The Transformative Power of Grace and Condign Merit at the Council of Trent

173 The Thomist 79 (2015): 173-212 THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF GRACE AND CONDIGN MERIT AT THE COUNCIL OF TRENT CHRISTIAN D. WASHBURN Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity St. Paul, Minnesota CLEAR UNDERSTANDING of merit, as defined by the Council of Trent in canon 32 of the Decretum de iustificatione, will determine the nature and extent to which an ecumenical rapprochement can be made on the issue of justification. In the debate over justification at the Council of Trent, the council fathers addressed two questions concerning merit. First, “Is the unjustified able to merit condignly initial justification?”1 I will not discuss this question, since there was no serious theologian at any point during the Tridentine proceedings who maintained that it was possible to merit condignly initial justification. A second question, however, did agitate the minds of the fathers, which may be stated as, “Once one is transformed by inhering righteousness in the process of justification, is this justified Christian able to merit condignly?” Prior to the Second Vatican Council, most theologians seem to have held that Trent had actually defined the claim that the justified Christian is able to merit condignly, while in 1 This article prescinds from any discussion of the more complicated question concerning the role of congruous merit prior to initial justification. This topic has been treated by Heiko Augustinus Oberman, “The Tridentine Decree on Justification in the Light of Late Medieval Theology,” Journal for Theology and the Church 3 (1967): 2854 ; “Duns Scotus, Nominalism, and the Council of Trent,” in H. A. Oberman, The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992), 204-33; Hanns Rückert, “Promereri. Eine Studie zum tridentinischen Recht- fertigungsdekret als Antwort an H. A. Oberman,” Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche 68 (1971): 162-94. A 174 CHRISTIAN D. WASHBURN contemporary ecumenical discussions there has been a tendency to read the Tridentine doctrine on merit purely in terms of a gratuitous gift.2 In this article I will attempt to determine whether the fathers of the Council of Trent intended in canon 32 of the Decretum de iustificatione to define a doctrine of merit that is notionally equivalent to condign merit. To this end, in the first part of this article I will trace the conciliar debates and various schemata that led to the formulation of canon 32. In the second part I will offer a reflection on the final form of the decree in light of the debates. 2 F. X. de Abarzuza, O.F.M.Cap., Manuale theologiae dogmaticae, 2d ed. (Madrid: Ediciones Studium, 1956), 3:521; Severino Gonzalez, S.J., “De gratia,” in Iosepho A. De Aldama, S.J., Richardo Franco, S.J., Severino Gonzalez, S.J., Francisco A. P. Sola, S.J., and Iosepho F. Sagues, S.J., Sacrae theologiae summa, 4th ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca De Autores Cristianos, 1967), 4:694-95; Jean Herrmann, Institutiones theologicae dogmaticae, 7th ed. (Lyons: E. Vitte, 1937), 326; J. M. Hervé, Manuale theologiae dogmaticae, 16th ed. (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Bookshop, 1943), 3:243; H. Hurter, S.J., Theologiae dogmaticae compendium, 12th ed. (Innsbruck: Libraria Academica Wagneriana, 1908), 3:204; Ludovico Lercher, S.J., Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae, 3d ed. (Innsbruck: Feliciani Rauch, 1948), 4.1:109; J. Riviere, “Mérite,” Dictionnaire de théologie catholique contenant l'exposé des doctrines de la théologie catholique, leurs preuves et leur histoire, ed. E. Amann, E. Mangenot, and A. Vacant (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1928), 10.1: 757; Ludwig Ott, Grundriss der katholischen Dogmatik (Freiburg: Herder, 1959), 320; Christian Pesch, Praelectiones dogmaticae, 4th ed. (Freiburg im Breisgau: B. Herder, 1916), 5:247; Joseph Pohle and Arthur Preuss, Grace, Actual and Habitual: A Dogmatic Treatise, 6th ed. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co, 1929), 407; Adolphe Tanquerey, Synopsis theologiae dogmaticae, 27th ed. (Paris: Desclée et Socii, 1953), 3:195-96. In postconciliar ecumenical work, theologians have tended either to read Trent by avoiding the use of the terms condign and congruous as well as the concepts thereof, or to read the council as having affirmed merit as a reward to a promise. Carl J. Peter, “The Decree on Justification in the...