I say that out of Love God deigns in His Son to owe us some things; that his gifts are so transcendentally wonderful that we can be said, in Christ, even to have “merit.”
I understand you to say that the pre-Incarnation state of affairs of Psalm 8 persists.
To repeat myself, I think that, as in the differences over images — which may be a kind of diagnostic indication, come to think of it — we have different concepts of the meaning and implications of the Incarnation.
I think that grievous perversion of doctrine is no sign the doctrine is good or bad, except that “lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
Having merit in the sense of motivating and enabling a dying man, that is too drunk to see he is drowning, to accept the rescue offered him, then sobers him, and feeds him to have strength as they set off for a beautiful country.
And which he promises him to live in if he will trust his rescuer, and which also means trusting him as to catch and clean some difficult fish off the side of a boat, with the enablement he gives him, and works in his heart that trust and willingness to do so. And which fishing the rescuer does not need him to do, nor does he need the fish, as actually it would be less trouble to just make them, or do without them.
An inadequate analogy, but point is that the rescue was entirely unmerited, and the reward is not commensurate to the work, but it is rewarded as merit under the rubric of grace, not as if God was actually indebted to them for service, except to keep His word and perform His grace to souls which owe everything to him.
But may the Lamb receive the reward of His sufferings.