At the end of my post on final justification, I had an appendix at the end relating to the use of “merit” in the fathers and the medievals. I was particularly concerned with showing that our heavenly rewards are not based upon merit, which I defined as something along the lines of: that work which being done grants a right to a reward. I mentioned I was unsure at the time how to show that our heavenly rewards are not based upon ex pacto merit, seeing that they seemed to have the same components that ex pacto merit requires.
I now wish to suggest this solution. The Catholic Encyclopedia when defining congruent merit says that,
there are also other meritorious works which at most are entitled to reward or honour for reasons of equity (ex cquitate) or mere distributive justice (ex iustitia distributiva), as in the case of gratuities and military decorations. From an ethical point of view the difference practically amounts to this that, if the reward due to condign merit be withheld, there is a violation of right and justice and the consequent obligation in conscience to make restitution, while, in the case of congruous merit, to withhold the reward involves no violation of right and no obligation to restore, it being merely an offence against what is fitting or a matter of personal discrimination (acceptio personarum). Hence the reward of congruous merit always depends in great measure on the kindness and liberality of the giver, though not purely and simply on his good will.
If this is all that it meant when one speaks of congruent merit, namely, that there is a fittingness to reward, but no legal right upon which the reward is received on the basis of a work, then this is perfectly in line with what the Reformed mean to speak of when they speak on distributive justice. Compare Leigh:
[God's distributive justice is]
of reward, when God bountifully rewards the obedience of the creature with a free reward, 2 Thess. 1:5, 7; Matt. 10:41, 42; Mark 9:41. God bestows this reward not only on the godly, both by heaping divers mercies on them in this life, and by the fulness of glory and felicity in the life to come, but also on the wicked, whose moral actions he rewards with temporary rewards in this world, as the obedience of Jehu, the repentance of Ahab.
Such rewards are given as something fitting, not strictly earned in justice. With this category in mind, all we must do is subsume out eternal reward under this category of fitting reward, which nevertheless is not ex pacto merit, which bestows a right to a reward. Edit: After making this, I have found that Frans Burman also equates ex pacto merit with condign merit for precisely this reason. This makes everything much easier and neater.
The result of this is, as Becanus had already realized, "merit of congruity has not properly the relation of merit, but only of a certain suitableness."
To the objection that every promise implies a right, we can respond that this is not even true on the Catholic position. Take the following:
Congruous merit implies no previous contract or agreement, but only the kindness and generosity of the donor. Thus an employer may give his workmen a liberal bonus over and above their regular salary, not because they have a right to it but because he wants to show his appreciation of their services. Their salary would be merited condignly, whereas anything beyond would be gained congruously. Propriety suggests that employers occasionally favor their workmen with some evidence of good will; but if they fail to do so, they have not violated justice or done wrong to their employees.
In a comparable way God acts towards us in the supernatural order. Certain actions we perform He regards as worthy of merit in justice, which He has bound Himself to honor and on which we can depend with the surety of God's word. Others He prefers to consider dependent on His promise, perhaps, but not in justice. Thus a sinner making an act of perfect love congruously merits the state of grace, with something more than divine propriety but something less than strict equity. God does not owe him the grace of justification, but in His mercy has promised to infuse it under specified conditions and will be infallibly true to His promise.
Now, if even a Jesuit admits this, then we can be sure it is so.
To further defend the final point (about not every promise granting a right), this is from David Hollatz. I know at the end he seems to make it a matter of right not being conferred in strict justice, and I am not opposed in principle to speaking of a certain right that corresponds to congruent and not to condign merit and thus to a certain kind of promise rather than another kind of promise (and if you focus in on the phrase "as though exacting debt" then this I suppose would be the difference between the two types of rights insofar as man can demand reward in one but not the other), but the beginning where he affirms this statement is what's relevant to my point:
"not every promise confers a right (ius) to another to confer a thing, as though exacting a debt. For powerful and kind men sometimes seriously promise their commendation, intercession, promotion, or suffrage, which nonetheless cannot be required from them by a certain right, but is imputed to ... their humanity and veracity. As far as this reaches to divine promises, it is certainly impossible that God who is immutable and the most truthful would revoke them; nonetheless, it seems to bespeak too much pride to say that a mortal [man] obtains a right from the promise against God. [He gives an example about the relationship of a father and a son.]"
He goes on to say "that God renders according to works but not on account of the merits of works - that is, God renders according to the qualities of the works but not on account of the works as meritorious causes of eternal life." This is the point I am trying to make in that we should deny good works to be the meritorious cause of eternal life (which I define briefly as conferring a right in the relevant sense) as Turretin speaks at 20.6.XX or by comparison at 17.5.VII, but nevertheless can speak of them as what I would call congruently meritorious insofar as they are fittingly rewarded (and even from promise).
EDIT 4/20/2024:
Another and perhaps even better way to make the same distinction that I wish to make would be this: perhaps in a broader sense, the rewards for our good works (whether it be the degrees of Heavenly reward or even Heaven itself considered as a reward given to our works may be referred to as covenantal merit (and so condign under the definition I have given following Burman), but nevertheless, we can speak of two different kinds of meritorious causes: a more strict one which confers personal right and a broader one that confers real right. So if the condition for receiving my paycheck is that I reach out my hand, such an act confers real right, although personal right was given to me by the very fact that I had worked. It would then be the conferral of personal right that the Reformed deny when they deny that our works are meritorious causes of degrees of heavenly reward (see Turretin 20.10.V) or of Heaven itself, or of faith in relation to justification, or in sacramental causality or prayer.
On this way of working things out, what the Reformed are denying when they deny anything to be the meritorious cause of our salvation besides Christ’s obedience is the denial that such things confer personal right to life and the forgiveness of sins.
An easy example to tell the two kinds of causality apart, regardless of what we are calling them, would be this: the specified way of receiving your paycheck (according to the stipulations of the company) is to reach out your hand to take it. The act of reaching out your hand will be same kind of instrumentality as our good works have in relaiton to eternal life (or our works in relaiton to the degree of reward) whereas the work you did for your paycheck is the same kind of instrumentality in Christ's obedience. If the reaching out of my hand is made the basis upon which I am paid (instead of my work), confusion has resulted, and it is precisely this confusion which is at work whenever the Reformed are criticizing Romanists or Arminians or Neonomians or anyone else in their errors on justificaiton or merit (that is to say they, directly or indirectly, incorrectly identitfy what correlates to what kind of causality). That is, all others err in the material cause of the right to eternal life/remission of sins.