McGrath on Covenant, Calvin, and Cucumbers

From Alister McGrath's The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation:

“In the twelfth century, however, the origins of one of the most significant theologoumena of High Scholasticism may be detected: the idea that, as justification involves an ontological change in man, an ontological intermediate is required in the process of justification – and this intermediate was to be identified with the created habit of grace or charity.” (p. 79)

“For Ockham, the implication of created habits in justification is not a consequence of the nature of the process of justification, but results form a divine decision that they shall be thus implicated. To suggest that habits are involved in justification as a matter of necessity (ex natura rei) is to imply that God was subjected to external constraints in establishing the created order, which is unthinkable… Ockham exploits the tension between the absolute and ordained powers [of God] to demonstrate the contingency of the role assigned to created habits in justification… In effect, Ockham works with a concept of covenantal, rather than ontological causality: created habits are involved in the causal sequence of justification, not because of the nature of the entities involved (ex natura rei), but on account of the divine will (ex pacto divino).” (p. 80)

Speaking of the theologians of the via moderna, McGrath explains, “It is this pactum [‘covenant’ or ‘contract’ between God and man] established unilaterally by God, which constitutes the turning point of the doctrines of justification… God is understood to have imposed upon himself a definite obligation, embodied in the pactum, to regard the man who does quod in se est with the gift of justifying grace. If man meets the minimal precondition for justification…God is under a self-imposed obligation to justify him… It is considerations such as these which suggest that the later medieval period witnessed a general transition from a concept of ontological to covenantal causality… Thus, for example, the concept of ‘grace’ was no longer considered primarily as a created intermediate species interposed between man and God, but rather as an aspect of God’s disposition towards man.” (p. 81-82)

“… the later medieval tradition as a whole… adopted a strongly voluntarist approach to the basis of merit. This observation applied equally to the merits of Christ as to human merit… In the Institutio, Calvin adopts an identical position in relation to the merit of Christ… Calvin makes the clear that the basis of Christ’s merit is not located in Christ’s offering of himself (which would correspond to an intellectualist approach to the ratio meriti Christi), but in the divine decision to accept such an offering as of sufficient merit for the redemption of mankind (which corresponds to the voluntarist approach). For Calvin, ‘apart from God’s good pleasure, Christ could not merit anything…” (p.104-105)

And then there's this, just for fun:

“Erasmus complied a list of theological concerns at Paris which demonstrates precisely the issues that were debated with the via moderna. Two such questions may be noted. First, can God undo the past, such as making a prostitute into a virgin? ... Second, could God have become a beetle or a cucumber instead of a man? In its more usual form, this question was stated thus: could God have assumed the nature of an ass, or a stone, instead of a man?” (p. 98-99)

By the way, the answer of the via moderna theologians was "yes."