I want to ask a question, and I hope I can explain it. I'm not sure if this is something that Orthodoxy has anything to do with, or I just don't understand at all ... so I'm hoping for comments.
"Merit theology" is also under discussion in another thread (I think in TT) so maybe my ears perked up. Anyway - I've kept my car radio off for about a month, and I was hoping to find some music tonight. (There is almost never anything good.) But as I was flipping through our 3 religious stations, I heard on the Catholic one a statement I wanted to ask about.
The person was talking about whether or not the grace would flow to the person who received the Eucharist, and that this grace was "merited by Christ" by His crucifixion.
Frankly, I have no idea really what they are talking about. Should I understand this? Is this in the basis of Christ "paying for" our sins, perhaps?
Then I was thinking about it some more, and in my protestant days, grace was always defined as "unmerited favor". I wonder if the reason Protestants use that particular definition is in reaction against Catholic theology?
My understanding of grace is really that it is the energies of God shared with us, and that it comes - well, because of His grace, goodness, and mercy, not because of any merit really (as in us "earning" it). Though He may bestow His grace via the Eucharist, for example, and it is our right reception of it that allows us to receive the grace, rather than condemnation that could result if we receive wrongly.
I would appreciate comments on any of this really. Thank you so much.
I actually had a rather lengthy discussion of this with a Catholic "brother" (in the "avowed religious" sense of brother) and teacher of theology. I can't hope to summarize it all. But my main understanding is that the idea of merits evolved out of the idea of Christ making satisfaction for our sins on the Cross, in the sense of paying a debt that we incurred via Adam and can never repay. I believe in the RCC view, following Anselm, the debt is seen more as honor/obedience owed to the Father, than about punishment owed to us. At any rate, someone earlier mentioned "superabundant satisfaction." It makes little sense to me either, but the gist is that Christ "over-satisfied" our debt because he was sinless, and God, whereas Adam was only a man, and this "superabundant grace" now resides in the "treasury of merit" and that merit can be transferred and infused into us by the sacraments, works of mercy and the like.
He commented that this is very heavily tied to the thinking of Thomas Aquinas, and that for the last several hundred years, to study Catholic theology in seminary was essentially to memorize the theology of Aquinas. He was very well versed in Eastern fathers and Eastern theology, and commented that since Vatican 2, and especially in the last two Papacies (neither of whom were Thomist theologians I guess?), there's been more emphasis on recovering some of what came before Aquinas. And seen in this way, he said, things like "merit" and "purgatory" sort of collapse into something not terribly different from what Orthodoxy believes.
I spent so much time reading about the Reformation some years ago, that I have a good sense that the RCC theology of the day was very bent on teaching a concept of grace/merit that was quantifiable, and their explanations of Purgatory sound very financial. The Protestants rejected this (in part...more in a second), and Rome reacted by codifying it even more concretely in Trent and the theology that followed.
As to the Protestants...if you read explanations of the more classical reformers like Calvin, you see that ultimately their view of salvation still heavily depends on merit. They still agree that Christ merited salvation for us, though with a much heavier emphasis on suffering and punishment. Where they differ, is that they insist that this saving merit is "imputed" (i.e. legally credited to our names) when we place our faith in him, rather than being infused into our souls through sacramental means.
At root, both systems seem to agree that man's basic problem of sin is a debt owed to God, Christ's essential function was payment of that debt, and that having "purchased" or "merited" salvation for us, we now are saved when our accounts are credited with his works. They differ in the details of how we withdraw from the ATM at the Bank of God