What is the Problem with Usury?

For the course in Christian Ethics that I'm auditing, we were asked to write our thoughts on chapter 7, “That which has been wrung from tears” of the book Usury, the Greek Fathers, and Catholic Social Teaching. It outlines some of the problems associated with usury. In the modern Western world the term “usury” has fallen into disuse, and as the above chapter states, “We are happy to pay 4 percent as long as we can get the holiday pillows that marketing experts tell us we need.”

The card processing companies charge merchants 2% to 3% for debit card purchases and 4% to 6% for credit card purchases. Of course, these fees are added to the purchase price whether a person pays with cash or with a card. Invisible fees such as these drive up prices, but also greatly increase the money supply by the banking system creating “new money” each time a credit card is used, thus driving inflation. Even if one pays off a credit card in full within 30 days, “new money” is added to the money supply.

It also states “people with money to waste consider 'interest' to be a nonissue.” Because most people are motivated by immediate gratification, they ignore such hidden costs and inflation in order to satisfy their craving for the latest fashion, tech toy, or automobile model. But the long-term effects of consumer credit purchases are ballooning consumer credit debt due to compound interest and the devaluation of the U. S. dollar due to inflation.

Retired people who had what seemed like a reasonable amount of savings at age 65 might discover at age 85 that the buying power of those funds, even with accumulated interest, is perhaps one-third to one-fourth of what it was. Inflation destroys the buying power of retirement savings. As long as a person is working, he can hope that his wages will keep up with inflation. But retirees living on a fixed income do not have that hope. In spite of cost-of-living increases, Social Security payments do not keep up with inflation.

Today we consider as “usury” interest rates above what a bank would charge for a 30-year mortgage. Most people are aware that payday loans and overdue credit card charges can quickly multiply the size of loans, but few people understand the effect of compound interest on a 30-year mortgage at a nominal 5% interest rate. In the first six years of such a loan the borrower's payments are actually 74% interest, and the principal is reduced by only 8.6%. The banks and their investors get the lion's share of that money up front, while the dollar is still worth nearly the same as at the outset.

Then the home-”owner” (the holder of the mortgage actually owns the house) often gets a new job that requires moving to another location, so he starts the process over again, buying another house and paying 74% interest to the banks and their investors once again. Thus “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.” What is the solution to this dilemma? What is the problem with usury?

The author refers to Ezekiel 18:4-9, which includes usury in the list of sins along with idolatry, adultery, robbery, judging unjustly, and neglecting or despising the poor. That is, usury is a sin. In Romans 13:8 we read, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” I can remember as a child that my parents took this verse quite literally, and seriously considered whether it was a sin to take out a mortgage to buy a house.

In his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Origen wrote, “In many cases, debt is equivalent to sin. Therefore, St. Paul wants us to owe nothing on account of sin and to steer clear of debts of this kind, retaining only the debt which springs from love, which we ought to be repaying every day.” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

Debt is to be avoided if at all possible, and in the Old Testament charging interest from fellow Israelites was forbidden, as the author states referring to Deut. 23:19-20. In Deut. 15:1-2 we read, “In the seventh year you must declare a cancellation of debts. This is the nature of the cancellation: Every creditor must remit what he has loaned to another person; he must not force payment from his fellow Israelite, for it is to be recognized as 'the LORD's cancellation of debts,'” clearly implying that a wise lender would not lend money for more than six years.

If we adapt these principles to today, we can say that six years should be the maximum length for loans, and the interest rate should be no more than the rate of inflation. Thus, if a person avoids all consumer debt by only paying cash for everything except housing, and buys a small condominium on a 5% loan, it could be paid off fully in six years with total interest of only 16%.

This would have the effect of lessening the increase of the nation's money supply, thus decreasing the rate of inflation. Then as his family grows, he could buy a somewhat larger home and pay it off the same way in six years. Repeating this again when the older children are approaching their teenage years and need more space, the third home is fully paid for by the time the older children are about to go to college, and the parents can afford to pay cash for their higher education at community colleges, eliminating student debt.

If these ideas were adopted by traditional Christians nationwide, it would greatly reduce the rate of inflation caused by banks issuing “new money” for mortgages and consumer debt. The nation could then focus on lowering the national debt. We as Christians should learn to live in moderation and within our means, shining as lights in a dark world, as a city on a hill for all to see and emulate. Then interest rates would fall because far less “fiat currency” is being created.

The usurious interest collected by banks and their investors would decrease, and they would be forced to find jobs that actually produce goods and services for society instead of living off of other people's labor. The seemingly endless cycle of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer would be broken, the poor and the middle class would escape debt slavery, once again moving up the economic ladder.

I've been developing these ideas for the last several years, and you can find out about them in more detail from my essay “Escaping Debt Slavery.”

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 29 Oct. 2016.)

The First Christians Were Not Like Those Who Came Later

(← click) For the course in Christian Ethics that I'm auditing, we were asked to write our thoughts about a rebuttal to the article mentioned in our last issue of Hosken-News, so here are mine:

My response to “On Wealth and the Bible, The First Christians Were Not Like David Bentley Hart”at http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/10/17950/ by Dylan Pahman should be obvious by the above title. To eloquently bemoan the fact that Christianity has matured over the centuries, as Dr. Hart and Mr. Pahman do, is  to merely belabor the obvious: of course Christian teaching and practice have grown with time and experience. There have been clarifications by the Church Fathers, but there have also been errors and even heresies. The danger lies in going to extremes, which it seems both Hart and Pahman do for the sake of argument.

Pahman introduces his article with the following statement: “Neither the New Testament nor the writings of early Christians support the idea that material wealth is intrinsically evil.” But neither is wealth intrinsically good because acquiring wealth so often leads to the passion of greed or covetousness. The Lord Jesus Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount:

"Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves don't break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can't serve both God and Mammon.” (Mat. 6:19-24)

Christ condemns here the desire for ever more and more earthly treasures, the accumulation of material wealth for its own sake. St. John explains “the evil eye” to be “the lust of the eyes” which is greed or covetousness. And our Lord teaches us here that we can't serve or worship both God and Mammon, material wealth. The desire for ever more wealth is worship of a false god and is incompatible with the worship of the true God.

The Apostle Paul in Eph. 5:2-5 states against covetousness:

“Walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance. But sexual immorality, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be mentioned among you, as becomes saints; nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not appropriate; but rather giving of thanks. Know this for sure, that no sexually immoral person, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God.”

Here St. Paul contrasts living by the law of love against living by the passions of lust and greed. He includes “covetousness” along with sexual immorality as sins that exclude a person from the Kingdom of God. The Apostle even equates covetousness with idolatry, reflecting the incompatibility of worshiping both God and Mammon. So it isn't too great a stretch for Dr. Hart to state that the accumulation of wealth is intrinsically evil. My own experience teaches me it is extremely difficult to relate to wealth altruistically and without any attraction to it or desire to acquire more and more wealth. As Christ said of the rich young ruler: “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God.”

The web page for Mr. Pahman's article has links to five other well-reasoned articles refuting Dr. Hart's various writings. Another article, “Tradinistas: Angry, Churchy Millennials Who Scorn Freedom and Demand a Guaranteed Income for Breathing” at https://stream.org/tradinistas-angry-churchy-millennials-who-scorn-freedom-and-demand-a-guaranteed-income-for-breathing/ (which I linked to in my Hosken-News Daily at http://www.hosken-news.info/news/article-202.htm), mentions David Bentley Hart: "they quaff a few economically confused essays by writer and poet G. K. Chesterton, activist Dorothy Day, or theologian David Bentley Hart." I don't quite agree that G. K. Chesterton is in the same left-leaning league as Dorothy Day or Dr. Hart, but all are master polemicists whose rich vocabulary at times outpaces and obscures basing their arguments on logic and facts. Both sides, however, tend to go to extremes, one side utterly condemning material possessions as inherently evil, and the other side praising material wealth to the high heavens as the ultimate good.

Mr. Pahman makes the statement, “Early Christian 'communism' (granting that anachronism for the sake of argument) was clearly voluntary in nature and not mandatory. Furthermore, it didn’t work. Acts 6:1-6 tells the story of how the needy among them were not being equally served. So the Apostles ordained the first deacons to manage the distribution of all donations, and we never again hear of the early Christians possessing 'all things in common.'” Sharing material possessions, as I wrote in my earlier essay, was both voluntary and partial, not a total handing over of all their wealth to the Church.

It is not quite an anachronism that Dr. Hart used the word “communism” in his article because the Greek word koinos for “common” is used in Acts chapters 2 and 4, which is the root for both the word “communism,” “community” and “communion.” But the modern connotation of “communism” is Soviet or Chinese Marxist socialism. Actually, Marxist doctrine does not teach that the stage of dialectical development reached in the USSR or China was communism, but only socialism. But even that was achieved by force of mass killings and confiscation of all private property, hardly anything like the early Christian community.

When we were living in the Udmurt Republic of Russia, the heart of its military-industrial complex, my first Udmurt language tutor told me of how her parents barely survived the Bolsheviks' collectivization. They owned a cow – just one cow – so they were considered “kulaks” (“fists”) who were holding tightly onto their private property. The Bolsheviks seized not only their cow but also their house, furniture, clothing – everything. The only item they were allowed to keep other than the clothes on their backs was one blanket wrapped around the elderly and sick grandmother. My tutor's daughter, by the way, was our first convert there and is now a missionary.

But Mr. Pahman also states: “it didn't work.” This point is often overlooked in discussions about the Christian attitude toward material wealth. We can view Acts chapters 2 through 6 as the first steps of the baby Church in learning how to walk. In that sense, these chapters are historical and descriptive, but not normative and prescriptive. Later apostolic writings teach us to share our material goods with those in greater need. I emphasize the possessive pronoun “our” because the Apostles always use these pronouns which imply the right of having personal possessions.

The question then remains: how do we relate to our possessions – do we own them, or do they own us? It is good and right if we own them as stewards to whom the Lord has entrusted a certain number of coins to use for His Kingdom. But it is evil if we either bury or misuse them for selfish purposes, not as a faithful steward: they are “ours” but only as trustees. Christ continued in the Sermon on the Mount by saying in Mat. 6:28-33:

“Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won't he much more clothe you, you of little faith? Therefore don't be anxious, saying, 'What will we eat?', 'What will we drink?' or, 'With what will we be clothed?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first God's Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Are either Dr. Hart or Mr. Pahman concerned about their future well-being to the extent of “laying up treasures for tomorrow”? Do they have vested retirement accounts? Do they have more raiment than the clothing on their backs? Do they have food stored up in their pantries? I would venture to guess that the answer is “yes” to all these questions. If so, then both of their articles are merely tilting at windmills, much ado about nothing, mere empty intellectual exercises. Let us take seriously the words of the Gospel and put them into practice in our lives before we wax loquacious over them.

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 15 Nov. 2016.)

Are Christians Rabble-Rousers?

The photo on the left is from the online Commonweal magazine subtitled "The First Christians Were Not Like Us" by Dr. David Bentley Hart, a renowned Orthodox theologian. This photo depicting plaster-of-Paris saintly-looking disciples surrounding Jesus that introduced the article aptly illustrates Dr. Hart's disdain for an acculturated, saccharine-sweet version of Christianity.

I have been asked to write a short essay on this article for a seminary course on Christian Ethics that I'm auditing. The assignment is simple: "Do you agree with Dr. Hart's conclusions? Why or why not?" My short answer is: "Yes and no." That's the easy part, now for the hard part. While working on a fresh translation of the New Testament, Dr. Hart began to consider what life was like for the early disciples. He writes, it "caused me to absorb certain conclusions about the world of the early church at a deeper level than I could have anticipated. Most of them I already knew, admittedly, if often as little more than shadows glimpsed through a veil of conventional theological habits of thought...."

As one who has spent many years as editor of a revision the Russian Synodal Bible, I can relate to Dr. Hart's pondering while working with the scriptural texts. Our "conventional theological habits of thought" frame our faith in logical constructs and cultural customs that have developed over the past 2,000 years. Dr. Hart questions the conventional meaning of the word Christian as "someone who is baptized or who adheres to a particular set of religious observances and beliefs," but this is far removed from what the New Testament describes as a Christian:

In the Book of Acts we read: "Therefore those who were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word" (Acts 8:4). This verse I adopted as a teenager for my life verse, and it has proved true - I have traveled the world preaching God's Word in four languages. A few chapters later the author Luke picks up the same thread of thought: "They therefore who were scattered abroad by the oppression that arose about Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews only. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Greeks, preaching the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord" (Acts 11:19-21).

The Good News of Jesus Christ was spread across the entire known world not by seminary-educated scholars, but by rude-and-crude former fishermen, publicans, rebels and ex-prostitutes who were "scattered abroad" - driven out of one town after another. The same has happened to me, by the way, being forced out of three different cities in Russia. But the key phrase comes a few verses later, when Barnabas brought Saul to Antioch: "It happened, that for a whole year they were gathered together with the church, and taught many people. The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch" (Acts 11:26). There the term "Christian" was invented (probably sometime later by Evodius, the second Bishop of Antioch). But the question is: What were they called before they were called Christians?

The answer is obvious in this verse: they were called "disciples." But now, two thousand years later, we have split the two terms, "Christian" and "disciple," into two different realities or stages of spiritual growth. The first stage is "someone who is baptized or who adheres to a particular set of religious observances and beliefs," but does not incorporate those beliefs into his day-to-day life: he attends church and contributes as much as is convenient, and that is the extent of his commitment. The disciple, however, is fully committed to struggle against his carnal nature and strives to know God and do His will every day of the week. He prays, reads the Bible and other spiritual literature on a daily basis, helps the poor, sick and elderly, and confesses his sins and shortcomings regularly.

The problem with this dichotomy is that the New Testament knows nothing of the former kind of "Christian." In the first-century Church and onward, until shortly after Christianity became at first officially tolerated, and then displaced paganism as the official state religion, to be a Christian was to be a disciple, and only a true disciple deserved the derisive epithet of "Christian." But when Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal, it became culturally acceptable and convenient to become a Christian.

If one chose to go full-out for the faith, however, one would become a monk or a nun, or flee to the desert and practice strict asceticism. The discipline of discipleship was not required for "ordinary Christians" who paid their annual dues, attended church services as convenient, and thus were more or less assured of a free pass through the pearly gates -- unless they really messed up and committed the "unpardonable sin" (whatever that might be - it was a matter of speculative theological debate).

Then once in a while we find exceptional believers, saints such as John Chrysostom who penned On Wealth and Poverty, or Basil the Great who gave over his large inheritance to the Church in order to build whole communities for orphans, the poor, the diseased, widows and elderly. Dr. Hart no doubt has in mind these examples of true disciples when he along with the Apostle Paul inveighs against "works of the Law - ritual observances like circumcision or keeping kosher" that have little or no relation to "caring for the orphans and widows in their affliction, and keeping oneself unstained by the world" (James 1:27).

I quite agree with Dr. Hart on his repudiation of the idea that in the Magisterial Reformation and onward in much of Protestantism, "justification by grace" instantly imputes the righteousness of Christ to our account, and thus with this accounting maneuver we are relieved of the necessity to do good works. Dr. Hart lists Romans 2:1–16 and 4:10–12, 1 Corinthians 3:12–15, 2 Corinthians 5:10, and Philippians 2:16 as proofs that we will be judged according to our deeds, our works, and not solely by our mental assent to certain theological propositions about Christ's life, death and resurrection that we accept as historically true.

Referring to another article, Dr. Hart wrote "arguing for the essential incompatibility of Christianity and capitalist culture. My basic argument was that a capitalist culture is, of necessity, a secularist culture, no matter how long the quaint customs and intuitions of folk piety may persist among some of its citizens; that secularism simply is capitalism in its full cultural manifestation." On this point and for most of the remaining part of his essay I beg to disagree with him. I see no "necessity" that a free-market economy is intrinsically bound to a secularist culture: it is true and painfully obvious to us as conservative followers of Christ that in many cases modern capitalism promotes secularism and consumerism, but I have lived and served the Lord in socialist countries that are also secular and consumerist-oriented. The carnal nature's desire to acquire - consumerism - and its rebellion against God and rejection of His love is amply evident under socialism, when one looks behind the facade of socialist rhetoric. Our secular Russian acquaintances were fully as acquisitive as their Western capitalist counterparts.

The carnal nature's drive to accumulate wealth for its own sake dates much further back than modern capitalism: the Old and New Testaments witness to this trait of fallen human nature. And yet, the Bible stories of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Boaz, David, Solomon tell approvingly of their material possessions because their hearts remained faithful to the Lord - at least most of the time. These stories also tell of how Abraham doubted God's promise to make him great, how Jacob deceitfully got the upper hand over Laban, and how David and Solomon yielded to fleshly lust, which often led to losing out on God's material blessings.

It is abundantly clear from Scripture that the desire for more and more wealth in itself is evil, but also that the blessing of material and physical well-being is often the result of living righteously and striving to please God in all that we do. God promises to bless not only spiritually but even materially those who honor Him. Our goal should be to love God and do good, and let the chips fall where they may. The normal, expected result of doing good is that good things come in return, but we should not doubt God's goodness when evil is returned for good: that is a result of the fallen cosmos in which we live, it is not from God.

Dr. Hart points out Christ's extreme "commands to become as perfect as God in his heaven and to live as insouciantly as lilies in their field; condemnations of a roving eye as equivalent to adultery and of evil thoughts toward another as equivalent to murder; injunctions to sell all one’s possessions and to give the proceeds to the poor, and demands that one hate one’s parents for the Kingdom’s sake and leave the dead to bury the dead." The true disciple, Christ's rabble, in his struggle against the prince of this world and his minions will strive to live out these teachings of Christ. By our counter-cultural lifestyle we are thus rabble-rousers: the secular world, both socialist and capitalist, perceives this lifestyle as a threat to a society that accepts and even encourages human imperfections such as lust, adultery, "greed is good," clannish "diversity" behavior and selfishness.

Yes, it is very difficult - but not impossible as Dr. Hart implies - for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. St. Luke writes of Christ's encounter with the rich young ruler: "How hard it is for those who have riches to enter into the Kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to enter in through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God" (Luke 18:24-25). Matthew's Gospel states that the rich can only "with difficulty" enter the Kingdom (Mat. 19:23). Then the disciples asked, "Who then can be saved?" and Jesus replied, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (vv. 25-26). I have personally experienced earning in the upper 10% income bracket, and know the temptation of dwelling upon how much I was earning every minute, every second. It was very difficult to break free from that mindset. Salvation merely by human effort, by doing good works or giving one's wealth for the poor, is impossible; but with God's grace transforming our hearts and motives, it is possible to do good works and give up our wealth for the sake of the Kingdom.

Another of Dr. Hart's misreading of Scripture is his statement: "the first converts in Jerusalem after the resurrection, as the price of becoming Christians, sold all their property and possessions and distributed the proceeds to those in need, and then fed themselves by sharing their resources in common meals (Acts 2:43–46). " The verb "sold" is in the Greek tense of a continuing action, not a completed action, and the text does not have the word "all" in it. As a Greek scholar, Dr. Hart should have noticed this. The conclusion that we must draw from this text (and others) is that the early Christians practiced generosity as they sold some of what they owned as needs arose, not everything all at once.

We see this later with Barnabas who "having a field, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet" (Acts 4:37). This passage does not state that "Barnabas, on becoming a Christian, sold his field" as Dr. Hart writes, implying that a condition of becoming a Christian is to sell all of one's possessions and give all the proceeds to the Church. And the fatal error of Ananias and Sapphira was not that they refused to turn over all their possessions to the Church, but that they lied about what they gave, as Peter said: "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land? While you kept it, didn't it remain your own? After it was sold, wasn't it in your power? How is it that you have conceived this thing in your heart? You haven't lied to men, but to God" (Acts 5:3-4). Notice that St. Peter affirmed the Christian's right of ownership of private property: "While you kept it, didn't it remain your own?"

It is a misuse of the word "communism" as currently understood to describe the early Christians' actions as a form of communism. Apparently Dr. Hart has lived all his life in the ivory tower of academia and views communism through the rose-colored glasses of this Leftist-leaning intellectual elite milieu. I have personally witnessed the devastation of society, the economy and the human person by modern communism. It would be much better to use the current expressions "a sharing economy" or "cooperative living" than to ascribe the early Christian lifestyle to communism. Or is Dr. Hart an admirer of "Liberation Theology" that has its roots more in modern Marxism than in early Christianity? Marxism is a philosophy of forced redistribution, but Christianity upholds ownership of private property as stewardship from God, and teaches the voluntary sharing of one's own possessions with those in need.

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 01 Oct. 2016.)