The second chapter of the book is the best chapter as it features less of Perkins’s own theorizing. It still has issues, for sure, but the citations from the Reformed help it retain value.
Chapter 2
Their system then focuses on obtaining eschatological blessing, namely by works both before and after the fall. The two types of merit differ in that condign merit is the strict sense' which supposes an equality between service and return; it is measured by commutative justice justitia commutative), and thus gives a real claim to a reward? On the other hand, congruent merit is 'quasi-merit (meritum inadoequatum sive de congruo)' which owing to its inadequacy and the lack of intrinsic proportion between the service and the recompense, claims a reward only on the ground of equity? In sum, a work of condign merit is truly, intrinsically, and proportionately worthy of its reward. On the other hand, a work of congruent merit obtains reward only because God concedes to accept it as fitting? As the Reformed see it, the problem with condign merit, which even this entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia admits, is that man can never de facto make a claim on God for reward. The reason is that our creaturely works are never intrinsically proportionate to the reward of supernatural, eschatological life with God in the new creation. (53)
The main issue with this paragraph is that Perkins is working only on a Thomist view of merit, which is somewhat understandable given his citation of the Catholic Encyclopedia which has that bias. I’ve dealt with the correct understanding of merit here and the rest of my comments here will reflect what I’ve already written and will be hard to understand without reading that post. Perkins ought to know that “condign merit” in itself does not say anything about whether the proportion to just reward is intrinsic or extrinsic to the reward since the Scotists hold to condign merit and yet hold that the proportionality to a reward in justice is extrinsically given to the work by covenant. This, in fact, just is the Reformed view of ex pacto merit and anyone who compares the Scotist’s description of condign merit with the Reformed’s description of ex pacto merit will see this. Adam’s works, if they were properly performed, were sufficient by God’s covenant for earning him a right in justice to the reward of the covenant. This is precisely what Scotist condign merit means. The idea of “proportion” in relation to a reward necessarily implies that it be extrinsic since any “value” or “worth” is entirely defined in relation to covenant stipulations which decide that this action is to be recompensed with this reward. There is no inherent value or worth or proportion to any work considered apart from covenant because apart from covenant no work is related to a reward. This work is proportionate to this reward because God has decided it would be accepted for a reward and nothing more.
Then, as the Reformed see it, the problem with congruent merit, especially as applied to our situation as sinners after the fall, is that it posits that God counts at least less than perfect, if not sin-stained, works as acceptable for earning grace and supernatural rewards. This chapter shows how the Reformed found Rome's whole system of merit wanting. Its historical contribution establishes real precedent in the Reformed tradition for using covenantal merit as our way to address the issue of the true disproportion between creaturely works and eschatological reward, contra Rome's condign-congruent distinction. (53)
Per the above, properly understood, the Reformed are not really contra Rome’s condign-congruent distinction. Our view of ex pacto merit aligns with the Scotist view of condign merit where it is formally the covenant which creates merit. To say that God was bound by the justice of the covenant to reward Adam with the stipulated reward for his works is nothing else than to say that Adam’s works were (extrinsically) proportionate to a reward in justice, which is condign merit. Adam’s works would have been adequate, by the covenant, for the reward in justice.
Congruent merit, properly understood, I covered as best I could in my post on merit but, put simply, congruent merit “has not properly the relation of merit, but only of a certain suitableness” and is what we talk about whenever we talk about God “rewarding” a certain work in a broader sense that does not deal with giving the right to a reward in justice, as we might speak of God rewarding “the wicked, whose moral actions he rewards with temporary rewards in this world” (cf. Leigh there) or how God will reward our good works with degrees of glory in Heaven. God is not obligated in justice to give these rewards and thus we do not say they are “ex pacto merited” in the same way we would of Adam. But properly understood, this is a coherent category that the Reformed do not really reject except in name as many of them equate condign with intrinsic and congruent with extrinsic, thus losing the real distinction the Romanists make. The Reformed opposition to “congruent merit” was not focused on the concept of “congruent merit” per se, but rather on the use of congruent merit by men such as Biel as it related to natural actions meriting supernatural reward as Perkins notes on pages 57-59. Perkins has noted the historical Reformed tendency to equate condign with strict/proper/intrinsic merit and congruent with ex pacto merit here and in the current chapter, but evidently he thinks that this is the same way that the Romanists themselves divide condign and congruent. But it is not, as I have explained above, and this appears to be why Perkins is making this mistake in his assessment of Rome’s view. You can read Alsted retain the more traditional understanding of condign as about proportion of merit (without regard to it being “intrinsic” or “extrinsic”) and congruent as only about promise but not justice, the latter being the way God will reward us according to our good works and the former being the way God would have rewarded Adam. John Tombes also implicitly provides evidence of this more traditional (and more accurate to Rome) way of understanding the two when he states that “yea, [Romanists] teach that a man may by his good works merit of condignity (either by virtue of Gods promise, or the worth of the work) eternal life.” (pg. 136 here) Again, condignity is not about intrinsic worth per se, but about just proportion, which should be obvious given both the Scotists and the Thomists hold to it. Finally, Patrick Gillespie says “There was an equality of proportion or merit betwixt the conditions required from, and performed by Christ, by vertue of this Covenant, and the conditions promised and performed unto Christ by this Covenant” and this merit was “de condigno, there being a just and equal proportion betwixt the fault committed, and the satisfaction given, and betwixt the reward promised and given to Christ, and the obedience required from and performed by him.” (69-70 here). Once again, merit of condignity may be spoken of in terms of (extrinsic) proportion in relation to the stipulations of the covenant. In fact, Perkins himself provides evidence for equating ex pacto merit with condign merit (that is, merit proportionate to reward) on page 65 when Thomas Adams names ex pacto merit as a subset of merit proportionate to reward (that is, condign) and even contrasts it with ex merito, by which he evidently means strict merit (which is, again, another species of condign merit). Compare my chart on my post on merit.
Second, its theological contribution establishes a precedent for addressing the issue of disproportionality between human works and heavenly reward through covenantal structures. As the previous chapter
outlined, the major challenge in the whole nature-supernature/grace discussion, which comes critically to bear on the covenant of works, in the issue of proportionality between human works and heavenly reward As chapters three and four detail, Rome, to overcome this challenge, posited the ontological solution that grace elevates human nature. As this chapter argues, Reformed theology contained the impulse to address this issue through the biblical category of covenant. This chapter's thesis demonstrates how Reformed theologians saw the issue of merit as a covenantal issue. This Reformed approach stands in stark relief to Rome's view of merit as related to a perceived ontological problem resolved through their use of nature and grace. This Reformed solution to the problem of proportionality implicitly shows again, as the previous chapter noted, that the Reformed have a stronger ontological starting point. Given the premise that Adam's original righteousness was a concreated rather than a superadded gift built into our nature, the Reformed view of original righteousness is more ontological than Rome's in the sense that the issue of proportionality did not involve an ontological problem with our nature concerning the sort of works that Adam could perform. That our solution to the issue of proportionality was covenantal and judicial confirms that Reformed theologians did not recognize the disproportion as being a problem with our nature as such. We should not see the problem to address in the proportionality issue as involving any attempt to overcome our analogous position in the Creator-creature distinction as if merit should rest on a true ontological proportion between us and God. The theological payoff from this chapter's argument provides a bulwark against the idea of an ontological solution for the disproportion between Adam's creaturely works and his prospective eschatological reward. We need to think through what connects the condition of perfect obedience, as with Adam in the covenant of works, to the prospect of obtaining supernatural, glorified life in the new creation. The competing solutions to the issue of proportionality force a choice between an ontological model or some alternative. The Reformed tradition contains tools for retrieval that allow us to tackle this challenge with appeal to our own architectonic principle of covenant without blurring into certain Roman patterns about ontology. (53-54)
There’s a lot here, but to put things simply, Perkins is confusing two different notions of proportionality. The first notion is proportionality to a reward in justice. We have already covered this in the above. The Thomists hold that there is an intrinsic proportionality to a reward in justice by virtue of the Holy Spirit’s work of grace in us. The Scotists, more accurately distinguishing, hold there can only ever be an extrinsic proportionality to a reward in justice that is given by virtue of covenant. Covenant stipulates what works ought to be performed and rewards them in justice. In either case, what proportion here is concerned with is establishing a positive legal right to a certain reward. So we can say that Adam’s works were made proportionate to eternal life, because this was the promised reward Adam was to be given on the basis of these works.
The second notion of proportionality is when a certain work is intrinsically ordered to a certain end. Works of grace always have the beatific vision as their intrinsic and proper end. Works of pure and undefiled nature always have natural beatitude in God as the first cause and final end as their intrinsic and proper end. Simply by virtue of having grace, Adam is proportioned to the beatific vision, even if he never actually achieves it. Likewise, simply by possessing original righteousness, Adam is proportioned to his natural end, even if he never actually achieves it. It is this sense of proportionality Turretin speaks of when he says:
"We confess that there is a relation of order and of connection, such as exists between the means and the end, the way and the goal, the contest and the crown, the antecedent and the consequent. Also there is a fitness and proportion as it were between things of the same order, such as between sowing and the harvest, the firstfruits and the mass, the beginning and the completion of a thing."
By the way, Harrison quotes this on page 77, but apparently fails to see that this sort of proportion cannot exist between natural works and works and the end of eternal life since they are not “things of the same order” but belong to different orders (nature and grace).
That these two notions of proportionality are not the same should be evident by considering the following: Scotus holds,
“That God of his absolute power could well have accepted a nature capable of beatification – with the special acceptance stated before – existing in its pure natural state; and similarly its act, for which there was a purely natural inclination, he could have accepted as meritorious” (Ordinato, Book I, 17th Distinction, 160).
In other words, God, in His absolute power, could have chosen to reward purely natural actions of Adam with eternal life. In this situation, Adam’s actions would have been proportionate to eternal life in the first sense (for they would have been rewarded with eternal life in justice). But they would not have been proportionate to eternal life in the second sense (for natural works have no proportion to a supernatural end). Or we can consider that Adam by virtue of living a righteous life in a state of pure nature and apart from any covenant would have been proportioned to his natural end, but his works would not have had any proportion (in justice) to obtaining a legal right to that natural end apart from a covenant. Or we can say that Adam in grace was proportioned to the beatific vision, even if no covenant was ever made with him to establish his works as meritorious of a right to the beatific vision.
Put differently, proportionality may be viewed in terms of reward and in terms of end. While it is entirely possible that God could have decided to reward purely natural works with eternal life in terms of reward, Scotus continues,
“He is not believed so to have made disposition that pure nature or its act he would thus accept, because that ‘an act from purely natural resources is meritorious’ comes close to the error of Pelagius. Therefore it is more likely believed that he accepts nature and its act as meritorious through a supernatural habit.”
In God’s ordained power (or at the very least in his actual power), it is fitting that the reward and the end coincide. God wills that the means be fitting to the end. God willed for Adam to reach a supernatural end and so He gave him supernatural means to achieve that end. Even someone like Thomas Goodwin, who held that in point of fact Adam was never going to be given a supernatural end, well understood that if he was going to be granted such an end, he ought to be given supernatural means to obtain it. Conversely, if God willed only to have granted to Adam a legal right to permanent natural life, he would not have given Adam supernatural means to achieve this end. Thus, the works required of Adam in the covenant of works were at the very least modally supernatural and so required supernatural grace. Junius makes the point that “The natural, as such, was within the capability of man; as it was related and adjusted to grace, it could not be observed without supernatural grace.” That is, while there were certain natural acts required of him in the covenant of works which, as such, Adam could have obeyed without grace (e.g. not eating of the tree), insofar as these acts were “adjusted to grace,” Adam’s acts were modally supernatural and thus required supernatural grace for Adam to obey. God did not simply require that Adam have a natural faith, hope, and love which pure nature is capable of, but specifically required of him a modally supernatural faith, hope, and love (i.e. the theological virtues), which only a graced natural is capable of. Furthermore, the very nature of at least some of Adam’s actions, Junius contends, evidences their supernatural character. He points especially to Adam’s naming of the animals, which he sees a supernatural prophetic act:
"For this reason, to this particular principle of his nature was added (superadditus) a singular principle of grace for Adam, by which his intellective will was acting, singularly moved, above its natural mode. Hence, those words of Genesis 2:23 announced by that prophetic spirit: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Hence also in the same place, verse 20, the imposing of names to every single animal and many other things, which the intellect would never have been able to exert by its own insight or by the powers of its natural will."
To be clear, Junius does not mean that the bare act of coming up with names for animals is beyond man’s natural ability. What he does mean is that Adam’s actions evidence a particular prophetic insight and thus reveal that he was given a principle of grace which raised his faculties above their natural mode that he might be given supernatural insight. Thus, if at least some of Adam’s actions in the Covenant of Works were supernatural, he furnished with the supernatural grace required to perform these actions (cf. here).
Thus I hope it is clear why Perkins does injustice to Rome when he suggests that they think “merit rest[s] on a true ontological proportion between us and God.” No Romanist thinks that our works can merit from God in a strict sense and due to ontological proportion. But they do think (as do we) that works must be proportionate (in some sense) to the reward in order for them to be called merit. When they speak of an ontological reproportioning, they have in mind the second notion of proportionality we have covered. Our nature must be raised above itself by grace in order to be ordered to its supernatural end. The only reason Rome connects their view of the donum to their view of merit is because, as Scotus noted above, Rome holds that in point of fact, any merit must proceed from a supernatural principle because God has willed only to reward such acts with eternal life. But if we are following Scotus’s understanding that merit is defined entirely in relation to covenant, then the donum and merit are not otherwise related and Perkins ought not to reject the former because we deny the latter to our works. Adam was given the donum as a principle which would raise his works to a supernatural mode in accordance with the supernatural end and works that God would have him perform and was promised condign merit would arise out of these works. We are given the donum to raise our works to a supernatural mode in accordance with the supernatural end and works God would have us perform and no condign merit has been promised to these works. You can have one without the other. The inseparable association Perkins has created between merit and the donum oddly enough concedes the Romanist view of merit. But since we do not share in the Romanist view of merit, we can incorporate the donum (as the Reformed historically did) without concerns about present condign merit, for we do not hold, as the Thomists do, that merit is intrinsic to works of grace, nor do we hold, as the Scotists do, that God has covenantally ordained merit to our works of grace. So why are we even discussing this? I will not be spending more time on merit than necessary in this review as I see it as nothing more than a red herring that obscures the real issues behind nature and grace.
Finally, I would add that even on Scotus’s hypothetical where a man merits glory out of pure nature, one would still need to posit grace at least in the reception of glory. So you cannot escape matters of “ontology” as Perkins would like to. If someone is experiencing the beatific vision, they are receiving grace and their nature has been perfected by it.
As an aside, Scotus’s hypothetical is taken up by Samuel Rutherford in Covenant of Life, 22, which Perkins cites but does not understand. Rutherford’s primary concern there is to establish against Arminius that God could reward a natural work with eternal life. He just wants to make the point that it is formally the covenant which is providing the proportion to a reward and because of this it follows that God could even reward a natural act with eternal life. As far as that goes, he isn’t explicating what he thinks regarding whether Adam also had grace, which he more fully does in his Examination of Arminianism where he clearly affirms Adam did in fact possess supernatural grace. Secondly, Rutherford is excluding the mode of the work which Adam was commanded to do and only considering the fact that the law given to Adam not to eat of the fruit was in itself something that he was able to perform in his natural powers and in doing this I think he’s following the same line of argumentation that Junius does in the Fourteenth Proposition of his correspondence of Arminius (both men are addressing the exact same argument from Arminius). To be sure, both Rutherford and Junius would say there’s other requirements Adam had in the Covenant of Works which involved works that were at least modally supernatural (and Junius says Adam had the natural law “adjusted to grace” as that "The natural, as such, was within the capability of man; as it was related and adjusted to grace, it could not be observed without supernatural grace" because even natural actions insofar as they are modally supernatural/related to grace require supernatural grace) but they’re trying to focus in on a very specific point from Arminius. Here's that part of Junius: https://ccel.org/ccel/arminius/works3/works3.iv.xvi.html The line of thought is very close to what Rutherford is getting at there.
Chamier’s appeal to covenant merit was far from a voluntarist construct since he has Christ’s merits in view. Christ’s merits are undeniably real (realiter), not some prescript of nominalism. (62)
This is a good example of the many nonsensical sentences Perkins has packed this book with. Chamier’s appeal to covenant merit was “far from a voluntarist construct,” for what reason? Because “Christ’s merits are undeniably real.” Perkins writes as if voluntarism is opposed to realism and not to intellectualism. This sentence simply makes no sense. What does it matter to the question of Chamier’s voluntarism that Christ’s merits were “real.” And what does Perkins mean by Christ’s merit being “real”? We aren’t told. Nothing Chamier has said has anything to do with explicating how Christ’s merits are “real,” so we’re left to guess what Perkins means here. And on what basis does Perkins assert that Chamier’s view is far from voluntarism (other than, of course, by equating voluntarism with nominalism)? Look at what Chamier has said:
merit by the covenant, whereas it does not have the strength to obligate on its own account, nevertheless, it does have it from the arrangement, so that either a full or greater reward for the work is owed to it.
…
That is by the promise it has strength to merit so far as by its arrangement by which reward is expected... indeed merit of such value is by the arrangement, but furthermore the method of the arrangement pays from only the will of the one who arranges
Chamier clearly holds that merit comes only from “the will of the one who arranges.” It takes a bold scholar to claim that Chamier’s view of merit is “far from a voluntarist construct” but not only does Perkins claim this, this is all that Perkins claims in this regard! Perkins’s only comment as it relates to voluntarism after citing this passage is to deny that Chamier is voluntaristic in his conception of merit. I will trust the reader to believe his own eyes. Chamier provides support for what we have already said: There is no inherent value or worth or proportion to any work considered apart from covenant because apart from covenant no work is related to a reward. This work is proportionate to this reward because God has decided it would be accepted for a reward and nothing more. Just like we’ve seen in Rutherford and Scotus, Chamier holds that the formal principle of merit is the covenant itself. Calvin’s comments that “works have no intrinsic dignity but are meritorious by the covenant” and that “this principle is true: the reward for works hangs from the voluntary promise of the law” (62-63) Perkins says “might gesture toward a more voluntarist underpinning than Chamier’s” but who does not see that Perkins has pulled this conclusion out of thin air! What Chamier has said is no different than what Calvin has said! And yet Chamier is somehow “far from” voluntarism, but Calvin is not?! He then even goes on to talk about the contrast between them–where he is getting this contrast of course being unknown to all readers living in this plain of reality.
“Man, therefore, by the very fact that he was made according to God’s image, has been constituted as in a covenant with God” (66)
This is a quote from Johannes Cocceius, whom I will grant to Perkins, but the issues with making the Covenant of Works intrinsic to our nature still apply. Perkins is following in the same error Cocceius made: making a contingent and biblical-theological category such as covenant a part of human nature. And it is surprising to me he does not see the implications of statements such as “the principle of covenantal merit is bound concreatedly into imago Dei.” I am currently made in the image of God. Therefore I must be currently bound to covenantally merit. Christ was made in the image of God. Was he under the Covenant of Works then? He must have been if it is so constitutive of human nature lest we say that Christ was not human. And what then was the point of the Covenant of Redemption if he was able to merit just from being made in the image of God? Now, to be fair to Perkins, he later claims to have refined “Cocceius’ point to avoid equating the image of God and the covenant” but how he is supposed to have done so is extremely unclear as we will see in chapter 6.
“Because there was no grace in the case of Adam, the one building favor, when everything he would have was from God”…Braun’s denial of grace for Adam is further interesting, entailing that Adam needed to fulfill the covenant by natural strength without supernatural assistance. (71)
The first quote is from Johannes Braun, the second is Perkins’s comments on the quote. Perkins has misread Braun here and also provided a strange translation (Perkins has here oddly rendered the technical “gratia gratum faciens,” that is, “grace making pleasing” oddly as “the one building favor” even though he recognizes it as a technical phrase elsewhere). Here is a better translation of that section: “Because in Adam there was no grace that makes one pleasing to God, since everything he had came from God.” One can take this as a denial that Adam had grace making pleasing to God, but this would not be a denial of all supernatural to grace to Adam, but simply the denial of gratia gatum faciens. But Braun may be even be read as simply making the point that the grace making Adam pleasing to God was extrinsic to him and from God rather than from anything naturally arising from Adam (cf. le Blanc’s treatment of the Reformed divisions of grace which makes this point). Either way, this quotation from Braun does not affirm that Adam was without grace/supernatural assistance and had to fulfill the covenant by his own natural strength, as Perkins claims it does.
Turretin connected the covenant of works closely to Adam's created nature, so linking the law's demands to Adam's upright state. This covenant is natural 'because it was established in human nature as it was originally created by God, and in its integrity or abilities.’ The covenant is then legal 'because the condition on man's part was the observation of the natural law, which he had stamped into him.’ Turretin stated that Adam's reward would have been everlasting life, but the condition was his perfect, personal, and proper obedience. He argued that any help that God gave to Adam ‘did not extend to pouring any new virtue into him, but only to revealing the power of that strength which he had received.’ Notably, even Adam's virtues, which are fruits of faculties, are not new or superadded to human nature. This point highlights how the Reformed were responding to the Roman view of the nature-grace distinction, by-and-large rejecting the donum superadditum.
Turretin’s point at the end is clearer in context:
"Although man was already bound to this obedience by a natural obligation as a rational creature, necessarily subject to the dominion of God and his law, yet he was more strongly bound by a federal obligation which God so stipulated that man-by the powers received in creation-could perform it, although in order that he might actually perform it, he still needed the help of God both to actuate these faculties and powers and to preserve them from change. This help did not tend to the infusion of any new power, but only to exercising the efficacy of that power which he had received. Now this did not belong properly to the covenant of nature, but always depended on the most free good pleasure (eudokia) of God; otherwise the covenant of nature had been immutable, and man had never sinned."
Adam did not require a new infusion of virtue in him in order to avoid sin. He had already been given infused grace, which is why Turretin says the help “did not tend to the infusion of any new power, but only to exercising the efficacy of that power which he had [already] received.” That is all Turreitn intends to deny here. But what Turretin does affirm here is that Adam would still have needed actual grace in order to avoid sin. Perkins leaves that part of the quotation out, but this would have made Turretin's point clear: actual grace is presupposing habitual grace here. By leaving out Turretin's comments, he obscures the logic of Turretin that Adam only needed to be given actual grace to avoid sin because he was already in possession of habitual grace. My point here is that Turretin's use of actual grace is tied to the fact that Adam had already received habitual grace/the donum, both being of the supernatural order because the latter flows out of the former. Contra Perkins, Turretin’s entire point here does not deny the donum superadditum, but rather assumes it. Superadded virtues had already been infused in Adam and so he would not need a new infusion of them in order to avoid sin, but only the exercise of the superadded virtues he had already received. See what Turretin says elsewhere:
"Some are wont to express this negation of grace by desertion; not privative (as if internal and habitual grace already given were taken away), but negative (by which that not yet given is suspended). But since desertion seems properly to suppose some antecedent culpability of the one deserted, it is better to use the word negation or "not-giving," so that God may be said not to have given to man actual grace efficaciously determining Adam to stand (from which negation sin would indeed follow necessarily by a necessity of consequence and hypothetical on the part of God, but still freely on the part of man who was conscious that he was impelled to sin by his will alone through no internal necessity)" 9.7.15
"Adam after his fall had the image still (as also his posterity even now have), since they are said to be made after the image of God. Yet this must be understood only relatively (as to certain natural remains of that image) and not absolutely (as to spiritual and supernatural qualities which are evidently lost and must be restored to us by the grace of regeneration)" 5.10.16
Turretin affirms Adam had received an infusion of habitual grace. His point in Perkins’s quotation is simply to deny that he needed a new one in order to avoid actual sin.
This should also help one understand Turretin’s point about the covenant of nature being natural insofar as “it was established in human nature as it was originally created by God, and in its integrity or abilities.” In saying this, Turretin does not exclude the supernatural virtues but rather comprehends them in “human nature as it was originally created by God” (refer back to part 1 here https://brandoncorleyschoo.wixsite.com/brandoncorley/post/further-notes-on-nature-grace-and-original-righteousness). Adam was equipped from the start with the ability and power to perform all that which the covenant commanded—whether natural or supernatural. In this very specific sense is the covenant called “natural,” but Turretin should not be taken to mean that the covenant is formally natural or a part of nature, indeed he denies this and rather affirms it is superadded to nature:
By his own right, God could indeed have prescribed obedience to man (created by him) without any promise of reward. But in order to temper that supreme dominion with his goodness, he added a covenant consisting in the promise of a reward and the stipulation of obedience. (VIII.iii.2)
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