Strict justice, Aquinas argued, is only possible between equals, and since God and man are not equals there is never strict justice in God’s dealings with us. Further, God being God, He is never put in debt to His creatures, never obligated to give anything, unless by His own prior self-binding. McGrath writes, “Merit before God is based upon a divine ordination according to which God will reward a particular work with a specified reward. God cannot be thought of... Read more

According to Calvin, only in a qualified sense. McGrath says, “The later Franciscan school, the via moderna and the schola Augustiniana moderna regarded the ratio meriti as lying in the divine good pleasure; nothing was meritorious unless God chose to accept it as such. This teaching was extended to include the work of Christ; the merita Christi were regarded as being grounded in the acceptatio divina .” Calvin likely encountered this perspective at the University of Paris, and thus he... Read more

Augustine said that in crowning the merit of human works, he is simply crowning his own gifts: “si ergo Dei dona sunt bona merita tua, non Deus coronat merita tua tanquam merita tua, sed tanquam dona sua.” McGrath points out that this axiom concerning merit is set by Augustine in an eschatological context, not in the context of initial justification: “when God ‘crowns merits,’ God does so, not by justifying humans, but by bestowing upon them eternal life .” Only... Read more

Justification, Protestants confess, is a declaration of God as judge. But is this ever audible? Where? Is the judgment ever publicly promulgated? Is it merely the secret declaration in the heart? And if so, how can we be sure that the declaration we’re hearing is God’s voice of commendation and not our own self-justification? When these questions are raised, we can see the disastrous effects of the Protestant tendency (especially in revivalistic American Protestantism) to detach justification/soteriology from the church... Read more