In Christian theology, merit (Latin: meritum) accrues when a believer's good work incurs "a future reward from a graceful God".[1] The role of human merit in Christian life has been a point of dispute between Catholics and Protestants.
Both Catholics and Lutherans affirm the common Christian belief that a person's justification is not determined by that person's merit: "By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works".[2]
The Catholic Church further teaches that "When Catholics affirm the 'meritorious' character of good works, they wish to say that, according to the biblical witness, a reward in heaven is promised to these works. Their intention is to emphasize the responsibility of persons for their actions, not to contest the character of those works as gifts, or far less to deny that justification always remains the unmerited gift of grace".[2] The idea of merit underpins many controversial Catholic doctrines: prayers for the dead, indulgences, the Church's treasury of merit, and the intercession of saints.
Protestant and Reformed doctrine has not developed a positive theology of human merit, except for the merit of Christ that humans receive through divine grace, and also generally dismisses the idea that charitable good works by Christians have any intrinsic merit.
Merit bears resemblance to Thawab in Islam.
In Catholic philosophy, merit is a property of a good work which entitles the doer to receive a reward: it is a salutary act (i.e., "Human action that is performed under the influence of grace and that positively leads a person to a heavenly destiny")[3] to which God, in whose service the work is done, in consequence of his infallible promise may give a reward (prœmium, merces). It is treasure "laid up in heaven". Just as God is just to punish demerits, he is just to reward merits.
The Church has a figurative communal Treasury of Merit. Merit is transferable: it increases by sharing it: a person with merit who prays or acts effectively with that merit increases their own merit and transfers merit to the person prayer for or interacted with. This transferability is part of the Catholic doctrine of the Communion of Saints, which entails that salvation is more than an individual fiduciary arrangement but has communal involvement. It also underlies the doctrines of indulgences, prayers for the dead and the intercession of saints.
Prayer need not be made by someone who has merited any reward to be effective, nor is there any aspect of extortion or transaction: God also hears anyone "who prays appeals solely to the goodness, love, and liberality of God for the fulfilment of his desires, without throwing the weight of his own merits into the scale..." (known theologically as the "effect of impetration" effectus impetratorius)
Merit exists only in works that are positively good.
In Christian theology, humans possesses nothing of their own; all that they have and all that they do is a gift of God, and, since God is infinitely self-sufficient, there is no advantage or benefit which a human can by their services confer upon God. Hence on the part of God there can only be question of a gratuitous promise of reward for certain good works. For such works he owes the promised reward, not in justice or equity, but because he has freely bound himself, i.e., because of his own attributes of veracity and fidelity.
Many Catholic Scholastic theologians attempted to explain merit by distinguished two kinds:
Philosopher Richard Cross notes "Underlying it is the claim that the reward for condign merit is everlasting life, and that the reward for congruous merit is the gift of sanctifying grace ... "[4]
This early-scholastic distinction and terminology, which developed in the controversies with the Pelagians and Semipelagians, were again emphasized by Johann Eck, the famous adversary of Martin Luther (cf. Greying, "Joh. Eck als junger Gelehrter," Münster, 1906, pp. 153 sqq.). The essential difference between meritum de condigno and meritum de congruo is based on the fact that, besides those works which claim a remuneration under pain of violating strict justice (as in contracts between employer and employee, in buying and selling, etc.), there are also other meritorious works which at most are entitled to reward or honour for reasons of equity (ex œquitate) or mere distributive justice (ex iustitia distributiva), as in the case of gratuities and military decorations. From an ethical point of view the difference practically amounts to this that, if the reward due to condign merit be withheld, there is a violation of right and justice and the consequent obligation in conscience to make restitution, while, in the case of congruous merit, to withhold the reward involves no violation of right and no obligation to restore, it being merely an offence against what is fitting or a matter of personal discrimination (acceptio personarum). Hence the reward of congruous merit always depends in great measure on the kindness and liberality of the giver, though not purely and simply on his good will.
The relation between merit and reward furnishes the intrinsic reason why in the matter of service and its remuneration, the guiding norm can be only the virtue of justice, and not disinterested kindness or pure mercy; for it would destroy the very notion of reward to conceive of it as a free gift of bounty (cf. Rom., xi, 6).
If, however, salutary acts can in virtue of divine justice give the right to an eternal reward, this is possible only because they themselves have their root in gratuitous grace, and consequently are of their very nature dependent ultimately on grace, as the Council of Trent emphatically declares (Sess. VI, cap. xvi, in Denzinger, 10th ed., Freiburg, 1908, n. 810): "the Lord ... whose bounty towards all men is so great, that He will have the things, which are His own gifts, be their merits."
Another term used is supererogatory merit, which is merit given for doing above what a Christian is required.[8]
In Catholic teaching, for all true merit, there are seven conditions, of which four regard the meritorious work (viz. a work must be morally good, morally free, done with the assistance of actual grace, and inspired by a supernatural motive), two regard the agent who merits (viz. they must be in the state of pilgrimage and in the state of grace), and one regards God who rewards.
Apart from earlier dogmatic declarations given in the Second Synod of Orange of 529 and in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (see Denzinger, 191, 430), the Council of Trent upheld the traditional doctrine of merit by insisting that life everlasting is both a grace and a reward (Sess. VI, cap. xvi, in Denzinger, n. 809). It condemned as heretical Luther's doctrine of the sinfulness of good works (Sess. VI, can. xxv), and declared as a dogma that the just, in return for their good works done in God through the merits of Jesus, should expect an eternal reward (loc. cit., can. xxvi).
In the Latin version of his Assertion of Article Thirty Six (1521) Martin Luther denied the category of congruous merit, writing that Paul "wanted it to be understood that everything we are and do by our nature merits wrath and not at all grace."[4]
In his 1532 Commentary on the Sermon of the Mount, he noted that while the reward one gains from condign merit is much greater than that of congruent merit, the sort of good works said to attain each type of merit is similar. Luther thought it did not make sense that the two types of merit could be gained by similar actions when the benefit of condign merit is so much greater than the benefit of congruent merit.[9]
According to the doctrine of Calvin (Instit., III, ii, 4) good works are "impurities and defilement" (inquinamenta et sordes), but God covers their innate hideousness with the cloak of the merits of Christ, and imputes them to the predestined as good works in order that he may requite them not with life eternal, but at most with a temporal reward.