DAY 354
CHALLENGE
“Catholic theology of merit is false. We can’t earn our place before God.”
DEFENSE
The Church does not teach that we can earn our place before God. Everything we receive from him is due to his grace.
When we first come to God and are justified, it is entirely by his grace, for “none of those things that precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification” (Trent, Decree on Justification 8).
After our initial justification, God’s grace leads us to do good works (Eph. 2:10) and he rewards these (Rom. 2:6–7), but still, “with regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator” (CCC 2007).
In terms of this “strict right,” Benedict XVI wrote: “We cannot— to use the classical expression—‘merit’ heaven through our works. Heaven is always more than we could merit, just as being loved is never something ‘merited,’ but always a gift” (Spe Salvi 35).
On the other hand, Scripture does indicate that we will receive rewards, that our actions can lay up “treasures in heaven,” and that God will reward patience in good work with glory, honor, immortality, and eternal life (see Day 312). There is a sense, therefore, in which each of these things is understood in Scripture as a reward for what we have done by God’s grace. However, good works receive a reward (i.e., become meritorious) not because we earn our place before God, but because they are done by his grace and because he freely promised to reward them.
“According to the Catholic understanding, good works, made possible by grace and the working of the Holy Spirit, contribute to growth in grace, so that the righteousness that comes from God is preserved and communion with Christ is deepened. 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” (JD 38).