Thomistic theology of merit is the set of beliefs developed by Thomistic thinkers regarding merit in Christianity.
Thomas Aquinas discussed merit extensively in his early Commentary on the Sentences and in his mature Summa Theologica. In both texts, Aquinas views human life as a "journey" which starts with the conversion from sin to grace and ends in the beatific vision, a process marked by the good actions which make the soul closer to God and hold the divine approval. Acknowledging the difficulties of affirming the possibility of human merit before a divine entity, Thomism develops thoroughly on the concept in order to defend the Catholic position.
Congruous and condign merit
In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas develops on merit as part of his teachings on grace and categorizes it as "an effect of cooperating grace". The Doctor distinguishes merit from rewards, as the latter is something bestowed by reason of the former. Merit seems to be a "function of justice", which as such would depend on an equality between both agents. This approach appears problematic considering that humans are not equal to God and therefore cannot demand nor make claims on the latter. Therefore, Aquinas characterizes merit as part of the "divine ordination", by which God desires to bring all things to their ends according to the divine will and therefore is not "our debtor simply but His own, inasmuch as it is right that His will should be carried out". For this to be possible, God gives men the necessary grace to be able to carry out what would be impossible by nature.
Merit can be subdivided between condign and congruous merit. Condign merit is that which is "the right in strict justice to a reward", while congruous merit is "based on what is fitting in a given situation". Taking merit as proceeding from human free will, Aquinas concludes that men by themselves can only merit congruously. However, as grace allows Christians to participate in the divine nature as adopted sons of God, they can merit condignly by the meritorious works performed through the action of the Holy Spirit in them.
Aquinas does not make recourse to this in his Commentary on the Sentences. The fact that humans are able to merit before God is firstly defended by using the Aristotelian categorization of justice: as merit is to be understood as pertaining to distributive and not to commutative justice, the objection regarding an inequality between God and men is dismissed. Secondly, merit is taken to be possible as part of the divine covenant or promise. As God has freely decided to render a reward for human merit, meritorious acts cannot be said to establish a debt because such debt has been self-imposed by God. His free decision to promise such an answer annuls the possibility of human debt, and only implies being faithful to what has already been affirmed. As later championed in the Summa, the divine ordination implies that "God has ordained that what human beings do, despite its intrinsic inferiority, will nevertheless be treated as deserving of eternal life".
Merits of Christ
The role of the merits of Jesus Christ is crucial in the Thomistic theology of merit. Thomas "not only holds that Christ could merit but also that he merited from the first moment of his human existence". The merits of Jesus hold a preeminent position in the salvation process, standing above satisfaction, sacrifice and redemption.
As condign merit is a personal title, however, the question regarding how Christ can merit salvation for mankind is risen. Aquinas explains this process through the believer's incorporation into the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, in which the merits of Jesus are communicated to human beings. Salvation is therefore described as a "mystical union between Christ and the faithful". The merits of Christ are communicated to men when, in baptismal regeneration, they are made participants of his Body. Following Saint Porphyrius' idea by which "all men are one man in common nature", Aquinas affirms that Christ can merit for other humans "representing humanity before God and thus meriting on behalf of the whole of the human community" because of the essential conjunction (coniunctio essentialis) held with them. Human beings can only be united to each other by an accidental conjunction of affection (coniunctio affectus), but Christ as the Last Adam had joined human beings in a communio in natura. Christ's humanity is to a certain degree understood as an "instrument" of the divinity through which the whole of mankind is influenced.
As to how Christ could merit considering he had possessed the beatific vision since his conception and during his whole earthly life, as Aquinas contended, the theologian follows Peter Lombard and Gregory the Great in affirming that "one and the same reward could be merited in various ways, not in the sense that it became more due but rather in that it was made due for various reasons, so that one, as it were, obtained several titles to the same good".
Object and reward of merit
When reflecting on the object of merit, Aquinas distinguishes things that can be merited from things that cannot. Both initial justification and restoration to grace after committing a mortal sin cannot be merited congruously nor condignly. Final perseverance is also part of this group. On the other hand, one can congruously merit the first grace for another and condignly merit an increase of grace and eternal life for himself. Generally speaking, the main rewards on meritorious actions can be read in the Summa and the Super Sententias as eternal life itself and the increase in "habitual grace", by which human beings may keep performing good acts. Aquinas places a particular emphasis on the object and reward of merit in his Commentary on the Sentences, in which he is not particularly concerned with which actions can be taken as meritorious and which cannot.
It is in his Commentary on Matthew that Thomas joins meritorious acts and their rewards when discussing the beatitudes. Aquinas characterizes each as composed of a meritum and a correspondent praemium, and the reception of the latter is due to Christ's promise. Therefore, in the first beatitude, poverty in spirit is the merit and the Kingdom of Heaven its reward. The Doctor develops extensively on the subject in the prologue to such chapter, in which he appeals to Aristotle's "heroic virtue" as a form of action "above the human manner". This kind of actions are performed only through grace in Catholic theology, and thefore merits are "either acts of the gifts [of the Holy Spirit], or acts of the virtues according as they are perfected by the gifts".Merit is presented here as a form of virtuous action, performed under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. One of the reasons to perform these actions is that they are part of the new law. To Aquinas everything that is said in the Sermon on the Mount is a concrete application of the merits described in the Beatitudes: 'Just as Moses first set down the commandments, and afterwards said many things which were all referred back to the commandments given, so Christ in his teaching first sets forth these Beatitudes, to which all the other things are reduced'.But merit means more than simply obeying the Law, as it implies acting towards the final end which is happiness. Despite happiness will only be fully attained in Heaven and therefore the promise shall not be fulfilled in a complete sense during earthly life, following the beatitudes nevertheless derives in being rewarded with a certain earthly happiness, composed, for instance, of the loosening of sins and the defeat of one's defects.
Regarding the possibility of meriting the first grace for others, Aquinas states that only Christ can said to do so condignly as the head of the Church. However, one can merit the first grace for another person in a congruous sense. As put in the Summa Theologica:It is clear that no one can merit condignly for another his first grace, save Christ alone; (…) inasmuch as He is the Head of the Church, and the Author of human salvation (...) But one may merit the first grace for another congruously; because a man in grace fulfills God’s will, and it is congruous and in harmony with friendship that God should fulfill man's desire for the salvation of another.This position led later Thomists such as Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange to propose a third kind of merit, mostly associated to the Virgin Mary in her advocation as Mediatrix. As the former defined it, the merit "de congruo proprie" implies the "merit of becomingness" which "is founded on charity or friendship with God, rather than on justice". As put in The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Christ would have "satisfied for us in strict justice by His human acts which drew from His divine personality an infinite value capable of making reparation (...) Mary satisfied for us by a satisfaction based, not on strict justice, but on the rights of the infinite friendship or charity which united her to God". Saint Pius X would make a similar point at Ad diem illum, in which he affirmed thatWe are then, it will be seen, very far from attributing to the Mother of God a productive power of gracea power which belongs to God alone. Yet, since Mary carries it over all in holiness and union with Jesus Christ, and has been associated by Jesus Christ in the work of redemption, she merits for us de congruo, in the language of theologians, what Jesus Christ merits for us de condigno, and she is the supreme Minister of the distribution of graces.Regarding the conditions for an act to be meritorious, Catholic theologians have held different positions. Duns Scotus had affirmed that the works of those justified were meritorious on account of the "divine promise" or covenant, whereas later Thomists such as Thomas Cajetan or Domingo de Soto defended that works condignly meritorious were so because of the works themselves.
The "principle of merit" in which every meritorious action must be founded is "charity founded in sanctifying habitual grace". Furthermore, two conditions must be met for meriting: namely the "facultas merendi" (capacity to merit) and the "status merentis" (state of meriting). The facultas merendi implies that a person is in control of his own acts through free choice and that divine grace is present in the action. The status merentis refers generally to earthly life, a situation in which human beings can perform meritorious actions in contrast to the heavenly beatitude in which they already possess what merit is directed to. From a Thomistic point of view, the individual must also be in a state of grace for an act to be meritorious.
Merit and moral goodness
This conditions follow from the belief that only believers can perform actually meritorious acts, while unbelievers can do morally good works which are not meritorious. Some acts, namely those good works of someone who does not have Christian charity, are therefore indifferent to merit or demerit. As charity is dependent on faith, unbelievers cannot be said to hold Christian charity and therefore cannot merit eternal life in any sense through this acts according to Thomism, what differs from other assessments of invincible ignorance.