Aquinas on Merit: Can Man Merit Anything from God, and Can He Merit Eternal Life Without Grace? (ST I-II q.114 a.1–2)

Orientation #

He opens by recalling the proemium to q. 113: “we just finished the part of the justification of the impious” (prev. lecture), and now turn to merit, the effect of cooperating grace. He closes with “maybe stop here” after a. 2, with articles 3–10 still to come. The previous class finished q. 113 aa. 8–10 and the next takes up q. 114 aa. 3–4 on condign merit and charity.

The class, in order #

1. Where we are in the treatise on grace (“an effect of gratia operantis”) #

The point: merit is the second of the two effects of grace, and the whole question sits under cooperating grace.

• The consideration of grace is divided into three: grace in itself, its causes, its effects.
• The effects are two: justification of the impious, an effect of gratia operantis (operating grace); merit, an effect of gratia cooperantis (cooperating grace). Thomas repeats this at the head of q. 114.

2. The ten articles of q. 114, read with glosses (“about this ten things are asked”) #

The point: a walk through the list, with his reactions.

• a.1 whether man can merit anything from God; a.2 whether someone without grace can merit eternal life (“sounds strange, sounds modern”); a.3 whether someone by grace merits eternal life ex condigno, “worthily”.
  • On a.3 he recalls the passage in Jude read earlier: building yourselves up by faith, hope and charity, and then, before “eternal life”, Christ’s mercy. His gloss: it is justice, but there is still an element of mercy in it; a.3 “may cast some light” on that. He quotes Shakespeare on the dead, “home are gone and ta’en their wages” — “your merits, I guess.”
• a.4 whether grace is the beginning of meriting principally by means of charity (“I think that’s probably so”).
• a.5 whether man can merit the first grace: he thinks of EWTN interviews with converts, “whether they merit the first grace that led them this way.”
• a.6 whether man can merit it for another: Monica and Augustine — “the tears and prayers, how could they fail to do something?”
• a.7 reparation after a lapse (“I hope so”); a.8 growth of grace or charity; a.9 final perseverance, “the ultimate grace”, which he wonders why it is “stuck in at the end”; a.10 whether temporal goods fall under merit — “like a little piece of filet mignon stuck in there”: can I merit a filet mignon?

3. Article 1, objection 1: rendering what one owes (“the act of justice by which someone renders”) #

The point: doing what we owe God does not seem to earn a reward, yet Thomas says a voluntary rendering of what is owed is meritorious.

• Objection: no one merits a reward by rendering to another what he owes; but by all our good works we cannot recompense God, “we always owe more” (semper amplius debemus, “as even the Philosopher says in the eighth book of the Ethics” — he notes the reference is to lectio 14, “pretty good for old Aristotle”); and Luke 17:10, when we have done all that is commanded we are useless servants. Therefore man merits nothing from God.
  • Aside: the old servant in As You Like It, “service and fidelity, not for reward”, “the antique world” — “a great play, an appreciation of nature”; he is also working through The Comedy of Errors.
• Reply: man, insofar as by his own will he does what he ought, merits; otherwise the act of justice by which one renders what he owes would not be meritorious.
  • Boundary case: “is it meritorious that I pay my debts? Yes, because it’s voluntary” — against paying income tax, “which they force me to”: the IRS, “the greatest collection agency in the world”, locks on bank accounts and seized wages.
• Asides: a man buying three lottery tickets for seventy dollars; why the bishops oppose casinos (the poor “get in the hole”; “it gives you just enough hope, then takes your money”); two students, the math genius unwelcome at casinos, the lucky Irishman given free rooms.

4. Objection 2: profiting oneself, not God (“God does not seek from our goods anything useful”) #

The point: our good works give nothing to God, yet we merit because they serve his glory.

• Objection: one who makes himself better does not merit before one to whom nothing accrues; man acting well profits himself or another man, not God — Job “30 verse seven” [ed.: Job 35:7 (inferred)]: “if you act justly, what do you give him, or what does he take from your hand?”
  • His picture: people pray as if giving God something; like the child who buys his mother a rose out of the allowance she gave him — “they still appreciate it, even though you gave him the money he bought the rose with.”
• Reply: God seeks from our goods nothing useful but glory, i.e. the making known of his goodness, which he seeks also from his works. From our worship nothing accrues to him but to us; so we merit from God not as if something accrues to him from our works, but insofar as, for his glory, we do something for the manifestation of his goodness.
  • He connects “glory” with Christ’s prayer about the glory he had before the foundation of the world: not something God gets from us; he wants it “made known to us.”

5. Objection 3: God is nobody’s debtor (“put that in your pipe and smoke it”) #

The point: merit presupposes a debtor, and God is debtor to no one — except to himself.

• Objection: whoever merits constitutes the other his debtor; God is debtor of no one, Romans 11: “who has first given to him, that it should be returned to him?”
• Reply: since our action has the ratio of merit only on the presupposition of the divine ordering, it does not follow that God is made simply our debtor, but a debtor to himself, insofar as it is owed that his ordering be fulfilled — “put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
  • Student: someone once described Christian merit as “God giving you an IOU, he makes himself our debtor.” His correction: more a debtor of himself, because he ordered this act to glory.

6. Sed contra and corpus: justice, equality, and secundum quid merit (“the maxima inequalitatis”) #

The point: merit is a matter of justice; justice is equality; between God and man there is maximal inequality, so merit is only according to proportion and the divine ordering.

1. Sed contra: Jeremiah 31, merces est operi tuo, “there is reward for your work”; reward is rendered for merit.
2. Merit and reward refer to the same thing: reward is what is recompensed to someone for his work or labour, “as a certain price of it”; so, as to pay a just price for a thing received is an act of justice, to pay the reward of a work is an act of justice.
3. Justice is a certain equality, “as is clear through the Philosopher.” Aside: “equality is justice” as democratic thought — the minorities practising vices “must be treated equally, that’s justice.”
4. Hence simply justice is among those simply equal; where there is not simply equality there is not simply justice (he doubts “simply” carries the full force of simpliciter), but a certain mode of justice, the paternal or lordly just, as the Philosopher says in the same book.
5. So where there is the simply just there is simply the ratio of merit and reward; where only secundum quid just, merit is secundum quid — as a son merits from his father, a servant from his lord.
   • “As a son, did you merit something from your father?” A quarter for vacuuming the room: is that justice? Secundum quid — “he gave life and the house and clothes and food and school”; Cicero: the son is always in debt to his father. “You paid your father back?”
   • Student: perhaps there are concurrent reciprocal debts that wash out in the father’s favour, though that may not keep the distinction. His cases where the father does receive from the son: Shakespeare’s history plays, the son rescuing his father from death; caring for aged parents — his sister and their mother, “she changed your diapers”; “been there, done that”; the saying that parents change children’s diapers so children will change theirs. Student: a child instrumental in a father’s conversion and salvation.
6. Between God and man there is the greatest inequality, “they’re infinitely distant,” and the whole good of man is from God. So there is no justice of man towards God according to absolute equality — “you can’t give back to God, or even to your father, the equal of what you received” — but according to a certain proportion, each acting according to his own mode; and the mode and measure of human virtue is to man from God.
7. Conclusion: man’s merit before God can only be on the presupposition of the divine ordering: he obtains as reward from God that for which God gave him the power of acting — as natural things attain by their own motions what God ordered them to — but with the difference that the rational creature moves himself by free will, whence his action has the ratio of merit that is not in other creatures.

• Thomas’s answer to “can man merit from God?”: “Not simply, but secundum quid.”

7. Digression: simpliciter vs. secundum quid (“Not simpliciter, right? But I came to be in some way”) #

The point: the distinction on which the whole answer turns, “used a lot,” and never made by the moderns.

• Coming to be: “did I come to be when I walked in this room? Not simply; I came to be in this room”; sitting down, “I came to be sitting”; my height “was I already before I came to be?” — the division of being by the figures of predication [ed.: categories]: the nine genera of accidents are being secundum quid, substantial being is being simply. Ceasing to be: “I’ll cease to be in your company, in this room, sitting.”
• The same in ability vs. act: “am I in my house now? I’m able to be there — to be there, not simply.” The student able to learn does not know, “only in ability.” Against “it’s not what you know but where to find it” (a Google search): “is that really to know simply? It’s what you know that you know.” Aside: this is used against memorization.
• “The modern philosophers never distinguish between simply and secundum quid.”
• Why not merit from God simply? “He doesn’t have anything except what he’s received from God.” His allowance story: brother Richard ten cents a week, Marcus five, himself two (“the ancient honorable rules of order, hierarchy”); penny candy and five-cent soda; saving two cents to buy something for mother or father earned “a little more love, a rise from two to five cents.”
• God has made an ordering of things: “if you do this, then you get this” — the Our Father: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Student: but simply you owe God his will; is my merit of heaven something I owe? His answer: simply, doing his will is owed; but God accepts it as meriting, because he has ordered doing his will as the way to the kingdom — so if we freely do it, we merit heaven, “but not simply. Strange, huh?”
• Aside: the dog outside “likes the class”; “he hasn’t the slightest idea what we’re doing. There’s no food.”

8. Article 2, objection 1: nature ordered to beatitude (“the eyes of the bat”) #

The point: man is naturally ordered to beatitude, yet merits eternal life only by grace.

• Objection: one merits from God that to which he is divinely ordered (as said); man by his nature is ordered to beatitude as end, so naturally desires to be blessed; therefore by natural powers he can merit the beatitude which is eternal life.
• Reply: God orders human nature to the end of eternal life to be attained not by its own power but by the aid of grace; so its act can be meritorious of eternal life.
  • Aristotle, “they always quote him”: man’s eye is to seeing God as the bat’s eye to daylight — too bright; so by natural knowledge man is “kind of blinded.” The happiness Aristotle treats is the one man can reach “by the discourse of reason”, less than knowing God as he is. “We don’t know what happened to Aristotle” — whether mercy was taken on him.
  • Student: was Aristotle himself virtuous? He set up a statue to Plato, “the first man to show by both word and example that the virtuous life is a happy life” — he can hardly be praising himself for it; he admired Plato.
• Asides: Kasurik asking whether Mozart helped him control his emotions; Mozart on writing what only connoisseurs fully appreciate but everyone will like; his seven-year-old granddaughter on Ave verum corpus, “heaven singing on earth.” Contrast: contemporary art “only for artists” (a student); the St Mary’s physics chairman’s jumble of lab scrap exhibited as art; the Tate janitor who threw out the prize-winning tray of cigarette butts; the Canadian who splashed paint, won, and was told by an admirer “the man is pure genius”; the jet-engine painter; “Pierre Simeon”, the chimpanzee praised by critics; Aristotle’s Poetics on early statues no one recognised unless labeled; “the emperor’s clothes.”

9. Objections 2 and 3 of article 2 (“the more perfect is the source of the action”) #

The point: neither “less owed, more meritorious” nor “God’s liberality exceeds man’s” shows that eternal life can be merited without grace.

• Obj. 2: the less a work is owed, the more meritorious; a good preceded by lesser benefits is less owed; one with only natural goods has received less than one with gratuitous goods too, so his works are more meritorious — “Aristotle’s got hope with that objection.” Reply: man without grace cannot have a work equal to one from grace, since the more perfect the principle of an action, the more perfect the action; the argument would follow only supposing equal operation. “That makes sense.”
• Obj. 3: God’s mercy and liberality infinitely exceed man’s (Thomas is always quoting Avicenna: God alone is liberal, getting nothing in return); but one man can merit from another before receiving grace from him; so much more can a man without grace merit eternal life from God. Reply: as to the first point, God and man are dissimilar — man has every power of doing good from God, not from another man, so from God he merits only what is already God’s gift (the Apostle: “who has first given to him”), whereas from a man one can merit before receiving from him, though by what one has received from God. As to sin, God and man are similar: one cannot merit from someone he has offended unless he first makes satisfaction.

10. Corpus of article 2: two states of man without grace (“a twofold status”) #

The point: in both states eternal life is beyond merit without grace, for one reason in integral nature and for two in fallen nature.

• Sed contra: Romans 6:23, “the grace of God, eternal life.”

1. Man without grace can be considered in two states: integral nature (Adam before sin) and corrupt nature (as in us before the reparation of grace).
2. In the first state, one reason: merit depends on the divine preordering; but no act is divinely ordered to something exceeding the proportion of the power that is its principle, since by the institution of divine providence nothing acts beyond its own power; and eternal life exceeds the proportion of created nature, even its knowledge and desire — 1 Cor 2:9, eye has not seen, ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man. His gloss: eye and ear name knowledge, heart names desire; Aristotle desired the happiness possible by natural powers, not this. So no created nature is a sufficient principle of an act meritorious of eternal life without the added supernatural gift called grace.
3. In the state of sin a second reason is added, the impediment of sin: sin is an offense against God excluding from eternal life, so no one in sin can merit it unless first reconciled, the sin dismissed, which happens through grace; to the sinner is owed not life but death — Romans 6, the stipendia of sin.

• Aside on “stipend”: a fixed regular sum, as given for a lecture or a Mass, “fixed by the bishops’ conference” — a customary offering rather than wages. “Maybe stop here.”

His words #

• gratia operantis / gratia cooperantis: operating grace (effect: justification) and cooperating grace (effect: merit).
• ex condigno: “worthily”; he ties it to justice with an element of mercy (from Jude).
• semper amplius debemus: we always owe more (Ethics VIII).
• ratio of merit: the character of merit, present only on the presupposition of the divine ordering.
• merces: reward, “as a certain price” of work or labour.
• simpliciter vs. secundum quid: simply vs. in a certain respect; he doubts “simply” carries simpliciter’s full force.
• paternal / lordly just: the secundum quid mode of justice between unequals.
• maxima inaequalitas: the greatest inequality, between God and man.
• figures of predication: the division of being into substance and the nine genera of accidents [ed.: the categories].
• ability: being or knowing “in ability”, not simply [ed.: potency].
• liberal: God alone is liberal, giving and getting nothing in return (Avicenna, as he reports it).
• integral nature / corrupt nature: the two states of man without grace.
• stipendia: “stipend”, which he takes as a fixed customary sum rather than “wages”.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 113 proemium and q. 114 proemium (the division and the ten articles)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 114, a. 1 (objections, replies, sed contra, corpus)
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 114, a. 2 (objections, replies, sed contra, corpus)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Ethics VIII (owing more; paternal/lordly just); he notes Thomas’s lectio 14
• Luke 17:10; Job 35:7 (inferred; he says “Job 30 verse 7”); Romans 11 (“who has first given”); Jeremiah 31 (merces est operi tuo); Romans 6:23; 1 Corinthians 2:9
• Epistle of Jude (faith, hope, charity; mercy unto eternal life), recalled from an earlier reading
• Christ’s prayer on the glory he had before the foundation of the world (John 17, inferred)
• Aristotle on the bat’s eye and daylight (Metaphysics II, inferred); Aristotle, Poetics (statues needing labels); Aristotle’s epigram/statue for Plato
• Avicenna: God alone is liberal
• Cicero: the son always in debt to his father
• Shakespeare: As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, the history plays, “home are gone and ta’en their wages”
• Mozart, Ave verum corpus

His questions #

• Is it meritorious that I pay my debts? Yes, because it is voluntary — unlike taxes the IRS forces from you.
• As a son, did you merit something from your father? Is the quarter for vacuuming justice? Not simply; secundum quid, the paternal just, since he gave you life, house, food and school.
• Did I come to be when I walked into this room? Not simpliciter; I came to be in some way, in this room, sitting.
• Is “knowing where to find it” really to know simply? No — it is what you know that you know; that is knowing only in ability.
• Why doesn’t man merit something from God simply? He has nothing except what he received from God.
• Is my merit of heaven something I owe God? (student) Simply, doing his will is owed; but God has ordered it as the way to the kingdom and accepts it as meriting — not simply, secundum quid.
• Was Aristotle himself a man of virtue? (student) He set up a statue to Plato as the first to show by word and example that the virtuous life is happy — he can hardly be praising himself.
• What’s a stipend? A fixed regular sum, a customary offering, rather than wages.