Condign and congruent merit
Aspect of Roman Catholic theology signifying merit with the dignity of Christ
Condign merit (meritum de condigno) and congruent merit (or congruous merit, meriturm de congruo) refer to two kinds of merit in Catholic theology. Condign merit, which is merit in the proper sense, refers to God's obligation to fulfill his promise to reward man's good works. Congruent merit, on the other hand, refers to the rewards that God gives men for reasons of fittingness or mercy, but apart from any obligation. As the Catholic Encyclopedia explains, "Condign merit supposes an equality between service and return; it is measured by commutative justice (justitia commutativa), and thus gives a real claim to a reward. Congruous merit, 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." Whenever merit precedes grace, it is called congruent merit.
Comparisons
Congruent merit is the equivalent of condign merit but applied to an unregenerated person by the goodness of God. In the first case, God has obligated himself, by his promises to reward His Son's merits in his children. In the second case, God bestows his merit to those who seek him in faith not from obligation but from mercy and love. In neither case is God obligated by the human. In the first case, God is obligated by his promises to those who love him.
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This entry incorporates text from “Condign and congruent merit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.