Grace and Merit II: Charity and Merit, and Whether the First Grace Can Be Merited for Oneself or Others (q.114 a.4–6)

Orientation #

He refers back to “the last article” (a.3, prev. lecture): the good work is “not worthy of eternal life” in one way, yet is a seed equal to it in virtute though not in act. He also recalls that charity commanding the other virtues “we saw before, earlier in the discussion of the virtues,” and that faith formed by love “has come up in the treatise on faith in the secunda secundae.” The class ends mid-a.6, after the sed contra is explained in the body: “gotta stop now.” The previous class covered aa.3-4 (condign vs. congruous merit, charity’s primacy) and the next continues with aa.6-10.

The class, in order #

1. a.4 obj. 2 and reply: labor and charity (“laborious and difficult in two ways”) #

Point: more labor seems to mean more reward (1 Cor 3:8, each rewarded “according to his own labor”), but charity diminishes labor (Augustine, On the Words of the Lord: all things hard and repulsive love makes easy, near, “nothing”); so charity would not be the chief source of merit. Reply, as a distinction: a work is laborious in two ways.

• From the magnitude of the work: this labor pertains to growth of merit, and charity does not diminish it but makes one attack great works — “it does great things if it exists” (Gregory, a text Thomas quotes often; he recalls Thomas at the start of the Summa Contra Gentiles undertaking a great thing “beyond my powers”).
• From the defect of the one working: the thing is hard because he does not do it with a prompt will (“oh no, I don’t want to do that”). This labor diminishes merit and is taken away by charity. Illustration of the objection’s premise: Mother Teresa’s sisters, whose morning Mass and communion sent them out to love the miserable of Calcutta. Digression on distinction and order (prompted by “two ways”): you must see a distinction before you can see an order, because nothing is before or after itself — an axiom. Today is after yesterday and before tomorrow, but not before or after itself; Mozart’s music can be better than Haydn’s, one piece better than another (the piano-and-woodwinds piece he told his father was “the best thing I’ve ever written”), one performance better than another, but none better than itself. Asides: the man who said “labor fascinates me, I can watch other people laboring all day long”; a photo of Mother Teresa with Henry Hyde in the Human Life Review; his teacher Kasurik and the difference between performances compared to De Koninck vs. Maritain on Thomas; Msgr. Dionne sent as a student to Maritain, found him superficial, was excluded from the inner circle.

2. “Never affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish” (“distinguish maybe first before you affirm”) #

Point: the Dominican maxim is corrected — you should affirm or deny after distinguishing.

• In the two replies just read Thomas distinguishes, then affirms one thing and denies another; so too in the last article (prev. lecture): the work is not worthy of eternal life in one way, but is a seed equal in virtute, not in act. Without the distinction you affirm or deny the whole claim; with it you see one part is to be affirmed, another denied.
• Example put to him: does the logician direct all the sciences, or the wise man? “I better distinguish”: in one way the logician directs all, in another and higher way the wise man.
• Aristotle at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics: happiness is the end of life, and the science of it seems to be political knowledge, since government directs the city; so knowledge of happiness belongs to political philosophy (“shows how far politicians are from having even the knowledge they should have”). But distinguish: the statesman directs the city to the common good (e.g. deciding on war), yet does not direct the wise man. Aside: King Alfred, “quite a man,” making Boethius known.

3. a.4 obj. 3 and reply: the martyrs (“the act of faith is not meritorious except”) #

Point: the virtue whose act is most meritorious would be chief; that seems to be faith and patience/fortitude, as in the martyrs who fought for the faith usque ad mortem (hence relics in the altar, which the priest kisses). Reply: martyr means witness, hence the mention of faith. The act of faith is meritorious only as faith acting through love — “formed faith” (treated in the treatise on faith, secunda secundae); likewise patience and fortitude merit only when done from charity, per 1 Cor 13: “if I hand over my body to be burnt but have not charity, it profits me nothing.” He notes Thomas “hits the nail on the head” with the very text a student anticipated, “eight hundred years” early.

4. Sed contra (John 14:21) and a digression on concreteness (“Thomas is so concrete that way”) #

Point: “If someone loves me… I will manifest myself to him”; eternal life consists in the manifest knowledge of God (John 17:3), so merit of eternal life is maxime according to charity. Digression from “manifest”: Kasurik derived it from manus — caught by hand, a “manifest thief” (he is unsure whether that etymology is right). Thinkers are often concrete: Aristotle, on how mathematics and natural philosophy define differently, uses the curved line vs. the snub nose (Socrates’ nose, right there as he lectures); his own example of a name kept by one of the things it was said of while the other gets a new name — “five fingers,” then “four fingers and a thumb.” Thomas’s concreteness in the sacraments: the three powers of the plant soul in Aristotle — nourishing, growing, reproducing — compared to Eucharist, confirmation, baptism. The likeness is of the sensible thing to what it does: in the Eucharist you eat bread and drink wine, but not primarily to nourish the body; spiritual eating in the likeness of bodily eating. Thomas’s division of John’s Gospel (inferred: his commentary): ch. 1 (divinity and incarnation) against the rest; the rest into Christ’s living and his dying-and-rising. In the first part: ch. 2, power over the natural elements — water into wine, which prepares for the Eucharist (it is wine because it does not keep the taste of water, otherwise the purpose would be destroyed); chs. 3-4, spiritual regeneration — Nicodemus the Pharisee, then the woman at the well (the sacrament for Gentiles too). Then the three things one gets from parents — life, food, instruction — give chs. 5 (life), 6 (nourishment, the Eucharist chapter), 7-11 (teaching: its origin in 7, enlightening in 8-9, life-giving after), each shown by word and by miracle (the blind man; Lazarus). “Absolutely beautiful.” Aside: to his mother, “I wouldn’t even be without you” — “That’s good.”

5. a.4 body: why charity is chief (“a human act has the character of meriting from two things”) #

Point: merit comes from two things, and charity is principal on both counts.

1. First and chiefly, from the divine ordering: an act is meritorious of the good to which man is divinely ordered — so no act merits unless God has ordered it to the end He intends.
2. Secondly, from free judgment (liberum arbitrium: arbitrium is reason’s judgment, liber belongs to the will — “free will” is a slightly strange translation): what man has above other creatures, acting through himself, voluntarily; the free is cause of itself (Aristotle, Metaphysics). On the first: eternal life is the enjoyment of God; the motion of the mind to enjoy the divine good is the proper act of charity (“did you know that?”), because charity regards the end, and the end is the first object of the will; all the acts of the other virtues are ordered to that end as commanded by charity. So merit of eternal life pertains first to charity, secondarily to the other virtues as their acts are commanded by charity.

• Diamonds/generosity: a man deserves the girl not for generosity but because he loves her; generosity is not the principal thing.
• The philosopher is named from love of wisdom because wisdom is his end. Albert the Great (quoted by Kasurik prefacing his translation of Thomas on Physics I-II): whoever studies the lower sciences not for the sake of the highest science has a perverted attitude toward knowledge. So natural philosophy is studied for first philosophy, and for a Christian, for theology; a Catholic philosopher not ordering philosophy to theology is “perverted.” Rare now to find philosophers aiming at wisdom; students: “hard to name them because there’s nothing there.”
• A mother’s praise is not that she feeds and clothes her children but that she does so because she loves them. On the second: what we do from love we do maxime voluntarie; since merit requires something voluntary, merit is chiefly attributed to charity. Kennedy on surviving in the boat — “didn’t have any choice,” yet called a hero; “that’s kind of funny.” Asides: “to unfold” (explicare) as De Koninck’s favourite oral-exam phrase, “unfold yourself”; he has seen private De Koninck–Mortimer Adler correspondence bemoaning the state of philosophy. Break.

6. a.5: whether man can merit the first grace (“no one is able to merit for himself the first grace”) #

Point: he cannot. Obj. 1: Augustine says faith merits justification, and justification is through the first grace. Reply: Augustine in the Retractions says he was for a time deceived, believing the beginning of faith is from us and its consummation from God; he retracted (“all the other guys make errors, they never retract anything”). If the beginning of faith is from God, the act of faith follows the first grace and cannot merit it. Man is justified by faith not as meriting justification by believing, but because when justified he believes: the motion of faith is required for justification of the impious. The objection’s Augustine text is Epistle 186 (student). Leonine footnote to Trent: we are said to be justified gratis because nothing preceding justification, faith or works, merits its grace — “kind of an authority”; he should reread Denzinger. Obj. 2: God gives grace only to the worthy, and worthy means meriting ex condigno. Reply: God gives grace only to the worthy — not that they were worthy before, but He makes them worthy through grace, since He alone can make clean the one conceived of unclean seed (Job 14:4; a priest’s prayer before Mass; original sin). “That would probably annoy some people.” Obj. 3: among men one merits a gift already received, as the servant given a horse merits it by using it well; God is more liberal, so man merits the first grace received by his subsequent works. His example: give me the Summa Contra Gentiles and I really read it, I merit the book — “intellectual horsepower.” Reply: every good work proceeds from the first grace as from a beginning, not from any human gift; not the same reason for both. Sed contra, Rom 4: to the one who works the reward is imputed not according to grace but to debt; what is merited is imputed as reward. Student: this undermines the (Protestant) rejection of merit — if got as reward, earned in some way; he agrees the whole matter is about reward. Body — the gift of grace considered two ways (“he’s always distinguishing”):

1. as a gratuitous gift: every merit is repugnant to it, else not gratis; Rom 11:6, si ex operibus, jam non ex gratia;
2. as the nature of the thing given: it cannot fall under the merit of one without grace, both because it exceeds the proportion of nature and because in the state of sin man has an impediment to meriting, sin itself (the same two points made before); and one already in grace cannot merit the grace already had, since the cause would come after the effect — reward is the end of the work, grace the beginning of every good work (“Thomas is looking before and after”); if merited by a preceding grace it would not be the first grace. Aside: “that’s getting me Pelagius” — who presumably said you could. St Paul’s temper: kicked out of every town, beaten and left for dead (Acts reading), preaching the next day; his church in Rome, the heads of Peter and Paul said to be at the Lateran.

7. a.6: whether man can merit the first grace for another (“except Christ alone”) #

Point: ex condigno only Christ; ex congruo, yes. Obj. 1: Matt 9:2, Christ “seeing their faith”; the Glossa ordinaria: how much one’s own faith avails before God, so also another’s — enough to heal inwardly, which is the first grace. Reply: another’s faith avails for salvation by merit ex congruo, not condigno. Monica’s tears: not equal, but fitting that such tears be rewarded. Stories from 40 Days for Life (Planned Parenthood): a motorcyclist who prayed the chaplet so loudly a woman already on the table heard, got up and left; a couple who came out smiling — “we decided to keep our baby.” “Pro-choice” does not want informed choice. Obj. 2: James, the continual prayer of the just avails much; “pray for each other that you may be saved”; salvation is only by grace. Reply: the impetratio (asking) of prayer rests on mercy; merit ex condigno rests on justice; so a man asks in prayer many things from divine mercy that he does not merit by justice — Dan 9:18, “not in our justifications but in your many mercies” (also a prayer before Mass). “These are the prayers of Monica among others.” Obj. 3: Luke 16, make friends with the mammon of iniquity that they receive you into eternal tabernacles — a great bishop’s motto; no one is received except by grace, which alone merits eternal life. Reply: the poor receiving alms are said to receive others into the eternal tents either by asking forgiveness for them in prayer, or by meriting ex congruo through other goods; or materially, because by works of mercy toward the poor one merits to be received. Aside: counting the parish money on Monday when it wasn’t there — the place should be called “the den of iniquity.” Sed contra, Jer 15: if Moses and Samuel stood before me, my soul would not be toward this people — though they were of greatest merit; at first “kind of obscure,” clarified: even their prayer would not avail. Body: our work has merit from two things — from the strength of the divine motion, hence ex condigno; and as proceeding from free judgment, voluntarily, hence ex congruo, since it is fitting that when a man uses his power God operates more excellently according to His super-excellent power.

• Ex condigno no one merits the first grace for another except Christ: each is moved by grace to reach his own eternal life, and condign merit cannot extend beyond that motion; but Christ’s soul is moved by grace not only to reach glory but to bring others, as head of the Church and author of salvation (Heb 2, bringing many sons into glory).
• Ex congruo one can merit the first grace for another: a man in grace fulfils God’s will, and it is fitting, by the proportion of friendship, that God fulfil his will for another’s salvation — “so pray for your children… pray for your enemies.” Sometimes there is an impediment on the part of the one whose justification is desired; this is what Jeremiah’s authority speaks of. Class stops here.

His words #

• “chief beginning of meriting” — principium merendi, source of merit
• “magnitude of the work” vs. “defect of the one working” — the two ways a work is laborious
• “nothing is before or after itself” — an axiom; distinction precedes order
• “never affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish” — Dominican maxim, corrected to distinguishing before affirming/denying
• “formed faith” — faith acting through love
• “manifest” — from manus, “caught by hand” (Kasurik’s etymology, which he questions)
• “unfold” — Thomas’s explicare; De Koninck’s “unfold yourself”
• “free judgment” — liberum arbitrium, reason’s judgment plus will’s freedom [ed.: usually "free will"]
• “the free is cause of itself” — Aristotle, Metaphysics
• “maxime voluntarie” — what we do from love we do most voluntarily
• “gratis justificari” — Trent: justified freely, nothing preceding merits it
• “si ex operibus, jam non ex gratia” — Rom 11:6
• “merito congrui / non merito condigni” — fitting vs. worthy (condign) merit
• “impetratio” — the asking of prayer, resting on mercy
• “proportion of friendship” — why God fulfils the will of a man in grace for another

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas, ST I-II q.114 a.4 obj. 2-3 and replies, sed contra, body
• Thomas, ST I-II q.114 a.5 (whole article)
• Thomas, ST I-II q.114 a.6 obj. 1-3, replies, sed contra, body (to the end of the respondeo)
• Scripture quoted within: 1 Cor 3:8; 1 Cor 13; John 14:21; John 17:3; Job 14:4; Rom 4; Rom 11:6; Matt 9:2; James (prayer of the just); Dan 9:18; Luke 16; Jer 15; Heb 2 Mentioned:
• Augustine, On the Words of the Lord; Retractions; Epistle 186
• Gregory, “love does great things if it exists”; Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (opening)
• Council of Trent on justification (Leonine footnote, Denzinger)
• Glossa ordinaria on Matt 9:2 (Migne PL 114-115)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (happiness and political knowledge); Physics (snub nose vs. curved line; mathematics vs. natural philosophy); Metaphysics (the free is cause of itself); powers of the plant soul
• Thomas, treatise on faith, ST II-II; discussion of the virtues, I-II; commentary on John (division of the Gospel) (inferred)
• Albert the Great, quoted by Kasurik prefacing his translation of Thomas on Physics I-II
• Boethius (Alfred’s translation); De Koninck–Adler correspondence

His questions #

• “Charity more diminishes labor than increases it” — so is charity not the chief source of merit? Distinguish: labor from the magnitude of the work grows merit and charity increases it; labor from a reluctant will diminishes merit and charity removes it.
• “Can Mozart’s music be better than Mozart’s music?” No: one piece or performance is better than another, but nothing is before, after, or better than itself.
• “Never affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish — is that true?” You must distinguish first, then affirm one thing and deny another.
• “Does the logician direct all the sciences, or does the wise man?” Both: the logician in one way, the wise man in another and higher way.
• “What do you get from your parents?” Life, food, instruction — matching John 5, 6, 7-11.
• “Are diamonds a girl’s best friend? Is generosity why he deserves her?” No; love is the principal thing, generosity is not.
• “The philosopher is named from what?” Love of wisdom, because wisdom is his end.
• “Does a mother’s praise consist in that she clothes and feeds her children?” In that she does so because she loves them.
• Does Thomas’s sed contra (reward by debt) undermine the rejection of merit? Yes, at least in some way — if received as reward it is earned; the whole article is about reward.
• “Whether man can merit for another the first grace?” Ex condigno only Christ, as head of the Church; ex congruo yes, by the proportion of friendship, unless the other puts an impediment.