All Doubt

The final witness is the decisive one. The Bible, Dagg observes, never stops to prove God; it begins, “In the beginning, God.” Hebrews 11:6 makes belief in God the first step in coming to Him, and Psalm 14:1 calls denial of God folly. Scripture is a light from “the Father of lights,” and in His light we see light. Dagg insists on “perfect harmony” between natural and revealed religion. Psalm 19 and Romans 1:20 show that creation speaks of God, and Job 12:7 even tells us to ask the beasts. Studying God’s works takes nothing from the authority of His word, because the same God speaks in both. Here Dagg stands with the historic Baptist confessions. The Second London Confession (1689) and the Philadelphia Confession (1742) open by saying that the light of nature leaves people without excuse, yet only Scripture is “the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule” of saving knowledge. The New Hampshire Confession (1833) says the Bible has “God for its author” and truth “without any mixture of error” for its matter. The authority of Scripture is the ground on which every other Baptist distinctive stands.

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

Dagg ends with two pastoral notes that matter for ministry today. First, he calls the denial of God “a lamentable proof of human depravity.” People say, “Depart from us.” The problem is not only in the head but in the will, and so, he says, the only real cure for such atheism is “a new heart.” Here we meet a deep Baptist conviction. Faith cannot be inherited, imposed by the state or produced by argument alone. It is born when the Spirit gives new life. That is why Baptists from Roger Williams and Isaac Backus to John Leland pleaded for liberty of conscience, and why Baptist churches receive members on a personal confession of faith. Second, Dagg gently helps believers who are troubled by doubt. Their remedy is diligent study of God’s word and works, attention to His hand in providence, and prayer. “If we habitually walk with God,” he says, “we shall not doubt his existence.” Finally, he answers the problem that God is invisible. We never see another person’s mind, yet we know it through words and actions, and we love or despise it. Why, then, can we not know an unseen God through His works? Baptist heirs of this teaching now gather in the Nigerian Baptist Convention, in the Brazilian Baptist Convention, in Cuba and in Mexico, many of them in cultures where belief in God is assumed but secular doubt is growing among the young. Dagg’s blend of reasoning and devotion still serves them. Other Christians weigh these arguments differently. Some Reformed thinkers prefer to begin with Scripture alone, while Catholic theology, following Thomas Aquinas, gives natural reason a larger place. Dagg holds both together, with revelation as the final word.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Dagg says the cure for practical atheism is “a new heart.” When you talk with someone who doubts God, how do you balance reasons with prayer for their new birth? Which of the four witnesses speaks most strongly to the people you serve? And in your own times of doubt, how faithfully do you practise Dagg’s remedy of walking with God through His word, His works and prayer?

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Reading 2 · Creation

Out of Nothing

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book III, ch. 2, “Works of God – Creation”

Dagg teaches that God created all things out of nothing, a truth received by faith rather than proved by philosophy. Writing two years before Darwin, he describes the day-age and gap views of Genesis, insists there is “no just ground to fear science,” and shows with the wise father and the elephant that science may correct our inferences but never the Bible.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Out of Nothing: Dagg on Creation, Scripture and Science

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Dagg’s chapter on creation, where he teaches that God made all things from nothing and calmly invites the young science of geology to the table

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book III, chapter 2, “Works of God – Creation.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Manual of Theology, Book III, ch. 2
Primary source
1857
John L. Dagg

A word before you read. Dagg wrote this chapter two years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859). The scientific debate he knew was about geology and the age of the earth, not about evolution. Some of his scientific remarks are dated, and Baptists today hold several views on how to read Genesis 1. CTS presents Dagg’s view as his own. What remains valuable is his confidence that God’s word and God’s world cannot finally disagree.

1.Nothing but God

Dagg’s thesis is short and strong: “God created all things out of nothing.” He supports it with a long list of texts, from Genesis 1 and Nehemiah 9:6 to Colossians 1:16, Hebrews 11:3 and Revelation 4:11. Then he states the doctrine in one sentence: “Originally, nothing existed but God.” There was no eternal matter waiting to be shaped, and no spiritual substance from which angels and human souls were cut. God gave all things “their entire being.” This is the classic Christian teaching, often called by its Latin name, creatio ex nihilo. It separates the biblical faith from ancient views in which a god merely arranged matter that already existed. It also governs the rest of Dagg’s theology. If everything owes its whole existence to God, then everything also belongs to Him. The Philadelphia Confession, which Baptists in America had adopted in 1742, teaches the same in its chapter on creation: God was pleased “to create or make the world, and all things therein,” for the manifestation of His glory.

2.A Truth of Faith Rather Than Reason

What is surprising is how Dagg argues. Some had claimed that matter cannot be eternal because self-existence is “too noble” for a lower nature. Dagg rejects this. Why could a small thing not exist without a cause as easily as a great one? In such reasoning “we are liable to deceive ourselves,” he warns, and perhaps most when the reasoning seems most profound. As far as philosophy can tell, an atom might last forever and might always have existed. So Dagg turns, as he always does, to Scripture. Once we know that a God exists who works miracles, it becomes likely that matter is His product. But “for decisive proof” we receive creation from nothing “as a truth of faith, rather than of reason.” Hebrews 11:3 is his key text: by faith we understand that the visible world was not made from things that appear. Dagg explains it with a homely picture. When we see a statue, we see its marble; when we see a house, we see its materials. The world is different. Its materials were themselves brought into being when the world was made. Here is a quiet Baptist habit of mind: Scripture, not speculation, settles the question.

3.Without Effort, and a Day for Man

Creation, Dagg says, was done “without effort.” God spoke, and it was done: “Let there be light,” and there was light. After six days God rested on the seventh, not because He was tired, but so that the seventh day might be set apart as a day of rest for human beings. Dagg cites the words of Jesus in Mark 2:27, that the Sabbath was made for man. Most Baptists of Dagg’s day kept the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, as the Christian Sabbath. The New Hampshire Confession of 1833 gives a whole article to it. For a pastor today, the point is still practical. Rest is a gift built into creation itself, not a reward for the strong. In busy cities from Guadalajara to Lagos, believers who work long hours need to hear that the God who never grows weary made a day for their good.

4.Geology and the Days of Genesis

Dagg then faces the hardest question of his age. Geologists, studying the earth’s crust, believed that plants and animals had lived long before the date of creation that readers drew from Genesis. Dagg describes two ways Christians had tried to reconcile the two. Some took each day of creation as a long period of time; since God’s seventh day of rest still continues, they reasoned, the other days might also be long. Today this is called the day-age view. Others placed a long gap between “the beginning” of Genesis 1:1 and the formless earth of verse 2, much as John 1 moves from “In the beginning was the Word” to “the Word was made flesh.” This is the gap view. Dagg does not choose between them. Instead, he rebukes the fear of science. Many ministers, he admits, regarded geology “with suspicion.” But there is “no just ground to fear science,” he says, as long as it works legitimately and draws its conclusions “with becoming modesty.” The reason is simple: the Author of the Bible is the Maker of the world, and truth is always consistent.

5.Waiting for the Cloud to Pass

Dagg compares apparent conflicts between science and Scripture with apparent contradictions inside the Bible. Careful study has often shown two passages to agree after all, and such “undesigned coincidences” actually strengthen our confidence that the records are true. When difficulties remain, we wait patiently. The unbeliever triumphs and “men of weak faith stagger,” but doubting the Bible because of one difficulty is like doubting the sun because a cloud passes in front of it. Geology, he notes, “is yet a recent science.” He even finds agreement between it and Moses, since geologists placed human remains only in the latest deposits. Here Dagg shows the limits of his time. He was sure that science would never place the origin of humanity far earlier than the biblical history suggested. Christians now debate those questions with far more data than he had. But his spirit is a good model: listen to the arguments, weigh them well, and trust that “the ark of God” will be carried safely.

6.The Wise Father and the Elephant

The most memorable part of the chapter is an illustration. As adults, we remember the lessons a wise father taught us in childhood. He did not teach us the sciences, but he taught us nothing contrary to them, and now we can see that he understood them all along. So it is with the Bible. The false sacred books of the nations contradict even “the very first lessons in geography.” Scripture never says the earth rests on an elephant standing on a tortoise; instead Job 26:7 says God “hangs the earth upon nothing.” Dagg also recalls the old claim that Joshua’s command to the sun disproved the Copernican system. That was a “childish inference,” he says, since astronomers who know the earth turns still speak of sunrise and sunset. Science may correct “erroneous inferences” that people draw from Scripture, and when it does, “we should be content to learn.” This distinction between the Bible and our interpretations of it is a precious tool for any preacher.

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

Dagg closes with worship and duty. When we remember that God made us, “and not we ourselves,” we must acknowledge His right to our service, praise and glory. He is the former of our bodies and the Father of our spirits. Redemption gives Him an even stronger claim, Dagg admits, but creation alone is enough to bind us. This is where a Baptist pastor begins. Every person in the congregation, rich or poor, educated or not, belongs first to the Creator. Baptist heirs of Dagg hold different views on the age of the earth. Many in the United States, Latin America and Africa hold a young-earth reading of Genesis; others hold day-age, gap or literary views of the six days. The Baptist Faith and Message (2000) affirms that God created the world but does not settle its age. Roman Catholic, Orthodox and many Protestant teachers likewise hold creation from nothing while differing on the science. The Baptist commitment to liberty of conscience, under the authority of Scripture, allows believers to study these questions humbly without breaking fellowship over them. Dagg’s calm is a better guide than either fear of science or worship of it.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Dagg says there is “no just ground to fear science” when it works with modesty. How would you help a student who feels that faith and science are at war? Where might your church need to distinguish between what the Bible says and what people have inferred from it? And how does the truth that God made you, “and not we ourselves,” change the way you use your body, your time and your day of rest?

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Reading 3 · The States of Christ

From Glory to Glory

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book V, ch. 2, “States of Christ”

Dagg follows the eternal Son through three states: original glory with the Father, humiliation to the cross and the grave, and exaltation to supreme dominion. He distinguishes “Christ” as a title of office from “Son of God” as a title of nature, insists the divine nature never changed, and rejects a descent into hell, a debated view this digest sets beside others.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

From Glory to Glory: Dagg on the States of Christ

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Dagg’s chapter on Christ’s original glory, His humiliation to the cross and the grave, and His exaltation to supreme dominion

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book V, chapter 2, “States of Christ.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Manual of Theology, Book V, ch. 2
Primary source
1857
John L. Dagg

A word before you read. Older theologians spoke of the “states” of Christ: the different conditions through which the one eternal Son passed for our salvation. Dagg names three: original glory, humiliation and exaltation. The shape comes straight from Philippians 2:5–11 and 2 Corinthians 8:9. Watch two things as you read: Dagg’s care to say that Christ’s divine nature never changed, and his firm, but debated, view on Christ’s “descent into hell.”

1.One Christ, Three States

Dagg’s chapter is built on a simple outline that every preacher can use. First, before the incarnation, the Son lived in “intimate communion of glory and blessedness with the Father.” Second, He took human nature and in it lived “a life of toil and sorrow,” and died “an ignominious and painful death.” Third, in that same human nature He was raised, ascended to heaven and was invested “with supreme dominion over all creatures.” Each state opens with a bold thesis in capital letters, followed by a list of texts, much as the old Baptist confessions do. This was the faith of the Philadelphia Confession (1742), whose chapter on “Christ the Mediator” follows the same path from the eternal Son to the throne. Dagg’s favourite summary text is 2 Corinthians 8:9: though He was rich, for our sakes He became poor, that through His poverty we might be rich.

2.Before the World Was

Dagg first shows that Christ existed before His birth. Many texts say so even without declaring His deity: He “came down from heaven” (John 3:13), and “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Taken alone, such texts might suggest a glorious created spirit. But the wider witness of Scripture, Dagg says, shows that this pre-existent one “was God, and not a creature.” Scripture gives Him several names before His coming. John calls Him “the Word,” probably because through Him the mind of God is made known. He is called the Son of God, the Angel of the Lord, the Angel of the Covenant and the Captain of the Lord’s host. Many have also seen Him in “Wisdom” in Proverbs 8. Dagg then gathers the texts on His eternal glory: the glory He had with the Father “before the world was” (John 17:5), His being “in the form of God” (Philippians 2:6), and His place “in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). From these we learn the “full communion” of the Son with the Father in all the blessedness of God.

3.“Christ” and “Son of God”

Dagg makes a careful distinction that helps in reading the New Testament. “Christ,” or Messiah, is “a title of office.” When Paul and Apollos proved to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 9:22; 18:28), they were showing that He was the promised Messiah. But “Son of God” says more: it names “the exalted nature which qualified for it.” Dagg points to Acts 8:37, where the Ethiopian eunuch confesses, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God,” before Philip baptizes him. Baptists have always loved this scene as a picture of believer’s baptism: first a confession of faith, then immersion. Modern Bibles note that verse 37 is missing from the oldest manuscripts, but the pattern of faith before baptism runs through Acts. On the words “begotten” and “only-begotten,” Dagg is very cautious. They speak of endearment, dignity and heirship, but we must discard “all gross conceptions” that suggest the Son received His existence. Many theologians, following the Nicene Creed, speak more confidently of the Son’s “eternal generation” from the Father. Dagg does not deny it, but he prefers to confess mystery.

4.God Manifest in the Flesh

The second state is humiliation. The four Gospels tell its history. But Dagg warns at once that we must not imagine the divine nature changed. “God cannot cease to be God.” The change was “in the manifestation, and not in the nature.” This guards against teachings that say the Son gave up His divine attributes when He became man. Dagg then adds a beautiful reflection on the angels. So humble was the babe of Bethlehem that the angels needed a command from the throne to worship Him (Hebrews 1:6). Was this a concealment rather than a revelation? Partly, Dagg admits. But it is like God hiding Moses in the cleft of the rock, covering His unbearable brightness so that His servant might see His glory and live. In the same way the angels, looking at God veiled in human nature, see what they could not otherwise see. These are the things “into which the angels desire to look” (1 Peter 1:12). Through the redeemed church, Ephesians 3:10 says, the manifold wisdom of God is made known to heavenly powers.

5.The Lowest Point: The Cross and the Grave

The lowest point of Christ’s humiliation was His death by crucifixion and His being held for a time “under the power of death, as a prisoner in the grave.” Here Dagg takes a definite position. Some think Christ descended into hell, as one line of the Apostles’ Creed is often read. Dagg believes this comes from misreading Psalm 16:10, where “hell” means “the unseen world,” the state of the departed. And 1 Peter 3:19, on preaching “to the spirits in prison,” means that Christ, by His Spirit, preached through Noah to people who rejected him and are now in prison. This was Augustine’s reading, and many Reformed and Baptist teachers follow it. Other Christians differ. Roman Catholics teach that Christ went to the realm of the dead to free the righteous who had died before Him. Lutherans speak of His descent as a proclamation of victory. Calvin read the phrase as Christ’s suffering of God’s judgment on the cross, and the Westminster Larger Catechism explains it as His remaining under the power of death. Baptist confessions usually do not use the creed’s phrase at all. CTS students should know these options and handle the passage humbly.

6.Raised and Exalted

The third state is exaltation: resurrection, ascension and supreme dominion. Again Dagg insists that the divine nature did not change. What changed was the manifestation of His glory, and the real condition of His human nature. That nature, once sorrowful, “is now perfectly happy.” Jesus has received the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2), and His saints will one day “enter into the joy of their Lord.” On His glorified humanity now rests “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Through Him the brightest revelations of God reach every creature, and through Him every command of supreme authority comes. He is seated far above every rule and authority and every name that is named (Ephesians 1:20–21). Dagg ends with a pastoral turn. This glory is “not a subject of idle speculation.” Jesus said, “The glory which you have given me, I have given them” (John 17:22). So while we suffer with Christ and for Christ in this world, we may rejoice in the hope of being glorified with Him.

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

For Baptists, the states of Christ are preached every time a believer is baptized. Immersion pictures exactly the path Dagg traces: death, burial and rising again (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12). The New Hampshire Confession (1833) calls baptism “a solemn and beautiful emblem” of faith in the crucified, buried and risen Saviour. That is why Baptists hold to immersion and to the baptism of believers only: the sign is meant to show a faith the candidate already holds. The exaltation of Christ also stands behind soul liberty. If Christ alone has “supreme dominion over all creatures,” then no king, state or church council is lord of the conscience. Finally, Dagg’s link between suffering now and glory later speaks powerfully to Baptist believers who have paid a price for their faith, from Cuban pastors under pressure to churches facing violence in northern Nigeria. And 2 Corinthians 8:9 corrects every “prosperity” message: Christ became poor so that we might be rich in Him, not so that the church might measure faith by money.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Dagg says the glory of Christ is “not a subject of idle speculation.” How does the hope of sharing His glory help you in suffering? When you next explain baptism to a new believer, how could you use the three states of Christ to show what immersion means? And how would you teach the “descent into hell” passages fairly to a church that includes people from Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed backgrounds?

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Reading 4 · The Covenant of Grace

The Purpose of the One God

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book VII, ch. 2, “Covenant of Grace”

Dagg presents salvation as the work of Father, Son and Spirit according to an eternal covenant: “the purpose of the one God.” He explains their offices, a voluntary subordination of office without inferiority of nature, and the order of blessing and of prayer. He then distinguishes this covenant from the new covenant of Hebrews 8, a point at the root of Baptist church membership.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

The Purpose of the One God: Dagg on the Covenant of Grace

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Dagg’s chapter on the eternal agreement of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to save, the order in which grace reaches us and our prayers rise to God, and how this covenant relates to the new covenant

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book VII, chapter 2, “Covenant of Grace.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Manual of Theology, Book VII, ch. 2
Primary source
1857
John L. Dagg

A word before you read. In this chapter “covenant of grace” means something many theologians call the “covenant of redemption”: the eternal agreement within the Trinity to save a people. It is not, Dagg says, the same as the new covenant made with believers. That distinction matters a great deal for Baptist teaching on the church and baptism. In one sentence in section 4 the antecedent is unclear in Dagg’s own text; the note there explains it.

1.Three Persons, One Saving Work

Dagg’s thesis reads: “The three divine persons co-operate in man’s salvation according to an eternal covenant.” His texts include Psalm 2:8, Psalm 40:6–8, Isaiah 49, John 17:6, Hebrews 13:20 and Titus 1:2. He has already shown, earlier in the Manual, that Scripture uses the word “covenant” with “great latitude of meaning.” So it is fitting to use it here. There are three divine persons, and if the unity of God ruled out any covenant among them, it would also rule out any real distinction of persons. Dagg therefore uses the covenant idea to protect the doctrine of the Trinity. Salvation is not the work of an angry Father persuaded by a kind Son, nor the private project of one person. It is the united work of the one God, in which Father, Son and Spirit each take a part.

2.Not a Bargain Among Equals

Dagg is careful to clear away a misunderstanding. When people make covenants, one party proposes terms and the other deliberates, then accepts or refuses. That happens “because of the imperfection of the parties.” Nothing like it happens in God. Scripture speaks “in condescension to our weakness,” using language taken from human affairs. Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man,” sounds like a consultation, but it teaches the agreement and cooperation of the divine persons. That agreement runs through all God’s works, for He works all things “after the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). Since all three persons possess infinite wisdom, disagreement among them is impossible. Salvation is performed according to an eternal purpose, and the persons agree in that purpose as in the work. Then comes the chapter’s finest sentence: “The purpose of the one God, is the covenant of the Trinity.” Here Dagg holds together what many get wrong, the oneness of God and the distinction of the persons.

3.An Everlasting Covenant

Why call it eternal? Because the parties are eternal, unchanging and all-knowing, and because Scripture says so. Hebrews 13:20 speaks of “the blood of the everlasting covenant,” Ephesians 3:11 of God’s eternal purpose in Christ, and Titus 1:2 and 2 Timothy 1:9 of life promised and grace given “before the world began.” God’s purpose is one, yet we must speak of it in parts. The part Scripture puts in front is the agreement between the Father and the Son. Jesus prays, “Yours they were, and you gave them me” (John 17:6). The Father says to the Son, “Ask of me, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance” (Psalm 2:8). The Son answers, “Lo, I come… I delight to do your will” (Psalm 40:7–8). In Isaiah 49, Dagg says, the terms between Father and Son are presented “almost as if they had been copied from an original record.” Psalm 2:8, with its promise of the nations, became a favourite text of the Baptist missionary movement, which sent workers to Burma, Liberia, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico in Dagg’s century.

4.Different Offices, One Godhead

Under this arrangement the Son took human nature “in the form of a servant,” obeyed to the point of death, and was exalted by the Father to supreme dominion. The Father appears as “the representative of the Godhead” in its authority and majesty: sending the Son, giving Him a people, prescribing the terms, accepting His service and sending the Spirit. (As it stands, Dagg’s sentence can read as if the Holy Spirit did all these things. The wording is Dagg’s own, not a transcription error: the sentence’s antecedent is unclear in Dagg’s text, and the next paragraph shows he means the Father acting for the Godhead.) The Son is “the representative and surety of his people,” and the promise of eternal life was made to them in Him. The Spirit completes the plan, and the Father’s promises to the Son include the gift of the Spirit, which is why John 16:7 says the Son sends Him and John 14:16 says the Father sends Him at the Son’s request. Dagg then adds a vital guard: the Son and Spirit accept a “subordination of office” voluntarily, and this does not imply “inferiority of nature.” The fullness of the Godhead dwells in each person. Evangelicals in recent years have argued over whether such subordination is eternal; all sides agree with Dagg that the persons are equal in nature.

5.The Order of Blessing and the Order of Prayer

Dagg next shows how this order shapes Christian experience. Blessings come down from the Father, “of whom are all things,” through the Son, “by whom are all things,” by the Spirit, who gives them directly and is “the last in the order of operation.” Our worship goes up in “the reverse order.” The Spirit moves us to pray and helps us when we do not know what to ask. Our prayers rise through Christ, and the Father is the final object of worship. Ephesians 2:18 states it in one line: through Him we have access by one Spirit to the Father. Yet at every step the whole God is present. When the Spirit draws us, it is the Father drawing (John 6:44). When we come to Jesus, “God is in Christ reconciling the world” (2 Corinthians 5:19). When we address the Father, the whole Godhead receives our worship. So the believer, Dagg says, may worship “without distraction of thought.” Whether we picture God in the private closet, in the busy world or on His throne in heaven, we address the same omnipresent One. We worship God alone whether we pray to the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit.

6.Not the Same as the New Covenant

At the end Dagg adds a warning “to guard against mistake.” The eternal covenant is not identical with the new covenant of Hebrews 8. The new covenant, quoting Jeremiah 31, is made “with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” that is, with people; the eternal covenant “is not made with man.” Yet the two are closely linked. In the eternal covenant, promises are made to the Son as the representative of His people. In the new covenant the same promises are made to the people themselves and partly fulfilled already: “I will be to them a God,” and “I will put my law in their minds, and write it in their hearts.” This is more important than it looks. Presbyterian and other paedobaptist theologians see one covenant of grace running through Abraham to the church, with children of believers included in it and marked by baptism, as circumcision once marked Israel’s sons. Baptists, from the Second London Confession of 1689 onward, read the new covenant as new in kind: its members are those who have the law written on their hearts and who all “know the Lord” (Hebrews 8:11).

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

From that reading of the new covenant flows the Baptist doctrine of regenerate church membership. If the new covenant community is made up of those whom God has taught to know Him, then the visible church should, as far as humans can judge, receive only those who profess saving faith, and baptize only them. Dagg argued exactly this in his Treatise on Church Order the following year. A pastor today takes three things from this chapter. First, salvation is entirely God’s work, planned in eternity, so the gospel can be preached with confidence: the Father has promised the nations to the Son. Second, prayer has a shape: by the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. Teaching this simple order helps new believers pray with assurance. Third, the church is a covenant people of changed hearts, not a social club or a family inheritance. In Latin America, where many people were baptized as infants in a state-linked church, this conviction lies behind the Baptist call to personal faith followed by believer’s baptism. It should be stated with respect for other Christians who read the covenants differently.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Dagg writes that “the purpose of the one God, is the covenant of the Trinity.” How does knowing that all three persons agree in your salvation strengthen your assurance? Try praying today in the order Dagg describes: by the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. And how would you explain, kindly and clearly, to a Presbyterian friend why Baptists link the new covenant with believer’s baptism?

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Reading 5 · Justification and Adoption

Declared Righteous, Welcomed Home

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book VII, ch. 3, §§2–3, “Justification” and “Adoption”

Dagg teaches that believers are justified by Christ’s righteousness imputed to them: acquitted, not merely pardoned, on the ground of His blood and obedience, through a faith that renounces all merit. He explains a threefold union with Christ, reconciles Paul and James, and rejects eternal justification. Adoption rises higher still, bringing the Father’s love, discipline and inheritance.

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The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Declared Righteous, Welcomed Home: Dagg on Justification and Adoption

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Dagg’s sections on how a guilty sinner is declared righteous through faith in Christ, and how God then receives that believer as a son and heir

A CTS digest of John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (1857), Book VII, chapter 3, sections 2–3, “Justification” and “Adoption.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Manual of Theology, Book VII, ch. 3, §§2–3
Primary source
1857
John L. Dagg

A word before you read. This is the longest reading in the course, and the heart of the gospel as the Reformation taught it. Dagg uses courtroom words (judge, acquit, impute) and family words (father, son, heir). Keep both pictures in view. “Impute” means to count or credit something to someone’s account. Dagg writes as a Calvinistic Baptist; where other Christians disagree, this digest says so.

1.Acquitted, Not Merely Pardoned

Dagg’s thesis is: “All who believe in Christ, are justified by his righteousness imputed to them.” He begins with a definition. Justification is “the act of a judge acquitting one who is charged with crime,” the opposite of condemnation. Deuteronomy 25:1 commanded Israel’s judges to justify the righteous and condemn the wicked. Then Dagg makes a fine distinction. Justification is “a higher blessing of grace, than pardon.” A pardoned criminal is freed from punishment, but he does not stand where an innocent man stands. Job 27:5 shows the difference: if we put “pardon” in place of “justify” there, the meaning changes. Through Christ the returning sinner is treated “as if he had never sinned.” Yet these are not two separate gifts given to two kinds of people. Every penitent believer receives both. As repentance and faith imply each other, so pardon and justification are “twin blessings of grace,” given together through Jesus Christ.

2.His Blood and His Obedience

On what ground is a sinner justified? Scripture names both the blood and the obedience of Christ: “justified by his blood” (Romans 5:9) and “by the obedience of one, shall many be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Both were needed to honour God’s law. His blood means that He endured the law’s penalty; His obedience means that He fulfilled its precepts. Our deliverance from wrath rests on the first, and our full acceptance on the second. Dagg also shows how the two belong together. If Christ had obeyed perfectly but not died, the penalty would remain. If He had died without loving God with all His heart, His sacrifice “would have been polluted.” A lamb “without spot” was required. Later theologians call these His “active” and “passive” obedience, and Dagg says both are needed for a complete salvation. He uses the language of purchase too: we were redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:19), bought with a price. His merits, and only His, are the ground on which justification may be claimed.

3.Faith That Renounces Merit

“Justification is by faith,” Dagg writes, and Romans 5:1 and Acts 13:39 are explicit. But why faith, rather than love, which is “the fulfilling of the law”? Paul gives the reason: “It is of faith, that it might be by grace” (Romans 4:16). In the very act of believing, merit is renounced and the sinner relies only on Christ. Faith is certainly an activity of the mind, and it produces works, for faith “works by love” (Galatians 5:6). But it does not justify “as a work.” It justifies as the empty hand that receives salvation “as a gift of free grace.” Faith is not even partly the cause of our justification. If it were, it would need enough merit to satisfy the whole law, and Christ’s death would be unnecessary. Rather, faith “distinguishes” those to whom righteousness is credited. It is “the turning point,” Dagg says, at which a sinner’s condition is decided. This is why Romans 4:5 can say that God “justifies the ungodly.” The sinner comes with no plea of his own, only Christ.

4.Imputation and the Threefold Union

At the centre stands 2 Corinthians 5:21: He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Our sins were credited to Christ; His righteousness is credited to us. Some object that this is unjust, since justice gives each person his due. Dagg answers that the idea of substitution runs through all sacrifice, has the full authority of God’s word, and that “there is no higher rule of justice than God himself.” Still, he shows why it is fitting. Just as he earlier explained a threefold union between Adam and humanity, so there is a threefold union between Christ and His people. First, a union of consent: Christ agreed to be their substitute, and believers, after giving up hope of saving themselves, gladly accept Him. Second, a spiritual union: as head and body, or vine and branches, believers share the one Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9; 1 Corinthians 12:13). Third, a federal union: as Adam represented his descendants, Christ stood as “federal head and representative” of all whom the Father gave Him. Yet there is a key difference. Adam’s sin is imputed by justice; Christ’s righteousness is imputed by grace, which rises above justice. Only when we feel that we are justly condemned can we receive salvation as “the unspeakable gift” of grace.

5.Paul, James and the Date of Justification

Dagg next takes up James 2:24: “A man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” Does this contradict Paul in Romans 3:28? No. James himself gives the key: “faith without works is dead.” Dead faith does not justify, and Paul never says it does; Paul’s faith is a living faith that “works by love.” Paul excludes works of law, offered as the cause of justification. James requires works as “evidences” of faith. Then Dagg asks when justification happens. Some place it only at the last judgment. Dagg agrees that God will then publicly declare His verdict, but Scripture says believers are justified now (1 Corinthians 6:11), just as unbelievers are “condemned already” (John 3:18). Others date justification “in eternity past.” Dagg rejects this too, for justification is a declaration, not a secret purpose. God’s purpose to justify is eternal, but believers are no more justified from eternity than they are glorified from eternity. The idea of eternal justification was held by the English Baptist John Gill and by some hyper-Calvinist Baptists. Dagg, president of a college in the pro-missions Georgia Baptist tradition of Jesse Mercer, insists that sinners pass from condemnation to justification when they believe, which is why the gospel must be preached to them.

6.Adopted into God’s Family

In Section III Dagg turns to adoption: “God adopts, as sons, all who believe in Jesus Christ.” Among people, adoption receives another’s child into the family with the full privileges of a son. This blessing “rises higher than justification.” A judge may acquit a prisoner, but he does not take him home. The believer may know God not only as “a justifying Judge” but as “a reconciled and affectionate Father.” Dagg lists three privileges. First, the Father’s love: as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him (Psalm 103:13), and the Spirit of the Son cries “Abba, Father” in our hearts. Jesus taught us to pray “Our Father.” Second, the Father’s discipline: “Whom the Lord loves, he chastens” (Hebrews 12:6). Dagg calls this “inestimably rich,” for our lot is chosen by a Father who knows what is best. Third, the inheritance: if children, then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). The full adoption waits for the redemption of the body, but the title is secure, and even now all things work together for good to those who love God.

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

These doctrines unite Baptists with other Protestants. The Philadelphia Confession follows the Westminster tradition closely on justification and adoption, and the New Hampshire Confession teaches that justification is bestowed “solely through faith” in the Redeemer’s blood. Other Christians see it differently. The Council of Trent (1547) taught that justification includes inner renewal and can be increased; the Lutheran–Catholic Joint Declaration of 1999 narrowed but did not end the disagreement. Orthodox churches speak more of union with God than of a legal verdict, and some Wesleyan and other Protestant teachers question the imputation of Christ’s active obedience. Yet for Baptists this doctrine has a special edge. A verdict received “by faith” cannot be given by proxy, by parents or by a state church. That is one root of regenerate church membership and believer’s baptism. A pastor gains three tools here: assurance for troubled believers, who stand on Christ’s merits, not their own; a call to holy living, since true faith works; and a family picture of the church. When Latin American believers call one another hermano and hermana, or African churches greet one another as family, they echo Dagg’s point: the acquitted are also adopted.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Dagg says justification is higher than pardon, and adoption higher than justification. Which of these truths do you most need to hear today? How would you use Paul and James together to answer someone who says that faith alone makes holy living unnecessary? And when hardship comes, can you receive it, as Dagg urges, as the discipline of “a kind and wise Father”?

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Further Study: Six Public-Domain Works

These six works are for further study, for the student who wants to go on reading. They are not part of the honors reading above: that stays as it is — the five CTS digests, any three read in full and recorded on your honor. All six are in the public domain; each link opens the work online, and most can also be found in the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg. Most are in English: the Chrome browser can translate a page (right-click, “Translate to…”; on a phone, the browser menu).

A Later Baptist System · Boyce

1. Abstract of Systematic Theology

James P. Boyce · 1887

Read the opening chapters on theological method and Scripture, then the sections on salvation. A later nineteenth-century Baptist system gives a direct point of comparison with Dagg’s organization and emphases.

Open reading ↗

Before Dagg · Gill

2. A Body of Doctrinal Divinity

John Gill · 1767–1770

Read Book I on God and Book VI on salvation. This earlier Particular Baptist synthesis helps students trace the Reformed Baptist tradition that precedes Dagg.

Open reading ↗

After Dagg · Strong

3. Systematic Theology: The Doctrine of Man, vol. 2

A. H. Strong · 1907

Read the sections on human nature, sin, Christ’s work, and salvation. Strong shows how a later Baptist theologian develops themes central to Dagg’s Books IV and VI.

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The Gospel Invitation · Fuller

4. The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation

Andrew Fuller · 1805 edition; first issued 1785

Read Part I and the concluding practical applications. Fuller’s argument on faith, responsibility, and gospel invitation illuminates a major Baptist debate behind nineteenth-century missions and soteriology.

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Grace in a Life · Bunyan

5. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

John Bunyan · 1666

Read the autobiographical account through Bunyan’s call to preach. This experiential Baptist narrative complements formal doctrine with lived accounts of conviction, grace, assurance, and ministry.

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Baptist Church Order · Hiscox

6. The New Directory for Baptist Churches

Edward T. Hiscox · 1894; scan of the 1902 edition

Read the sections on church constitution, officers, ordinances, discipline, and interchurch relations. It extends Dagg’s doctrinal theology into historically influential Baptist polity and congregational practice.

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Honor attestation: By selecting three readings above, you affirm that you have read those three digests in full. The digests are CTS-authored summaries that may include brief excerpts or adaptations of public-domain works.