ARTICLE X.

WHETHER TEMPORAL GOODS FALL UNDER MERIT

The reply is in the affrmative, to the extent that they are useful to salvation. If, however, they are considered in themselves, they do not fall absolutely under merit, which aims only at eternal life and those things which are conducive to it. But they do fall under a sort of merit from a particular aspect, according to a certain fitness based on the benignity of God. Thus, in the City of God, Bk. V, chap. 15, St. Augustine remarks that a temporal reward was rendered to the Romans on account of certain good customs which they observed. So terminates the treatise on grace, intimately bound up with St.  Thomas’ principle (Ia, q. 20, a. 3) that “the love of God is the cause of goodness in things; nor does it presuppose, but rather imposes goodness in us.” Therefore grace is a living manifestation of this uncreated love which demands a return of love and of gratitude, according to the words of St. John’s First Epistle (4:19): “Let us therefore love God, because God first loved us.”

1 Cooperative actual grace is not required for all merit; for example, meritorious acts of the gifts of the Holy Ghost do not demand it. They proceed from operative actual grace, for the soul does not strictly move itself to them, but is moved by the Holy Ghost, but with free consent. (Cf. Ia IIae, q.68, a.1, 2, and 3; also St. Thomas on the Epistle to the Romans, 8:14.) 2 De gratia, tr. 16, de merito, disp. II, no. 9 3 De gratia, de merito. 4 The Nominalists hold that God can accept merely natural works as meritorious for eternal life; for example, dying on the battlefield in defense of one’s country, a heroic, ethically good act.

 Reply. This would not be merit de condigno, nor strictly de congruo, but at most de congruo in the broad sense; so that it would no longer be merit properly speaking. Hence this would be overturning even generally accepted nominal definitions, confusing all the divisions of merit; it would especially mean confusing merit de condigno with merit de congruo in the broad sense. But the definitions generally accepted are based upon the principle that it is opposed to the nature of things for those which are of an inferior order to be ordained to supernatural goods, as if they were merits of commensurate worth. In the same way, it is incompatible with merit de congruo in the strict sense, for such merit is based on the laws of friendship, and the sinner is not yet a friend of God.

5 It is certainly true that from all eternity God predetermined the act of charity of Christ dying on the cross and the hour of Judas’ betrayal, and yet both Christ’s act of charity and Judas’ act of treachery were free; cf. St. Thomas on John 13:1; cf. above, pp. 159ff.

6 Thus St. Thomas says at the beginning of article 4 of the present question: “A human act has the nature of meriting . . . by divine ordination whereby an act is said to be meritorious of that good toward which man is divinely ordained.”

7 Cf. De revelatione, Vol. I, chap. II.

8 Cf. Rouet de Journel, Enchir. patrist., Theological Index, nos. 320 f., for the testimony of the Fathers on this subject.  9 Since final perseverance can be obtained by prayer made in the proper way, that great promise made by the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary seems to refer to this manner of impetration; that is, final perseverance will be given to those who receive Holy Communion on the first Fridays of nine consecutive months.  

Grace: Commentary on the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, Chapter Twelve Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.