Conclusion to Part 5
The first to plead his case seems right until his opponent comes and questions him (Proverbs 18:17).
For a millennium and a half, the Roman Catholic Church opposed interest-bearing loans. So did Eastern orthodoxy. This outlook was not challenged by any major theologian until John Calvin began to make modifications in the middle of the sixteenth century. Today, no major theologian in the Roman Catholic Church accepts the prohibition. The church’s leadership changed its collective mind in the late nineteenth century.
With respect to the prohibition against usury, the Christian church did not do its homework for a millennium and a half. This was a serious mistake. The best that we can say for it is that the church by the late Middle Ages had found theological work-arounds that enabled businessmen to evade what the church had clearly taught since at least the Council of Nicaea. I quote the great expert in these matters, John T. Noonan. He was the premier historian of the Catholic Church’s position on usury/interest. He was an American judge, professor, and distinguished Catholic historian. In 1999, he wrote this summary of the Church’s shift in views. The article appeared in the Catholic magazine, America. “Beginning about 1150 the moral rule was laid down that it was wrong to make a profit from a loan. ‘Lend freely, hoping nothing thereby,’ was papally interpreted as a commandment. Popes, councils, bishops, theologians joined in the condemnation of usury, understood as anything added to the principal of a loan. In the 16th century, as the economy of Europe became more commercial, profitable alternative ways of extending credit were recognized by theologians engaged in a fierce battle with curial conservatives. By the 18th century the old usury rule was a shadow, formally maintained by the papacy, ineffective in practice. By the 20th century, investments in banks were commonplace for popes, bishops and ordinary Christian folk. What had been prohibited had become lawful.”
With respect to the interpretation of the jubilee year as justifying widespread debt repudiation in the modern world, I am aware of no major theologian who has defended this position in print. The idea is unacceptable in the modern world generally, and by refusing to invoke the actual text of the jubilee law, the political activists who have promoted the idea should not be taken seriously. They do not take the Mosaic law seriously. It is simply the misuse of the Bible to promote an idea that the Bible never taught.
The Mosaic laws governing slavery were never studied carefully by Christian theologians until the late eighteenth century. That was when the issue of abolitionism became a major political issue. The abolitionists did not invoke the key passage that would have defended their position: Christ declaration of his ministry is the fulfillment of the Jubilee year (Luke 4:18–19). [North, Luke, ch. 6] The defenders of slavery obviously did not quote it. They quoted Leviticus 25:44–46, and they quoted it often. [North, Leviticus, ch. 30.]
Most Christian theologians do not take seriously the Mosaic law. They do not think that most of the Mosaic law is binding in the modern world or in New Testament times generally. With respect to the economic provisions of the Mosaic law, neither the theologians nor the political activists are serious about studying in detail what these laws actually taught. They do not offer a clear principle of interpretation (hermeneutic) that tells us on what basis we should accept or reject the continuing authority of any of these laws.
If you decide to pursue the calling of becoming a Christian economist, I strongly recommend that you spend a great deal of your time studying the actual text of the Mosaic laws that apply to economic theory or economic practice. I did this on a systematic basis from 1973 until 2012. You must do your homework. The slogans associated with international debt repudiation have not been taken seriously by the secular world. What began as left-wing social gospel propaganda in the 1970s has spread to the Roman Catholic Church by 1999. Pope John Paul II invoked the jubilee principle in defending a vague call for debt repudiation. None of this was spelled out. None of it has ever been spelled out. He announced: “In light of the imminent Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, and recalling the social significance that Jubilees had in the Old Testament, I wrote: ‘In the spirit of the Book of Leviticus (25:8–12), Christians will have to raise their voice on behalf of all the poor of the world, proposing the Jubilee as an appropriate time to give thought, among other things, to reducing substantially, if not cancelling outright, the international debt which seriously threatens the future of many nations.’” The Church’s Great Jubilee of the year 2000 has come and gone. It has left no trace. Most things don’t.
The longer that you do your homework, the fewer misinterpretations you will make. But it is better to risk making a misinterpretation then not doing the hard work that it takes to develop accurate interpretations. The important thing is this: when you correct your misinterpretations, you do so on the basis of a large body of work based on accurate interpretations. If you don’t do this, somebody else will, assuming that your misinterpretation is important enough to deserve correction.