John Calvin’s Shift on Usury

You may think that I’m totally at home reading the Bible. If you spend any time reading my articles here, you know I spend a lot of time inside the Bible. I’m not often comfortable when I’m reading it. I have a difficult time understanding it and I need help from many people who are more studied than I am. I grew up in a conservative and you might say fundangelical-adjacent denomination. We were taught that the Bible could be read for plain meanings. That just isn’t true. Our plain meanings are different than those of the Biblical authors and we don’t have easy ways to access what a plain meaning might even be. We often can’t even see the assumptions that we bring with us to the text that make a plain reading impossible.

Every time you open a Bible (or even The New Yorker or this little blog), you cannot escape yourself to do so. You bring with you the world in which you live, your relationships, your values and your cultural assumptions. You bring with you the voice of your Sunday school teacher from second grade. You bring with you the anger from your last meeting with your boss. You bring with you fears that keep you from going deeper. You open the book, yet you still smell of this morning’s shampoo.

Here’s a fun little detail from Ruth that I have no idea how to understand or use in my faith through a plain reading:

Ruth 4:7

Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging to confirm a transaction: the one took off a sandal and gave it to the other; this was the manner of attesting in Israel.

Today, I keep my shoes on and click a Docusign link. Trading shoes to consent to a contract seems quite whimsical to me. I don’t have any way to access the significance of that verse on my own. The good news we’re not alone. With every decade that passes, a new set of believers begins wrestling with scripture. We seek new ways to understand our faith in ways that can honor its core message and still be applicable to a modern context.

I recently stumbled on a great example of John Calvin’s reinterpretation of usury. Usury means charging interest on loans. The word usury is culturally interesting because even though it is a common practice, the word has picked up increasingly sinister connotations. The word sounds to our ears like someone is being used, being exploited. In fact, charging interest to someone almost always involves taking advantage of someone else’s vulnerability. It is not a neutral exchange when a person has no choice in life but to take on debt. So, the word has, I think rightfully, taken on some cultural baggage that seems closer to an intent to exploit other.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the Bible prohibits usuary. And so, in medieval Europe, lending money at interest was considered a grave sin and was condemned by church authorities. In a simple economy, it seemed clear to everyone that we shouldn’t exploit each other’s vulnerabilities to line our own wallets. But the economy in John Calvin’s time was shifting. Commerce became much more complex. While it makes moral sense not to charge an individual interest when you are helping them out of trouble, there might also be a new business owner who wanted to take on the risk of the interest to get access to the money needed to open a bakery. This kind interest wasn’t about exploitation; it was about a mutual exchange of value.

When John Calvin saw this shift in his culture, he felt that this rigid stance on usury that had held for thousands of years put undue strain on the current market realities. Calvin felt that everyone wins with the expansion of commerce as people find economic freedom from serfdom and in general making more stuff makes more stuff available. You can afford more bread because that new baker finds economies of scale and his own earnings can be spent on whatever you decide to build. Calvin thought this had to be morally good, especially compared to the brutal feudal alternatives society was leaving behind.

Calvin made an imaginative, one might even say prophetic, pivot. Instead of focusing on the actual practice, he focused on intent. The context had changed. A prohibition against usury of all forms couldn’t be a timeless command – even though it is firmly located in scripture.

Exodus 22:25-27

If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as guarantee, you shall restore it before the sun goes down, for it may be your neighbor’s only clothing to use as a cover. In what else shall that person sleep? And when your neighbor cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate.

Calvin was still against exploitation. Again, the intent here is to protect the vulnerable from harm. But if loans and interest could be used as tools to expand opportunity for people and not oppress serfs, then a new ethical reasoning was required that rose above the letter of the law in scripture.

Because my degree is in economics and not theology, I too find myself committed to principles of free trade for ethical reasons. Though I will say that the corruption of the current administration may make a full socialist out of me yet. Still, I’m incredibly uncomfortable about the through line of this reinterpretation that in some Christian circles leads in straight lines to Christian nationalism and ties capitalism and billionaire abuses to God’s will. So no, not all reinterpretation is valid. The point I want to make is that we all do it anyway, so we should step back and consider our culturally bound ethics in light of loving God and neighbor. Just because Calvin thought we could make exceptions for mutually beneficial loans, it doesn’t naturally follow that the allegedly conservative principles of the MAGA faithful follow along. A few of Trump’s economic tragedies come to mind that, while I cannot speak for Calvin, I’m pretty sure he’d scream about today:

• Cutting funding to universities
• Taking away food from hungry children
• Attacking new areas of economic growth like green energy
• Cutting medical and research funding
• Attacking free trade and thus economic growth through tariffs
• Tossing people off healthcare

Calvin would be against such wild reinterpretations that right wing Christians make today. As an example, in his Commentary on the Book of Psalms, Calvin wrote:

Whenever we concede that something may be lawfully done this way, many will give themselves loose reins, thinking that a liberty to exercise usury, without control or manifestation, has been granted them. … It is scarcely possible to find in the world a usurer who is not at the same time an extortioner, and addicted to unlawful and dishonorable gain.

The great lesson from Calvin’s example is not that we should gather to dance at the feet of the golden calf of capitalism, even if capitalism in Calvin’s day was a remarkable step out of serfdom. The lesson is that we should consider how we approach issues that were shaped by an ancient culture that no longer applies in our modern world. Some obvious examples are the rights of women, our LGBTQ+ siblings and immigrants. We must always consider that the purpose of our faith is to live out God’s unending love and not to uphold random cultural norms. What was the purpose of a particular text and how can we apply it today in a way that serves love and justice? Our ideas of family, belonging, psychological health, identity and equality have greatly improved over thousands of years. Calvin was able to move beyond long-held conventions to support changes in culture that were making lives better. We should also carefully examine the intent of the long arc of our faith. We’re here to honor God, not an ancient text.

Loving God and neighbor is eternal and transcends any cultural elements. Jesus demonstrated this in many ways, often defying conventions to prioritize compassion, respect and inclusion. Scripture must be filtered through this lens to stay relevant. Calvin’s shift on usury is an interesting historical reminder of this from a giant in our shared reformed faith. Reinterpretation is unavoidable because we all bring our own experience and bias into our faith. Thoughtful reinterpretation and a recognition of our biases honors scripture and allows us to evolve into new expressions of love for God and neighbor. Be rooted in God’s love and not in cultural artifacts. Let love guide your action, build your communities and steady you on your faith journey.