Merit of Man

MERIT OF MAN. - Merit, theologically, is the good work which, performed by man under determinate conditions, is worthy of supernatural reward.

I. REALITY OF THE MERIT OF MAN

1. Sacred Scripture

The word "merit" is absent from the Bible, but not the thing itself, since wages, recompense, crown, and retribution of good works are correlative concepts.

In the Old Testament the perspective is still little open to eternal goods, and the gaze is directed rather to the collectivity than to the individual, to whom, however, importance is gradually given. Moreover, even earthly sanctions are divine, and it is logical to think that the relationship is carried over to the higher sphere.

In the New Testament the Kingdom, that is, eternal beatitude, presents itself as a gift that descends from the gratuitous good pleasure of the Father. But alongside the divine initiative there is room for the human element that normally conditions its application. To be remembered are the Sermon on the Mount with the beatitudes and the moral norm of the Kingdom, the parables of the talents, of the minas, of the workers in the vineyard. The Kingdom, which initially is pure gift, becomes subjectively, in its phase of progress and perfection, also a conquest through works: "Possess the Kingdom; for I was hungry and you gave me to eat" (Mt. 25:34). What Jesus supernaturally condemns are not the works of the law, which the Pharisee performs, but the human principle on which he exclusively founds them; the vain ostentation before men and the importunate ostentation before God. "They have already received their reward," yet he does not disown works with their right to recompense; on the contrary, he teaches the way to render such a right truly certain and efficacious before the Father, who sees in secret (Mt. 6:4).

The doctrine of the Apostles is in perfect harmony with the Gospel. St. James knows that "every good endowment and every perfect gift comes from above and descends from the Father of lights" (Jas. 1:17); but he inculcates good works and emphasizes their value: "what would it profit, my brethren, if one should say he has faith while he has not works? can faith save him?" (ibid. 14). St. Peter speaks of "the incorruptible crown of glory" (1 Pt. 5:4), which the "presbyters" who have worthily fulfilled their ministry will receive at the appearing of the Prince of pastors; the same reward awaits all the faithful for their good works (2 Pt. 1:5-6). According to St. John, God searches reins and hearts and will give to each according to his works (Apoc. 2:23) and the reward to his servants (ibid. 11:18). "Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life" (ibid. 2:10). Death for those who die in the Lord is rest from their labors; their good works follow after them (ibid. 13).

St. Paul, while emphasizing the principal role of Grace in the order of salvation and its absolute gratuitousness, affirms the value of the good works performed by the justified man. "A man will reap whatever he has sown... from the flesh corruption, from the spirit eternal life" (ibid. 6:8). "Each will receive his wages according to his own labor" (1 Cor. 3:8) and "from the Lord the recompense of the inheritance" (Col. 3:23) "on the day of the Revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works" (Rom. 2:6-7). The justified are like athletes competing in a race: "Run in such a way as to make the prize your own, which will be an incorruptible crown" (1 Cor. 9:24-25): "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me on that day, and not only to me but also to those who desire his coming" (2 Tim. 4:7-8). Thus Sacred Scripture teaches that the justified man can, with Grace, bear fruit in good works, which he must perform, and that these are meritorious before God.

2. Tradition

The Church's faith in the meritorious value of good works is evident from the writings of the 1st and 2nd centuries, in which, in the judgment of the Protestant Schutz, alongside the Grace of God, the acquisition of a reward for man's action appears as a natural thing.

St. Justin: "We have learned from the prophets and we truly declare that punishments and torments and good rewards are distributed according to the merit (κατ' ἀξίαν) of each one's works" (Apologia I, 43: PG 6, 392). St. Irenaeus: "We esteem precious the crown... which is acquired through struggle... and all the more precious the more it comes to us through combat" (Adv. Haeres., 4, 37, 7: PG 7, 1104). Tertullian was the first to introduce the word meritum, which has remained in theological usage (Apologeticum, 18: PL 1, 434-35). St. Cyprian: "You can come to see God, if you will have merited God by your life and works" (De opere et eleemosynis, 14: PL 4, 635). The teaching of the Fathers took shape progressively, especially in ordinary catechesis and in homilies; for example, St. Cyril of Jerusalem says: "The root of every good action is the hope of the resurrection, since the expectation of the reward strengthens the soul" (Cathech., 18, 1: PG 33, 107); St. Ambrose: "Before each one stands the balance of our merits; on the day of judgment either our works will help us or plunge us into the deep" (Epist., 2, 14, 16: PL 16, 883); St. Augustine: "having said" (Rom. 6:23) that the wages of sin is death, who would not think to add: and the wages of righteousness, eternal life? And it is true, since as to the merit of sin death is rendered as punishment, so to the merit of righteousness eternal life is rendered as reward" (Epist., 194, 20-21: PL 33, 881; cf. Rivière, article cited in bibl., col. 576 ff).

3. Scholasticism

The Middle Ages gathered the patristic heritage, subjected it to rigorous analysis, deepening the notions of natural and supernatural and the "synergy" between Grace and free will, investigating the essence and foundation of the merit of man, and specifying the concepts of merit de condigno and de congruo.

The distinction is founded on the different relationship between the meritorious work and the reward. Merit de condigno entails a certain moral and proportional (not arithmetic) equality between the good work and the reward, so that, given acceptance and promise on God's part, the reward is owed according to justice; merit de congruo is not founded on equality and therefore the reward is not in the order of justice, but rather in that of fitness (decentia) and benignity; if the divine promise is added, to which God is faithful, one has infallible merit de congruo. Between the two there is only analogy; true merit, in the proper and strict sense, is only that de condigno: with this value, according to the common interpretation of theologians, the term "merit" is to be taken in the Tridentine documents.

4. The ecclesiastical magisterium

In 529, at the close of the Semi-Pelagian controversy, the Second Council of Orange, in can. II (Denz-U, 191), declared: "Grace is not preceded by any merit. To good works, if they are performed, a reward is due, but in order that they be performed, grace precedes, which is not due." The Council of Trent treated the subject with particular clarity, especially in chap. 16 and can. 32 of sess. VI: "If anyone shall have said that the good works of a justified man are so much the gifts of God as not to be also the good merits of the same justified man, or that the justified man himself, by the good works that are done by him through the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ (of whom he is a living member), does not truly merit the increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of eternal life itself (provided, however, that he dies in grace), and also the increase of glory, let him be anathema" (Denz-U, 809, 842; cf. also cann. 2, 24 and 26: Denz-U, 812, 834, 856). In 1567 St. Pius V condemned the errors of Michael Baius, who, failing to recognize the distinction between the natural and the supernatural order, asserted that the works of man give a right to the heavenly reward "by virtue of a natural law" and denied that in order truly to merit, man needs the grace of divine filiation and of the indwelling Holy Spirit (cf. props. 2-18; Denz-U, 1002-18). In 1653 Innocent X declared and condemned as heretical the 3rd proposition of Jansenius: "In the state of fallen nature, for meriting and demeriting there is not required in man freedom from necessity, but freedom from coercion is sufficient" (Denz-U, 1094).

5. Points of polemical dispute

After this rapid survey, one may conclude that when the Church, against the denials of the "reformation," set the memorable chapters and canons of the sixth session of Trent, she expressed nothing other than the doctrine of Jesus. The "reformation" was essentially a violent struggle against the merit of good works. It is true that to the first radical Lutheran denials correctives were added, immediately and even more so later, but the substance remained and remains in the symbolic books and in the general conception of Protestant and Reformed Christianity. The strength of the will of fallen man was thought to be entirely extinguished for good, so that it would remain in itself inert even under divine grace, whereas a justification that is merely external and imputed certainly cannot provide a stable internal principle of living and acting that is genuinely human and at the same time divine. The reasoning proceeded from the false presupposition that grace and the work of man are like two straight lines originating from two distinct points, whereas it is grace that begins, to which the free will attaches itself, moving vitally under its continual impulse, strong and gentle. Merit is the product of two factors, grace and freedom, both really operative and indispensable to the reality of the effect.

The meritorious work of man seems to place the creature in a position of rights before the Creator, and this moreover on a supernatural ground, whose gratuitousness is an essential note. To this objection one replies by conceding on the one hand that between God and man there can be no relation of strict justice, and by recalling on the other the "crown of justice" of St. Paul and the saying of St. Augustine: "God has made himself a debtor not by duty but by promising. We cannot say to him: render what you have received, but we rightly say: render what you have promised" (En. in Ps., 83, 16: PL 37, 1068). For if the Lord has declared (Lk. 17, 10) that one must consider oneself "unprofitable servants," he has also said (Mt. 25, 23): "Well done! Good and faithful servant." But Scripture says that eternal life is an inheritance for sons. True, but it also says that it is a reward promised to sons who do good. Let it be noted in passing how once again heresy asserts itself as a partial vision claiming totality. On the other hand, the merit of man does no injury to the merit of Jesus Christ, just as the cluster hanging from the branch does no injury to the vine. So efficacious was the merit of the Lord's passion and death as to obtain that man might merit in him. There is then the very common false presupposition that, in the name of a moral purism, qualifies as crassly egoistic and self-interested the Catholic doctrine of merit, in which, it is said, the "mania for reward" dominates. Without wishing to refute such a position thoroughly, one notes that there exists an objective relation between the good work and the reward, and that it is therefore moral for man, in his acting, positively to intend the recompense.

II. CONDITIONS OF THE MERIT OF MAN OF THE U

1. On the part of the one acting

He must be: a) in statu viae, because "when night comes (death), no one can work any longer" (John 9, 14); one must do good "while we have time" (Gal. 6, 10); b) in statu gratiae (v. the Council of Trent and the condemnation of the errors of Baius, cited above), that is, he must be vitally inserted, as a living member, into Christ, from whom alone derives in man the Christ-like and meritorious activity. Catholic doctrine does not hypostatize works, considering them thus severed from the acting subject as if they had a value in and of themselves, like the gold coin possessed by a thief, and as if they did not also derive such meritorious value de condigno from the supernatural dignity of the acting subject, made by habitual Grace a friend of God.

2. On the part of the work

It must be: a) free, perfectly, that is, not only exempt from external coercion, but also from internal necessity (v. the 3rd proposition of Jansenius declared heretical): merit belongs to the order of human moral values, whose root is freedom; for this reason the justified person who dies before having performed free acts obtains eternal life only as an inheritance; nor does merit cease where the work is obligatory: the love of enemies is an evangelical commandment, and yet it is said that for those who love them "their reward will be great" (Luke 6, 35); in the case of a precept by which the work is already owed to God, St. Thomas holds that man has merit for it "because of his own will he does what he ought" (Sum. Theol., 1st-2nd, q. 104, a. 1, ad 1); b) good, that is, in accordance with all the elements required for the honesty of the human act: an evil work merits punishment; the omission of an evil action is meritorious when it requires moral strength; c) supernatural: certainly by reason of the proximate eliciting principle, which is the faculty elevated by the infused habit, which most probably must be moved by actual Grace. That the human act must also be in some way oriented toward God as the author of supernatural salvation is to be admitted; theologians, however, do not agree in specifying what intentionality or motive is required. The Church has condemned certain propositions of Quesnel tending to affirm that only the act of charity is meritorious (Denz-U, 1403 ff.).

3. On the part of God

God's promise to accept the good work and to reward it is required. The reason is that man cannot claim to have a strict right before God; God must graciously take the initiative of ordaining human work to Himself with the promise of reward. Revelation has made this point clear in all the passages of Scripture and of the Fathers where it is said that one can and must perform good works. Theologians discuss the function that belongs to such ordination and promise with regard to the merit of man. There are those who think that the work, even when performed under the required conditions, is not in itself at all proportionate to the reward without the divine promise; others, on the contrary, hold that it is intrinsically so; many affirm that such a work has in itself radically and in actu primo the ground of merit, which the divine promise integrates and completes in actu secundo, so that the reward is strictly due to it. This last seems to be the true opinion, since it takes due account both of the intrinsic dignity of the work and of the transcendence of God, who only by promising makes Himself our debtor. Lastly, it is to be noted that for merit de congruo the state of Grace is not required and that God's promise is required only for infallible merit de congruo.

III. OBJECT OF THE MERIT OF MAN OF THE U

The Council of Trent (sess. VI, chap. 16, can. 2, cited above) defines the objects that man, freely justified, truly merits by good works, that is, de condigno, and they are: 1) eternal life, the principal object; 2) the increase of glory, inasmuch as the Lord will give to each according to his works and according to his labor: he who has gained ten minas will be placed over ten cities, he who has gained five, over five (Lk. 19:16 ff.). And since the Kingdom of God, which is eternal life, begins on earth in the soul of the just man, where Grace, intrinsically capable of increase, is its seed, its preparation and its pledge, and since a determinate degree of habitual Grace will correspond to a determinate degree of glory, it follows that the increase of Grace is also an object of merit. The just man likewise merits the conferral or payment of the eternal reward, which will however be given in its own time and on the condition that he die in the Grace of God.

Not objects of merit de condigno are: a) justification and the graces for preparing oneself: St. Paul affirms this several times and the Council of Trent has defined it (sess. VI, chap. 8; Denz-U, 801); in fact the condition for such merit is to be just; here therefore the principle holds: "the first grace cannot be the object of merit"; b) every supernatural good that the just man intends to obtain for others: God renders to each according to his own works, which alone, insofar as they are personal, avail for the crown; it is the exclusive privilege of Jesus Christ, the one mediator, to have merited de condigno for others; c) efficacious Grace as such: this is the common opinion of theologians, founded also on the lack, in this regard, of the divine promise; d) the gift of final perseverance, which the Council of Trent calls magnum donum, concerning which even the justified man must always be in salutary fear: the same Council does not list it among the objects of true merit, but places it as a condition for the merited attainment of eternal life; e) one's own restoration, after the loss of Grace. Mortal sin places man in the state of one condemned to eternal death, with a sentence immediately executable: if God makes him His son again, this is due to His goodness alone.

As for the object of merit de congruo, the sinner can merit: a) further actual graces, by which to dispose himself more closely to justification; this merit, because of God's promise, is infallible; b) justification. This is the most common opinion and the best founded in Revelation and in certain passages of the Council of Trent. Indeed, when it is a question of the act of perfect contrition, the merit de congruo is infallible. The just man can merit: a) efficacious Graces and final perseverance itself; in the absence, however, of the divine promise, the merit is fallible: let it be observed with Suárez (De Gratia, 12, 38, 14) that final perseverance is merited not by one or more determinate acts or during a certain time, but by a series of good acts unfolding throughout one's whole life; the "great gift" is the infallible object of "suppliant prayer"; b) also temporal goods, insofar as they are a help for eternal life.

For others, the just man can merit de congruo everything that he can in any way merit for himself, and in addition the first supernatural Grace and the first efficacious Grace, understandably fallibly. Three great things are absolutely and only gifts for those who receive them: the first supernatural Grace, the first efficacious Grace, and total predestination. The last touch of divine mercy is the revival of merits (v.).

Mario Ghirardi