170
MERIT
MESSENGER
world of the saving revelation of God, and the recognition of this work by God in the exaltation of Christ, which yields Him the fruit of His work in the salvation of men, is, at the same time, in- cluded in the execution of God's own purpose of salvation. Thus the ethical doctrine of the work of Christ culminates ultimately in the wholly religious view of it (2 Co 3'^ ; cf. the subordination of the work of Christ to the grace of God in Ro
324-28).
Such is the outline of a doctrine of Christ's merit, as sketched in the NT. The agreement of it with the ethical lines of Christ's own general teaching on merit, as previously stated, is apparent. There is the same stress on the inner motive of obedience, the same domination of the whole subject by the idea of God's Fatherhood ; while the exaltation of Christ is the analogue of the gift to His peojile of tlie Kingdom, in which they share His Lordshii) (Lk222», 2Ti2i2).
Very different is the ecclesiastical doctrine of Clirist's merit, which, beginning with Ansehn's C'nr Deiis Homo, extends throughout both the Catholic and the Protestant scholasticism. Here an idea of merit is applied to the work of Christ, which is essentially the same as that of the Pharisaic theology, re- jected by Jesus. This idea exists as a general conception illus- trating the relation of man to God from the time of Tertullian onwards, who introduced from the vocabulary of Roman law the term ineritum, and its cognates ■m-ereri, promereri, de- inereri, to define it (cf. Harnack, Dogmengesr.hichte'i, iii. p. 16, n. 1). As employed by Anselm to elucidate the work of Christ, it includes the following points. (1) The work of Christ is re- garded as a voluntary work or performance, lying outside of tlie sphere of Christ's pi-oper obligation to God. Anselm thinks of Christ as bound as man to obedience to God in His life, but as sinless man, free from obligation to die : hence His voluntary death is a work, which He can and does offer to God to procure the salvation of men. (2) The value of this work to God is estimated, not qualitatively by its motive, but quantitatively by the dignity of the Person who performs it. (3) The reward of Christ's work follows from God's justice, and the conception of this is equally external with that of the work itself, tlie reward being transferable from Christ to His people just like a sum of money. ' Whom could He more justly make the heirs of His debt {i.e. the reward which God owes Him), which He does not Himself need, than His relatives and brethren'?' {Cur Deus Homo, lib. ii. cap. 9).
The Catholic schoolmen after Anselm, and the Protestant schoolmen after them, continue the Anselmic doctrine of merit, not, however, without many changes. Of these the most im- portant are as follows. Peter Lombard, following Ph 2»-ii, adds that Christ merited not only salvation for us, but exaltation and glory for Himself (Sent. lib. iii. dist. 18). Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus no longer deduce the reward of Christ's merit from God's justice, as does Anselm, but either from a relative justice or equity, such as that implied in Roman law by the relation of father and son, or lord and slave (Aquinas, Stanma Theolngioe, II. i. 104. 1), or from God's mere good pleasure (Scotus in Sent. lib. iii. dist. 20, (|U. 1). By the Protestant schoolmen the material content of Christ's merit is enlarged by the addition of the general obedience of Christ's life, as voluntary, to the special voluntary obedience of His death (which latter' they view not as a gift to God, but as an endurance of the penalties of sin). None of these changes, however, essentially alters the Anselmic con- ception of merit. Two points in particular stand fast throughout, viz. the idea of Christ's work as something voluntary- and un- owed, and the entirely external conception of it as nqvantum, whose \alue can be assessed and rewarded hv another quantum of corresponding value. Only in the idea, first fully developed, after Bernard and Lombard, by Aquinas, and continued especially in the Reformed theology, that the ' transfer ' of Christ's merit to His people is mediated through His mystic unity as Head with them as His members, is the hard, juristic outline of the Anselmic doctrine transcended (cf. Summa Theol. iii. 46. 1). By the end of the Protestant scholasticism, however, the disparateness of the traditional idea of merit from anything in ihe NT had be- come clear to the theologians within Protestantism of a critical tendency. The Arminian Limborch says of this idea, along with that of satisfa<>tion : 'Since they do not stand in Scripture, but have been invented by men, no one is bound to the meaning of them any further than it can be construed from the phrases of Scripture, to elucidate the sense of which they have been applied ' {Theologia Christiana, lib. iii. cap. 21. 1). In the period of theological reconstruction since Schleiermacher, the general tendency of theologians, so far as they have not simply repeated older ideas, or dissolved theology into philosophv, has been either to reject the term 'merit' altogether, as being too much associ- ated with the scholastic conception of it, or, if it has been retamed, to reinterpret it along more Scriptural lines. Ritschl, above all, has succeeded in transforming into firm dogmatic conceptions the outHnes of the NT doctrine, as above stated. See his exhaustive treatment of the whole subject in Justifica- tion and Reconciliation, vol. iii. [Eng. tr. p. 434 ff.]. Literature.— Schultz, 'Der sittHche Begrift' des Verdienstes