Ask Mr. Religion
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That said and 'understood', how can you believe God's grace is unmerited?
You will have to unpack that a wee bit for I am unwilling to make assumptions on what you actually mean. You have a frequent tendency to make sweeping statements loaded with unstated personal assumptions and then sit back to see if anyone takes the bait. I will not. :AMR1:
But since you brought the subject up, let me start by saying one must have a proper understanding of merit. Because we are prone to be “merit-mongers” in our fallen condition we must be careful not to give people the impression that we can, in our own strength, please God. One thing is important, therefore, in giving advice to an unregenerate (not yet born again) person, namely, to remind him of the danger of legality and self-righteousness. He must not suppose that by the use of the means of conviction—reading and hearing the word of God, avoiding all associations and practices that dissipate seriousness and quench conviction, and prayer that God would apply the truth to his conscience—he is doing a meritorious work that obliges God to the regenerating act. He must not imagine that 'by doing his own part,' as it is sometimes said, he can necessitate God to do His. This would make regeneration a debt—making God a debtor contrary to Matthew 20:1-16; Romans 11:35—not grace.
Condign merit is a situation where the action is in direct proportion to the reward, and where the action is of the kind necessary to obtain the reward. The example I use is very simple: when someone goes to purchase a car, and pays the full amount in cash, he has condignly merited the possession of the car by paying the money. In theology, there are two condign merit situations: Adam condignly merited Hell by his disobedience, and Jesus Christ condignly merited heaven for us by His obedience.
Congruent merit is similar to condign merit in that both condign and congruent merit have an action that matches in kind the reward. However, congruent merit is not sufficient in and of itself to merit the reward. Say a person has some money, but not enough money to purchase a car. Paying the money he has would not in and of itself merit possession of the car. However, if someone else chipped in and helped him, he would be able to own it. This is "merit with a little help" or "grace assisted help". In theology, this would be what Christians get to heaven by in works paradigms. Christians cannot intrinsically merit heaven, but they can, by God's helping grace, do enough works so that God will say it is enough, and forgive the rest. This is congruent merit. Protestants deny this kind of merit all through the loci. Romanists use this kind of merit in their system for good works meriting salvation (Christ providing the extra help), Arminians often unknowingly assume that their act of faith is meritorious, and Reformed folk never make these assumptions.
The last kind of merit is pactum merit, merit according to agreement, according to covenant. In this situation, the action does not correspond either in quality or quantity to the reward. A father promises his son that if the son gets a perfect score on his SAT exam, the father will buy him a car. Obviously, a son could not possibly go to a car store and turn in an SAT exam result and expect to walk out with a car. However, the father had bound himself to this agreement, and so if the son got said score, that would produce the car by means of the agreement. Considering Adam, we find that his obedience was owed to God. This means that Adam's works could not have merited heaven intrinsically. They were owed anyway. That rules out condign merit. And certainly congruent merit is wrong to describe Adam's works, since perfection was required by the agreement. There was no grading on a curve in the garden. That leaves merit according to pact. God bound Himself to give Adam eternal life (as in the glorified state) on condition of personal and perfect obedience. The basis for the giving of eternal life to Adam was Adam's non-condign-meriting works.
One will notice right away that there is a lack of symmetry between Adam's obedience and his disobedience. His disobedience condignly merits Hell. However, his obedience would only have merited Heaven by pact. However, the law of God requires condign merit of us now, a condition that only Christ can meet, since He did not owe obedience for Himself, and He offered up an infinitely efficacious merit on the cross.
AMR
