 This is Anabaptist Perspectives, and we are here today to talk about money. Steve Russell is with us today, and we're going to talk about money in pre-modern Catholicism. Steve is not a stranger to Anabaptist Perspectives. He has been with us on numerous previous episodes, and he is the author of Overcoming Evil God's Way. He teaches history and theology at Faith Builders Educational Programs. In preparation for this conversation, I try to orient myself somewhat to the issues involved, because much of this is new to me, and so I have a lot to learn here. But I found this article in Crisis Magazine, it's a lay Catholic publication. The article was written by Jeffrey Tucker, and he says this. One of the earliest statements against interest comes from the Council of Icya, which sought to crack down on abaricious practices among the clergy, among which was lending money at a profit. The Council condemned this and other attempts at, this is in quotes, dishonorable gain. It was surely a wise teaching necessary to stop corruption, but there was a slight problem. The Council broadened its mandate beyond the priesthood and implied that the practice was universally wrong. It added scriptural proof from the psalmist that interest itself was immoral. He that hath not put out his money to usury, nor taken bribes against the innocent, he that doth these things shall not be moved forever. So how did the Catholic Church view money and economics prior to and leading up to the Reformation? Did this statement in the Council of Icya become the dominant position in the Church? I believe the statement in Icya was directed specifically at the clergy, but over time that was broadened out, as was suggested here in the quote that you read, to everyone. The reason for that is they looked back at the Old Testament which says to the Jewish people that they may not lend money to their own brothers at interest. They should give or loan money, but not at interest. They can loan it to a stranger or a non-Jew at interest, and the early Christians took that and made it their own. So if there was a Christian who needed money, we should give, but we shouldn't ask for usury or interest, which back in the early days would have been seen as identical. Nowadays when you talk about usury, people mean excessive interest, but back here it would have meant any interest. So it got broadened out to the Christians in general, which is one of the reasons over time Jews became the main money lenders in Europe, because it was all right for them to lend money at interest to Christians. They couldn't lend it to their own people at interest, but they could lend it to Christians, and Christians weren't supposed to lend money to each other at interest. Over time this did change in the, I don't know, probably high middle ages. The Christians started to develop banks, and banks handle money, but they also have to make money through using money. One of the things that the early Christians would have said is that it's wrong for money to engender money. There was a real emphasis on work. You should work with your hands to produce profit, produce money. It was seen as immoral for money to make money, but once you start having a banking system, you're into a little bit more of a problem. I don't know all the details, but the banks started to come up with ways that they could use money and charge for the use of the money, and therefore they could actually be a legitimate business that made money with money, I guess you could say. One of the things that the church said was necessary was if you're going to have a banking system, then there has to be risk on both ends, the person who's borrowing and the person who's lending the money. I guess that was seen as somehow making it more proper if I'm at danger of losing some money, and you are also at danger, one of us lending to the other. All the way up until the 1800s, a Catholic priest, if he felt that there was a reason to ask in the confession booth, one of his parishioners, if he was lending money out of interest, that was a legitimate question for the priest to ask. Are you lending money? Are you getting interest on it? That only changed in the, I think it would have been the early 1800s, and part of the reason for that is by that point the Catholics started to see that there might be some kind of legitimacy in lending money out at a rate of interest that wasn't too high so that somebody could start a business or somebody could buy a farm. As our economic system changed, the church's position in the 1800s started to shift as well. You've briefly mentioned some of the thinking behind this. You mentioned the Old Testament, you mentioned the resistance to money being made just by virtue of having money, but I'm curious if you could talk more about the ideas or the thoughts that motivated this strong resistance to usury or interest. I think one part of it is that there was actually an emphasis on being productive, actually making something, going out and farming or becoming a skilled tradesman who could make something with his hands. The emphasis was on that, that we should be producers. When it seemed to the Catholics that this was at least a questionable way of making a livelihood, where you were using money to produce more money, they felt that it was more proper and more fitting with what we are as humans who are made in the image of God to actually produce something. The emphasis was on production and if you could make a living without the production that would be a threat to what they believed related to be happening when somebody was making an income. Yes, I think so. So how did the Protestant reformers engage with this? Because we've been talking about this as a Catholic position, but those in the Reformation who left the church. I'm curious, was it something that they often also wanted to reform or did they accept the Catholic position? I would say Luther was probably the one who most closely stayed with the Catholic position. Calvin saw the possibility of using money to make money and to become more productive. And so Calvin was much more open to this, although he also saw the dangers of usury or he thought it was legitimate that it could be legitimate for someone to borrow money to start a business, let's say. But he also saw the danger of seeing a significant part of my income is going to come out of the money that I lent to you and that you're going to be paying me back with interest. Calvin saw that as at least potentially dangerous, but he thought we needed to be willing to help a brother who was either had an idea about starting a business or maybe was just in need. Now that, I think Calvin would have agreed with the Catholics that if it's a brother in need, he's had some kind of financial setback and really needs money to keep on going. I think that Calvin would have said you should give it to him without interest, which would have been the Catholic position. One thing that Calvin is very clear about is that even though it might be legitimate for me to lend you some money and charge interest if you've got this business that you want to do, nobody should make that his way of making his money. Nobody should be a user only. I might have enough money that I can lend you some money, but I shouldn't make my livelihood that way. This concept too of risk, the Catholics, the medieval Catholics had that and I think the Protestants, I don't know if they would have focused on that, but it's out of this concept that I think, I don't know as much about the economics as I should, but I think it's where the joint stock company came out where people would put money together, they would fit out ships and send them out to Asia to get spices or something like that. We're all risking this, our money together. I think that was seen as a legitimate way to invest and maybe make a lot of money out of that investment. It's not from Calvin, but later on the Calvinist started shifting. Calvin was very careful about the legitimacy of lending out money, but later on the whole thing about borrowing and lending out money and growing a company that becomes successful because I borrowed money, that starts to be seen among Calvinists as a sign that you're probably one of the elect if you can be a successful businessman. Calvin actually would have been a little bit hesitant about that. If you were a successful businessman, it might be because you were avaricious to use the word that you had quoted earlier. It's a kind of a mixed picture, but over time as it became clear that borrowing money could benefit people, even the poor, both the Protestants, the Protestants first accepted it and used it a lot and then the Catholics kind of followed along and saw it as potentially good. Well, that's very interesting. I think many in our audience will be curious what the Anabaptist, the first Anabaptist how to say about this, but I think we'll leave that for another episode, which we can hopefully get to later today. But I'm curious what you think. We're talking about what the early Catholics thought, we're talking about what the Protestant reformers thought, but as an Anabaptist yourself and a reader of the Bible, I'm curious what your take on these questions is. One of my favorite classes to teach at Faith Builders is Old Testament Survey. I don't consider myself a businessman, I'm not a businessman, and I don't consider myself someone who necessarily has a lot of deep insight about economics, but I was over time, I probably taught the class about 20 times. I started to notice all of the concern in the Old Testament for the person who's down on his luck, so to speak. I also noticed that in Deuteronomy, it says that the land I'm taking you into is a prosperous land, it's a fruitful land and there should not be any poor among you. Then just a few verses after that it says, but if there are poor among you, and then it gives programs to help these people and let's face it, some people are better businessmen, some people are better farmers, some people are better managers, there are going to be some people who have trouble, but the Old Testament is concerned about that, it cares for human flourishing. We no longer live in an agrarian society like they did, and most of the history of the Catholic Church and even the early Protestant Church, most of the people were farmers, so it was an agrarian society, and that kind of society can take care of the poor a little bit differently than a society that has become urban and industrialized, and I guess maybe post-industrialized now for us, but I think that the care that is shown in the Old Testament is something that we have to look at and ask ourselves, so in our setting what do we do? It doesn't mean exactly what's in the Old Testament anymore, it just wouldn't work. One of the beautiful things in the Old Testament is almost everyone lived on a farm, and so if I was a bad manager and I lost my farm, and I might even have to sell my children into slavery, well depending on when the Jubilee year comes along, either my own children, maybe even myself, I might get a new start when the Jubilee year comes because the Jubilee was the time when all debts were forgiven, and the land that originally belonged to my family would be given back, so if I didn't get the second chance, maybe my son would, or maybe my grandson would, there was built into the system ways to help people not be burdened by the problems that dad or granddad had, and I think modern Christians have to be inventive. How can we help each other? Well that sounds like wisdom to me, so thank you for sharing your thoughts and orienting us a bit to the history. This is part of a larger series that we're doing about economics, so this will provide some helpful framing I think for some of the episodes that are coming up next where we talk about distributism and hopefully an Anabaptist perspective on this also. Okay so thank you. Thank you for joining us for this episode and thanks to our donors and partners for making this possible. To learn more about this ministry, view our About Us video linked below. You can also subscribe to our supporters update at anabaptistperspectives.org