We Have Got to Talk About Usury (Part XVI): The Regensburg Dispute of 1587—A Lesson in Courage and Consequences
Regensburg, c. 1576, engraving by Frans Hogenberg
The following post is the fifteenth in a series on usury by the Rev. Vincent Shemwell. Rev. Shemwell serves as pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Johnson City, Tennessee. He graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne with the M.Div. in 2022, and received his STM from CTSFW in 2024, writing his thesis on Johann Georg Hamann. The previous installments can be found below:
Part I: Introduction
Part II: The Old Testament
Part III: The New Testament
Part IV: The Church Fathers—Clement of Alexandria through Hilary of Poitiers
Part V: The Church Fathers — The Cappadocians
Part VI: The Church Fathers — Church Councils and Ambrose
Part VII: The Church Fathers—Chrysostom through Leo the Great
Part VIII: Medieval Theologians
Part IX: The Medieval Church Continued—Councils, Canon Law, Dante, and Other Matters
Part X: Luther—His First Foray, in Translation
Part XI: The Strauss Affair and Luther’s Long Sermon
Part XII: Luther on Why Pastors Must Preach against Usury
Part XIII: Miscellaneous Mentions by Luther and a Few Misconceptions
Part XIV: After Luther—Spangenberg, Melanchthon, Brenz, Aepinus, Chemnitz, and Selnecker
Part XV: Rhegius, Hunnius, Gerhard, and the Setting of a Bright Sun
Ed: The below account of the Regensburg Dispute made my blood run cold, and the attentive reader will have no great difficulty in seeing the same patterns at work in ecclesial controversies to this day. - SG
In the middle of the sixteenth century, two opposing views were held among Lutherans with respect to interest-taking. Martin Chemnitz adhered to the traditional view, shared by Luther, that all lending at interest for profit is contrary to Holy Scripture. Others, such as Johannes Aepinus, contended that the biblical prohibition against interest applies only to lending to the poor; therefore, they argued, a distinction must be drawn in lending practices, and interest may rightly be charged to the well-to-do, at least in Zinskauf contracts. For Chemnitz, this distinction was without biblical warrant, and those who introduced it had clearly fallen into error (Loci theologici II (1653), 162). Aepinus, conversely, held that those, including Luther, who failed to make this distinction in lending had themselves committed “a pernicious error” (In psalmum XV commentarius (1543), 29).
By the early decades of the seventeenth century, however, the traditional position upheld by Luther and Chemnitz began to lose favor, a decline that continued for several centuries. Indeed, it was not really until the nineteenth-century Confessional Revival that the Luther-Chemnitz position began to reemerge. But how did this shift occur? Were theologians such as Rhegius, Brenz, Aepinus, Hunnius, and Gerhard so persuasive as to overturn Luther’s authority, and, with it, the weight of centuries of Christian teaching?
One might conclude that the more economically progressive among the Lutheran scholastics prevailed through the sheer force of their arguments. Yet, as I suggested in the previous part of our series, political and economic pressures seem to have exerted greater influence than strictly theological considerations.
As a case in point, I want to tell you a story. Most of this series thus far has been fairly dense and theological, and so a narrative—albeit a rather sad one—may help to clarify what is at stake. Through this story—or scandal, really—I hope to illustrate how theological conversations and debates can be curtailed before they are ever even settled whenever they become sufficiently uncomfortable or inconvenient. This pattern has occurred more than once in our Lutheran history. But we will get to that later.
So here it is:
This story is set in the Bavarian city of Regensburg in 1587, a year after the death of Chemnitz, and seven years after the publication of the German Book of Concord in Dresden. But the story does not actually start there. Instead, it begins roughly a hundred and twenty miles away, as the crow flies, in the Thuringian city of Rudolstadt, and several decades prior.
There, one Sunday morning, in 1564, the pastor of the town church of St. Andrew’s, Rev. Bartholomaeus Gerhard, inspired by Dr. Luther’s writings on usury, especially his 1539 To Pastors, That They Should Preach Against Usury, refused to commune two particular noblemen. His reasons for refusing Holy Communion were straightforward enough: these two nobles were deriving profit from imperially sanctioned Zinskauf contracts severed from agricultural property and, despite pastoral admonition, persevered in this practice without repentance. Luther had permitted Zinskauf only in cases of necessity, namely, for widows and orphans; but here, affluent noblemen were drawing profit not from the fruitfulness of the earth but from money itself. They were basically charging for the use of money, precisely the traditional definition of usury. Although Zinskauf, at that time, was considered by many as a sale rather than a loan, it was evident in this instance that these men were benefiting from a biblically proscribed form of finance. Thus, following Luther’s advice, the Rudolstadt pastor denied these men the Lord’s Supper.
Now Rev. Gerhard was well aware that this type of contract had been approved by Emperor Charles V, interestingly enough, at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530. But as Luther had argued, a magistrate cannot render righteous what God Himself has condemned (Long Sermon; LW 45: 277).
In any case, ultimately, Rev. Gerhard lost this battle. The local authorities ruled against him and effectively silenced him. Even so, his fidelity to Luther was not without effect. The controversy in Rudolstadt provoked considerable discussion throughout the burgeoning Lutheran church. Universities across Germany took up the matter, some aligning with Luther, Chemnitz, and the broader church tradition, and others with the newer perspective advanced by figures such as Brenz and Aepinus. A central question that soon emerged was whether a parish pastor may, in accordance with Luther’s counsel, refuse Communion to those whom he judges to be unrepentant usurers.
One of the leading figures who sided with Luther and the tradition was Nikolaus Gallus (1516–1570), the superintendent of Regensburg. Gallus, a protégé of Melanchthon, opposed Brenz’s more progressive interpretation of the Zinskauf contract as early as the 1550s, particularly the claim that Scripture is silent on which contracts constitute usury and that, consequently, Christians may simply follow whatever lending practices the magistrate authorizes (see Gallus’ Zwo Predigten Wider den Wucher (1572), 6; see also Part XIV of our series). Against Brenz, Gallus argued that while the magistrate may regulate such contracts for the “children of the world,” who are not committed to the Word of God, which explicitly forbids seeking profit through lending, the Christian remains forever bound by the command of Christ regardless of civil sanction: “namely, that one lends to his neighbor out of love, purely gratuitously, without consideration for any profit, without gaining anything from it, waiting patiently for an eternal reward.”
For Gallus, what Charles V approved in 1530—essentially property-less Zinskauf contracts at five percent interest for anyone—was only proof of “the great unfaithfulness of the world,” a concession to the hardness of unbelieving hearts, permissible for them but never for true Christians (7). For the believer, lending must, by its very nature, be gratuitous, a truth that, as he declared, “no angel in heaven” could ever contradict (7–8). In Gallus’ view, the fundamental evil of usury lay in its profit motive: it teaches men to place their trust in mammon rather than in God, Who promises to provide, especially to those who lend freely (Proverbs 19:17). Which is to say, for Gallus, as for Luther and centuries of church teaching, lending at interest was primarily a first commandment violation.
Suffice it to say, Gallus, this eminent leader of the Reformation in Regensburg, vehemently opposed all lending at interest, including Zinskauf contracts for any who were not in dire need. In this he perpetuated precisely the position Luther once held. And following Luther’s admonition, he even exercised church discipline toward those whose lending practices were not above reproach; in his judgment, the unrepentant usurer was no more worthy of the Lord’s Table than an unrepentant adulterer or murderer.
Because Gallus was so widely respected, his conservative stance (that is, the stance of Luther and the church of fifteen hundred years) was, for the most part, begrudgingly tolerated by moneylenders, merchants, and civil authorities throughout his tenure. In the decades following his death, however, preaching against usury waned. Regensburg retained a strong enough heritage of fidelity to Luther’s teaching over against the newer economic theories, yet few men actively and consistently upheld that legacy in a public way. That is, until five courageous pastors, inspired by their namesake, as well as by Gallus, resolved to remain steadfast to God’s Word, come what may.
In Regensburg, it all began on Trinity Sunday, 1587, when a pastor by the name of Michael Linsenbarth preached a sermon on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. In that sermon, Rev. Linsenbarth quite bravely stated the following (as quoted in F. Loy’s “Der Regensburger Wucherstreit: Ein Beitrag zum Kampf des Luthertums gegen den Kapitalismus,” Beiträge zur bayerischen Kirchengeschichte XXXI (1925), 3–28, here at 5): “Behold the course of the world and how things now go: when a man has a little money … he immediately puts it out at usury, and the borrower must annually pay him five, six, or even more florins per hundred. But when this sin is rebuked from God’s Word, then we poor preachers must bear the blame; they say that we stir up strife, cause disorder and confusion, and attack people’s honor. If one reproves usury on the basis of God’s Word, they mock us as though we were speaking foolishness. There are now people who wish to appear clever, who justify usury … by claiming that it is approved in the imperial laws, and must therefore be right. But what are imperial laws to us in the church? Even to this day the doctors of canon and civil law dispute this very matter, whether certain lending at interest is lawful, and indeed, those who say it is not lawful truly have stronger arguments.”
A week later, Rev. Dietrich Rosinus, the acting superintendent in Regensburg, likewise addressed the matter from the pulpit. Preaching with remarkable fervor, he denounced all usury and exhorted the faithful to obey Christ’s law rather than human ordinances, which, as Luther had long before highlighted, is a “wholly pure and perfectly just law” that can “endure no usury” (To Pastors; LW 61: 305–6, Kindle.) Rosinus urged his hearers to risk loss in this life by keeping Christ’s command, rather than imperiling their salvation by disregarding it for the sake of profit. And in his sermon, he permitted Zinskauf contracts only in cases of genuine and unavoidable necessity, just as Luther had allowed.
Predictably, these sermons, delivered by respected clergymen in Regensburg, sparked an intense debate both in the city and beyond. News of what many perceived as another Rudolstadt-like scandal, reminiscent of the controversy surrounding Rev. Gerhard several decades earlier, spread rapidly. Opponents of the traditional position, already committed to advancing a novel theory of lending at interest, quickly pressed for a formal response. Thus, on the Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Rev. Christopher Binder, a student of Jakob Andreae, mounted the pulpit and preached on Luke 6, but from a markedly different perspective.
Binder swiftly and unequivocally rejected the claim that Zinskauf contracts constituted loans. Instead, he maintained, as many before him had, that they were a form of sale and therefore exempt from the biblical prohibition, a characterization that conveniently preserved their legitimacy under imperial law. Furthermore, drawing on the teachings of Brenz and Aepinus, Binder insisted that the scriptural ban on interest required a distinction between persons: specifically, between the poor and the wealthy, that is, between those unable to bear the burden of interest and those deemed capable of doing so. He even insinuated that Linsenbarth and Rosinus were acting “dangerously” in failing to articulate this distinction, a criticism that deliberately recalled Aepinus’s earlier denunciation of the same as “a pernicious error.”
With this sermon, the entire city was thrown into upheaval over the question of usury. Lines were quickly drawn: on one side stood the so-called rigorist position, aligned with the patristic witness, the medieval theologians, Luther, and Chemnitz; on the other side stood the permissive or progressive view advanced by Brenz, Aepinus, and now Binder. The situation escalated with striking speed, becoming so fraught that the city council found it necessary to intervene. Only a few weeks after Binder preached his controversial sermon, all the evangelical clergy were summoned to appear before the council.
Already inclined toward Binder’s position even before examining the matter—no doubt for less-than-theological reasons—the council rebuked Linsenbarth and Rosinus for disturbing the economic elites of the city and for, as they claimed, needlessly burdening consciences. Yet both men held their ground. Rosinus even went so far as to accuse Binder of false doctrine. The council promptly ordered the pastors to remain silent on the subject; but the two, echoing Peter and the apostles, asserted that they would obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).
Although formally silenced, Rosinus took his place in the pulpit the very next Sunday and again preached against lending at interest, defining it, per the tradition, as charging for the use of money, and called upon his hearers to consult for themselves Luther’s writings on usury. The following day he was summoned once more before the council, sharply reprimanded, and again commanded to hold his peace.
That next Sunday, Binder sought to receive Holy Communion, but was refused by a deacon sympathetic to the cause of Linsenbarth and Rosinus, a man by the name of Johannes Roet. While the matter was handled before the Divine Service, sparing Binder the indignity of a public refusal at the altar rail, it nonetheless generated considerable unrest. Later that same day, Roet was summoned and reprimanded by the city council. When questioned about his reasoning, he explained that Binder was openly at odds with the other pastors—indeed, that Binder had been publicly accused of false doctrine—and that admitting him to the Sacrament before the dispute had been resolved would, in his judgment, have been a provocation. Deeply disturbed by Roet’s actions, the council further inquired whether the majority of the deacon’s colleagues shared his view. Roet answered in the affirmative. By this point, Linsenbarth, Rosinus, and Roet had been joined by two more pastors, Abraham Rorer and Paulus Schnetter. The number had now grown to five.
The city council attempted to mediate between Binder, together with his supporters, and the rigorist pastors. However, the pastors remained resolute, defending Binder’s exclusion from Holy Communion on the grounds that he had “preached from the pulpit erroneous opinions contrary to the universal consensus of the holy Christian church on earth concerning lending and usury … which are also contrary to the teaching and unanimous confession of the [Regensburg] ministry” (as quoted in Loy, “Der Regensburger Wucherstreit,” 9). Predictably, the council again sided with Binder and censured the pastors. Nevertheless, in the interest of peace and the appearance of impartiality, it directed both parties to submit written arguments to explain their cases. The rigorists responded by presenting Luther’s own works on the subject and claiming that they had merely upheld the doctrine taught in Regensburg since the days of Gallus.
Recognizing that these pastors were immovable, the city council, in early August, sought counsel from church leaders elsewhere, hoping to secure assurance that, should removal prove necessary, replacements more sympathetic to Binder’s position could be provided. Around the same time, from the pulpit, Rosinus preached on Matthew 7:15–23 and the warning against false prophets, those known by their fruits, insisting that one of the surest marks of a false teacher is doctrinal innovation. He implored his hearers not to grow weary of God’s Word, the very manna from heaven, as did the Israelites, by craving instead the fare of Egypt that is human opinion: an analogy that aptly captured the controversy at hand.
By this point, the situation was on the verge of spiraling beyond control. Therefore, seeking at last to resolve the matter in their favor, the city council in September appealed for assistance to a theologian they knew would support their cause, a theologian, dear reader, surely familiar to you: Jakob Andreae (1528–1590), co-editor with Chemnitz of the 1580 Book of Concord. Andreae gladly accepted the invitation and soon traveled to Regensburg, where he initiated a colloquium on the controversy in mid-October and preached four Advent sermons on lending and usury, published that next year under the title Vier Christliche Predigten uber ettliche Evangelia im Advent.
Andreae aligned himself, without reservation, with the camp of Rhegius, Brenz, and Aepinus. From the outset of his involvement in Regensburg, he openly expressed strong opposition to the five pastors and their tenacious adherence to the traditional understanding of lending at interest. Unsurprisingly, the rigorist pastors viewed him with suspicion from the very start. It is also worth noting that Andreae ultimately received a substantial monetary gift in recognition of his role in “resolving” the controversy (Loy, “Der Regensburger Wucherstreit,” 22).
Before proceeding to the dramatic conclusion of this narrative, it is necessary to pause and outline the positions of each side: the stance of the five rigorist pastors and that of Andreae and his allies.
The rigorist pastors, like Luther and Chemnitz before them, grounded their entire case in Luke 6:35, claiming that Christ’s command to “lend, hoping for nothing in return” categorically forbids profiting from lending, which must always remain wholly gratuitous. From this principle they maintained that, whatever name one assigns to the arrangement, if a lender demands more in return than was originally given, the practice is, in essence, usury. Accordingly, only Notwucher, a concession for the poor and desperate, such as widows and orphans, could be tolerated, and even then, solely as an act of mercy rather than as a legitimate financial contract.
They further contended that civil permission could never justify what God’s Word prohibits: even if the magistrate allowed Zinskauf contracts, Christians remained bound by divine law to refrain from using them. In Regensburg specifically, they noted that no local statute explicitly sanctioned the contract, and therefore its use lacked even local civil legitimacy. Interestingly, they also appealed to the 1569 papal bull Cum onus, which condemned Zinskauf contracts separated from real property, underscoring that the wider church had long rejected such arrangements. Moreover, they observed that in those imperial ordinances addressing this contract, the relevant regulations appeared under the heading “On usurious contracts,” a placement and wording they regarded as unmistakable confirmation that the practice was, by its very nature, usurious. Finally, in keeping with church tradition, they held that anyone who had profited from lending at interest must return those gains in order to be reconciled to the church.
For his part, Andreae, both in his colloquium and in the Advent sermons he delivered at Regensburg, reiterated the arguments previously advanced by Rhegius, Brenz, and Aepinus, while also anticipating some later developments of Hunnius and Gerhard. First, he argued that the Zinskauf contract, even when detached from agricultural property, was not a loan but a sale, and therefore fell entirely outside the scope of the biblical prohibition. Regarding that prohibition, he further maintained, following Rhegius, that the relevant Old Testament texts imply that usury occurs only when injury is inflicted upon the borrower (Vier Christliche Predigten, 89–90). From this, he concluded that lending at interest is forbidden in the Old Testament exclusively in dealings with the poor; and he even asserted—without evidence or explanation—that Psalm 15 and Ezekiel 18 support this interpretation (34–36).
Turning to the New Testament, Andreae adopted the distinction promoted by the more economically progressive theologians, insisting that Luke 6:35 must be read with a differentiation of persons in mind: toward the poor, lending must remain gratuitous, but toward the wealthy, the principle of “equality” should govern the exchange. Remarkably, he went so far as to claim that the church had misinterpreted this verse for many centuries and had established the historic prohibition on a fundamentally flawed reading, even in canon law (89).
None of this, in itself, was especially unique. Yet after laying this foundation, Andreae proceeded to make several extraordinary assertions, almost certainly the result of his desire to be polemical from the pulpit. For example, he argued that when Luther allowed Zinskauf contracts in cases involving the poor and needy, he did not actually intend to restrict this to widows and orphans alone, but simply mentioned them as representative cases (105–9). On this basis, Andreae reasoned that the same allowance could apply to anyone in need, whether poor or wealthy, peasant or noble; which is to say, he broadened the definition of “need” to the point that, as a category, it became utterly meaningless, so that even a noble could justify his “need” to accumulate more wealth.
This, of course, cut to the very heart of the controversy and revealed the true impetus of the entire Regensburg dispute: imperial law had extended the use of property-less Zinskauf contracts to all persons without distinction. This is what the five pastors were truly reacting against. And in attempting to defend this law, Andreae shamelessly bastardized Luther’s own words; in fact, he made them say the very opposite of what Luther plainly meant. The five faithful pastors pointed out this blatant distortion, but their protests achieved nothing.
As Paolo Astorri observes in a chapter on the Regensburg dispute in his 2019 Lutheran Theology and Contract Law in Early Modern Germany (ca. 1520–1720), Luther’s judgment was “abused and sacrificed at the altar of power and stability,” with Andreae defending usurious practices “for reasons of political stability and economic convenience for society” (466). Frankly, this brazen, obviously intentional misreading of Luther has forced me to reevaluate Andreae as a theologian, much as I appreciate his contributions to our theology. If one wishes to determine whether this display of Jesuitical logic is, in fact, as Chemnitz once put it, “avarice seeking a pretext” (Loci theologici II (1653), 162), one need only consult Andreae’s profoundly troubling Vier Christliche Predigten.
Again, the five rigorist pastors were accused by the city council of needlessly binding consciences with respect to the Zinskauf trade. Andreae, however, went further still. He declared that if anyone were to oppose the imperial law permitting interest-taking in these contracts, that person “would not have a calm and good conscience and would not remain unpunished” (Vier Christliche Predigten, 207–8). Thus, rather than merely safeguarding the imperial law, Andreae publicly bound Christian consciences to accept it, an astonishing reversal of the theological tradition established and upheld in Regensburg since the days of Gallus.
Ironically, Andreae even admitted that he was grateful the Regensburg controversy had arisen, since it touched upon the proper interpretation of Scripture, without which the Christian faith itself would be lost (289). I call this “ironic” because the same man proved himself overly willing to distort Luther’s words—and, one may easily argue, the Word of God as well—in order to defend his position, a position for which, it bears repeating, he appears to have been handsomely rewarded.
Later on, the faculty at Tübingen, on whose behalf Andreae had spoken throughout the dispute, took up the issue as well. In a publication of 1589, they reaffirmed the reasoning and conclusions of their most eminent theologian and representative (see Abfertigung deß ungegründten Gegenberichts der zu Regensburg Anno 1587 geurlaubten Prediger). With the Tübingen faculty’s judgment in print, the debate was considered settled, decisively in favor of Andreae’s camp and the Regensburg city council. As the faculty concluded (Abfertigung, 171): “In the imperially approved Zinskauf contract, interest may be given and taken by any Christians with a sound and untroubled conscience.”
But back to the five pastors and their fate in the final weeks of 1587. While Andreae taught and preached throughout that Advent season, the pastors persisted in resisting what they regarded as the introduction of a novel doctrine on usury in Regensburg. In time, Andreae summoned each of them for private interrogation (or inquisition). It should go without saying that the men remained firm in their convictions. But seeing the writing on the wall, so to speak, with city authorities and influential theologians ganged up against them, Rosinus ascended his pulpit on the eve of the final colloquium session and delivered a powerful sermon on 1 Corinthians 12 and unity in doctrine. Rightly sensing the end, he also took the occasion to bid farewell to his flock. In the sermon’s conclusion, he stated his position with absolute clarity (as quoted in Loy, “Der Regensburger Wucherstreit,” 19–20): “Let no hearer be persuaded that the imperially approved Zinskauf contract is lawful. Rather, it is usury, contrary to God’s Word, and to the writings of Luther and Gallus. But if God wills it, may it be according to His will, and may this be my last sermon.”
After the service, Rosinus invited his fellow rigorist pastors to his home for a meal. But upon arrival he was placed under house arrest and barred from further contact with the local ministerium. When the remaining pastors informed the city council that they intended to continue preaching exactly as Rosinus had, they, too, were confined to their homes. Then, on December 12th, the council rendered its final judgment: all five pastors were to be removed from office for stubbornly adhering to an outdated view of lending at interest. For the supposed “sake of peace,” they were ordered to depart the city the next day by noon, without contacting any of their parishioners in the meantime. As a hollow gesture of goodwill, the authorities promised that their families who remained in Regensburg would receive a partial salary until the men secured new employment elsewhere.
When the following morning arrived, nearly two thousand Christians gathered to support the pastors and bid them farewell (approximately ten percent of the city’s population, mind you). To the sorrowing faithful who grieved their dismissal and exile, the pastors responded in unison, citing their Lord’s words in Matthew 5:11: “Blessed are you when they persecute you!” Andreae and others attempted to temper the crowd’s indignation, but to no avail. In the end, by both the defrocked pastors and the common people, Andreae was seen as the chief culprit of the injustice. Perhaps he confirmed their suspicions when, later commenting on the size of the gathering, he dismissed the demonstration by arrogantly remarking that “even if there were so many hundreds, it is nevertheless just a number” (as quoted in Loy, “Der Regensburger Wucherstreit,” 21).
Although technically banished from Regensburg, most of the pastors remained in the surrounding area, determined to ensure that their cause would not be forgotten. From that time onward, they referred to themselves, and were known by others, as “the exiles of Jesus Christ.”
The unrest dragged on for at least another year. Many parishioners remained deeply dissatisfied with the replacement pastors, vetted and approved by Andreae and others, who were tasked with dismantling the traditional doctrine of usury. Over time, as the exiled pastors were repeatedly slandered and maligned as radicals and “Müntzerish ministers,” the controversy gradually subsided and daily life resumed a semblance of normalcy. What Luther and Gallus had taught, in continuity with a millennium and a half of Christian tradition, was effectively extinguished in Regensburg. With the publication of the Tübingen faculty’s opinion in 1589, affirming the city’s actions against the pastors, the debate was pronounced definitively settled. In the minds of the Tübingen faculty—and certainly Andreae—fifteen hundred years of Christianity, and Luther, had simply gotten it all wrong (see, for instance, Abfertigung, 476–77).
As Loy notes in the conclusion of his article on the dispute (27): “To these pastors, charging interest seemed emblematic of an economic system from which the spirit of the Christian command to love was increasingly departing, to the detriment of those who were economically vulnerable.” Tragically, these men lost their battle against mammonism and their valiant fight was, for the most part, lost to history. And not only did they lose the debate, they lost their ministry, their livelihood, and their voice. It is little wonder, then, that after this dispute and the scandal surrounding it, the traditional “rigorist” view of usury fell into considerable disfavor among Lutherans, remaining so for several centuries, until the days of Walther in the United States. In short, teaching what the church had once taught, and what Luther had taught, became not just unpopular but personally perilous.
Of course, Walther faced a similar uphill battle in his own context. God willing, in the next part of our series, we will turn to him and to his rediscovery of Luther’s teaching on usury, a discovery that ignited decades of debate within the early Missouri Synod. For half a century, Luther’s teaching on usury was resurrected within our church body. But unfortunately, political and economic interests are always formidable forces, even outside Regensburg.
Until then, I encourage you, dear reader, to consult the works by Loy and Astorri referenced above, which served as the basis for my retelling of the story.
Stay tuned.