Introduction to Part 5: Misinterpretations
I have more understanding than all my teachers, for I meditate on your covenant decrees (Psalm 119:99).
In every field of thought, both theoretical and practical, members of a new generation will abandon certain traditions of the previous generation. They will rethink the received truths that were handed down by that generation. Sometimes—in fact most of the time—they will confirm most of these truths. But they always reject some of them. There is an old slogan: “Science advances, one funeral at a time.”
In Part 5, I survey three issues that have been misinterpreted by theologians and laymen. The first is the prohibition on interest, also called usury. This has not been taken seriously for at least a century. But, throughout the history of the church, beginning no later than the fourth century, there have been theologians who have denied the legitimacy of all forms of interest-bearing loans. The second is the jubilee year. This misunderstanding is much more recent. It began in the 1970s in Left-wing Christian circles. It was a justification for national governments, but especially the government of the United States, to use tax money to repudiate personal debts and other governments’ debts. The idea was soon picked up by some Christian leaders who advocated the same kind of debt repudiation, not for foreign governments, but for individual citizens. The third is inter-generational slavery. The church misinterpreted this issue until the nineteenth century.
The first misinterpretation, having to do with interest-bearing loans, began in the early church no later than the Council of Nicaea in 325. While there are still a few obscure Roman Catholic layman and non-theologians who still think this prohibition is valid, it has not been taken seriously by the Roman Catholic Church since the late nineteenth century. The second misinterpretation has not been taken seriously by elected governments anywhere in the world, but certain church groups have accepted it, including the Pope. The third misinterpretation led to a civil war in the United States of America, 1861–65. Then, within a matter of months of the defeat of the seceding Confederacy, Southern white Christians’ opinions backing slavery by an appeal to the Bible ceased, with only one exception: the publication in 1867 of Calvinist theologian Robert Dabney’s 1863 manuscript, A Defence of Virginia [and Through Her, of the South].
I devote space to these three misinterpretations because some Christians who do not understand my approach to Christian economics, which is based on the exegesis of texts, may jump to unwarranted conclusions. They may adopt slogans from the Christian Right that favor debt repudiation. They may think that this is in some way validated by the Mosaic law’s recommended practice, which was never enforced, the jubilee year. They may also conclude that the Mosaic law’s system of slavery indicates that the Mosaic law was somehow immoral. Any Christian who takes this approach walks into a theological minefield. It rests on a presupposition: the God of the Old Testament was essentially an immoral God, and Jesus broke with this God. Theologically liberal Christians hold such a view. Some humanists hold this view. It is exegetically incorrect. In my chapter on slavery, I show why it is incorrect.
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The complete manuscript is here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/department196.cfm