Theopedia

John L. Dagg

John L. Dagg (1794-1884) was an American Baptist pastor and theologian sometimes called “the first writing Southern Baptist.”1 Thomas J. Nettles, in his preface to a modern reprint of Dagg’s chief work, called him “one of the most profound thinkers produced by his denomination.”2 That work, A Manual of Theology (1857), was quoted directly by Dagg’s contemporary James P. Boyce on the doctrine of human inability, and Daniel Scheiderer’s study of Baptist covenant theology treats it as one of the few sustained Baptist statements of the eternal covenant of grace after John Gill.34

Life and Ministry

Dagg belonged to the first generation of Southern Baptists to publish a full-scale systematic theology. His Manual of Theology appeared in 1857, two years after R. B. C. Howell, second president of the Southern Baptist Convention, published The Covenants (1855), and thirty years before James P. Boyce published his own Abstract of Systematic Theology (1887).4 Boyce quoted the Manual directly in his own systematic theology for its statement of human inability under sin.3

Theological Contribution

The eternal covenant of grace

In the Manual of Theology, Dagg treated the covenant of grace as eternal, grounding it in the concurrence of the divine persons rather than in a merely historical arrangement:

In every work of God, the divine persons must either agree or disagree. As they alike possess infinite wisdom, disagreement among them is impossible. The salvation of men is a work of God, in which the divine persons concur. It is performed according to an eternal purpose; and in this purpose, as well as in the work, the divine persons concur; and this concurrence is their eternal covenant. The purpose of the one God, is the covenant of the Trinity.5

Dagg held that each divine person is manifest in the economy of redemption according to this covenant, and that the Son and the Spirit’s subordinate roles in that economy do not imply any inferiority of nature, since “the fulness of the Godhead dwells in each of the divine persons.”5 He distinguished this eternal covenant of grace from the new covenant of Hebrews 8, while affirming “a close connection between them”: in the new covenant God deals with man directly, while in the covenant of grace the promises are made to the Son as representative of his people.6 This treatment placed Dagg within the same Baptist tradition of a singular, eternal covenant of grace argued earlier by John Gill and, in Dagg’s own generation, by Howell.4

Human inability and total depravity

On the natural state of fallen man, Dagg argued from Scripture’s own vocabulary of helplessness:

The Scripture representations of men’s inability are exceedingly strong. They are said to be without strength, captives, in bondage, asleep, dead, &c. The act, by which they are delivered from their natural state, is called regeneration, quickening, or giving life, renewing, resurrection, translation, creation; and it is directly ascribed to the power of God, the power that called light out of darkness, and raised up Christ from the dead.3

Boyce quoted this passage directly in his own Abstract of Systematic Theology to support the same conclusion: that corruption “can only be removed by a cleansing of human nature” that lies wholly beyond man’s own power to effect.3

Effectual calling and regeneration

Dagg identified regeneration with effectual calling rather than treating them as sequential steps in the ordo salutis:

Besides the call which is external, and often ineffectual, there is another, which is internal and effectual. This always produces repentance and faith, and therefore secures salvation… . The internal grace, which renders the outward call effectual, is the grace of regeneration. Hence regeneration, considered as the work of the Holy Spirit, is the same as effectual calling… . In effectual calling, the Holy Spirit displays his omnipotence… . His power in creating the world was unresisted; and equally unresisted is the power by which he new-creates the heart.7

Historical Significance

Matthew Barrett’s survey of the Reformed ordo salutis places Dagg alongside Boyce, Charles Hodge, Herman Bavinck, and William G. T. Shedd as representative nineteenth-century voices holding that regeneration causally precedes and produces faith, a position Barrett calls “standard” for Reformed theology of the period and one carried into the twentieth century by theologians such as Anthony Hoekema.7 Daniel Scheiderer’s study of the eternal covenant in Baptist theology likewise treats Dagg, alongside Howell, as one of only two Baptist theologians after John Gill to give the doctrine “a specific treatment” rather than an assumed, passing mention.8

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Daniel David Scheiderer, “John Gill: Continuing Baptist Affirmation of the Eternal Covenant,” in “Eternal Covenant: The Trinitarian Shape of an Historic Baptist Doctrine” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 81. ↩

  2. Tom J. Nettles, preface to Manual of Theology, by John L. Dagg (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 2009), n.p., quoted in Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 83. ↩

  3. John L. Dagg, Manual of Theology (Charleston, SC: Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1857), 171, quoted in James Petigru Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology, 2nd printing (Baltimore: H. M. Wharton & Company, 1887), 246. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 83. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Dagg, Manual of Theology, 254-56, quoted in Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 83. ↩ ↩2

  6. Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 83-84. ↩

  7. Dagg, Manual of Theology (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 2009), 332-33, quoted in Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Tertium Quid: The Failure of Recent Attempts at a Via Media,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 384. ↩ ↩2

  8. Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 82-83. ↩