We Have Got to Talk About Usury (Part V): The Church Fathers — The Cappadocians (c. 329–394 AD)
Ivan Dashko (Ukrainian, 1989–), St. Basil (2017). Acrylic on gessoed wood.
The following post is the fifh 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
Picking up where we left off previously, only a decade and a half younger than Hilary of Poitiers, Basil the Great (c. 330–379) emerged as one of the early church’s most zealous critics of usury. Like many before him, he appealed to Psalm 15 in particular as clear evidence of the binding moral prohibition against lending at interest, and he once preached a powerful homily against usury on the text of this psalm. I assure you, the entire sermon merits careful and repeated reading; here, however, I offer only a few representative excerpts:
Recognizing the profound significance this brief scriptural passage (Psalm 15) holds for the affairs of life, we deem it unwise to neglect the opportunity for closer examination. In portraying the perfect man destined for the unchangeable life, the prophet includes among his noble virtues the refusal to lend money at interest, a practice repeatedly condemned throughout Scripture. Ezekiel, for instance, ranks the taking of interest or profit among the gravest of offenses, and the Mosaic law explicitly prohibits such conduct: ‘You shall not charge interest to your brother and to your neighbor.’ Elsewhere, Scripture decries the cumulative injustice of ‘deceit upon deceit, and interest upon interest’ (Jeremiah 9:6). And concerning a city overwhelmed by corruption, the psalmist laments: ‘Usury and deceit have not departed from its streets’ (Psalm 55:11).
Indeed, usury entails the greatest inhumanity, for the one in distress, lacking even the necessities of life, seeks relief through a loan, while the other—unsatisfied with merely recovering the principal—exploits the misfortune of the poor in order to generate profit for himself and accumulate wealth. Yet the Lord has given an unambiguous command: ‘From him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.’ Nevertheless, the avaricious man, upon seeing a fellow human being compelled by necessity to fall at his feet in supplication, displaying every posture of humility and uttering all forms of earnest entreaty, remains unmoved. He feels no compassion for one suffering beyond what he deserves, acknowledges nothing of their shared humanity, and offers no mercy in response to desperate pleas. Instead, he stands firm in cold defiance, unyielding, unsoftened by tears, and resolute in his refusal.
The borrower, seeking help, instead finds hostility; in his search for medicine, he instead discovers poisons. It is your duty to alleviate his destitution, yet you, the usurer, intent upon extracting gain even from barren ground, only deepen his deprivation. As if a physician, visiting the sick, were to rob them of their remaining strength rather than restore them to health, so you transform the sufferings of the afflicted into occasions for profit. Just as farmers pray for rain to nourish their crops, you perversely desire poverty and want among men, so that your money might yield returns. Do you not perceive that the increase you seek through interest adds more grievously to your sins than it does to your wealth?
The exactor of usury, like a dog, is hungry for prey; the debtor, like the prey, cowers before him.
Basil spends much of the sermon warning his audience about borrowing money. He argues that debt makes one a slave. “You may be poor now,” he says, “but you are still free. However, once you borrow at interest, not only will you fail to become rich, you will even lose your present freedom. For he who borrows is the slave of his creditor … who endures the mercilessness of his slave master.”
Basil moreover maintains that it is better to beg than to borrow. “If you cannot work, then beg. Is this really such a shameful thing? I tell you the truth, it is far more shameful and problematic if you neglect to repay what is borrowed.”
Several times in this sermon, Basil cleverly speculates about the significance behind the Greek term tokos (τόκος), and more implicitly, the real meaning behind the Hebrew neshek (נֶשֶׁךְ), which, again, derives from the verb nashak (נָשַׁךְ), meaning “to bite,” like the biting of a serpent or “viper.” He says: “This particular form of avarice is aptly named, for the term tokos, literally ‘birth’ or ‘offspring,’ signifies, in my view, the fecundity of its evil. Whence else would it derive such a name? Or perhaps it is so called because of the anguish and torment it engenders in the souls of borrowers. Just as labor pains afflict a woman in childbirth, so the debtor is stricken with dread at the approach of the appointed day of payment. There is interest upon interest (i.e., compound interest), the perverse progeny of wicked parents. Let these offspring of usury be likened to a brood of vipers. For it is said that vipers are born by biting through their mother’s womb, and in like manner, interest consumes the very substance of the debtor’s household.” In agreement with Aristotle, Basil understood money as utterly sterile. Therefore, the only procreation possible through usury is the reproduction of iniquities.
Basil returns to the sins of the usurer and addresses him directly: “Listen, you who are rich, to what we are forced to advise the poor on account of your inhumanity: that they would do better to endure their dire circumstances than to embrace the greater miseries brought on by the burden of interest. Yet if you were to heed the command of the Lord, such exhortation would be entirely unnecessary. What, then, is the counsel of the Master? ‘Lend to those from whom you do not hope to receive in return.’ One may ask, ‘What kind of loan is this, which carries no expectation of repayment?’ Reflect on the depth of this teaching, and you will marvel at the generosity of the Lawgiver. When you resolve to aid the poor for the sake of the Lord, your act becomes at once both a gift and a loan—a gift, in that you expect nothing in return, and a loan, because the Master Himself becomes the guarantor, repaying far more than was given. He, Who receives meager offerings through the hands of the impoverished, bestows in return immense blessings. ‘He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord’ (Proverbs 19:17).”
In this passage, Basil gets to the heart of our Lord’s command in Luke 6. We are to lend expecting nothing in return, which means we are to lend with the sole expectation that we may effectively be giving. But even if our loan becomes a gift—even if the principal is lost—Scripture promises that God Himself will reward with repayment according to His munificence. What better surety is there?
Basil concludes his sermon as follows: “The interest you exact is marked by the utmost inhumanity. You derive profit from misfortune, extract wealth from tears, oppress the naked, and strike the famished. Nowhere is there mercy, no recognition of a shared humanity or kinship with the one who suffers. And yet you dare to call the proceeds of such cruelty humane? Woe to you who call bitter sweet and sweet bitter, who cloak inhumanity with the name of philanthropy…. Finally, I say to you: Scripture is extraordinarily clear: ‘From him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away’ and ‘You shall not charge interest to your brother.’ These commands are given to you so that, having been taught what is right from both the Old and the New Testaments, you may finally depart to the Lord with good hope, receiving in eternity the interest from your good deeds, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to Whom be the glory and power forever. Amen.”
Before moving on from Basil, it is worth mentioning that in a letter to Amphilochius of Iconium (Letter #188), he addresses the issue of repentant usurers potentially entering the ministry. He advises: “Regarding a usurer, only if he consents to give all the profits he has made through his injustices to the poor, and agrees to flee from the plague of covetousness for the rest of his days, may he be received into the ministry.”
Equally as fiery as Basil, his younger brother and fellow Cappadocian father, Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394), treated the sin of usury repeatedly in his homilies and writings. In the fourth of his Homilies on Ecclesiastes, covering Ecclesiastes 2:7–11, Gregory speaks at length about the vanity and futility of amassing wealth and hoarding goods. He excoriates the buying and selling of goods falsely presented as necessities but which are, in truth, mere luxuries. His critique of what we might today call artificial demand bears striking resemblance to Luther’s later analysis in his 1524 On Trade and Usury. For Luther, the danger confronting the German people in his day was not a crisis of genuine necessity, but rather the proliferation of artificial needs introduced through foreign trade (see LW 45:246–47), which resulted in “usury and avarice bursting into the land like a flood” (SA Preface), complicating the economic situation and compromising the moral fabric of the nation. Like Luther, Gregory had no patience at all for the array of flimsy rationalizations offered in defense of corrupt commerce and predatory lending. He writes: “What is this irrational frenzy for the acquisition of possessions, the ultimate end of which is futility? So intense is this madness for wealth that it drives individuals to acts of violence and murder, and, beyond these, to the practice of usury and other forms of exploitation.”
After lambasting the vain and unchristian pursuit of wealth, Gregory takes up his brother’s curiosity about the etymology of tokos, writing: “Not only is the practice of usury condemned, but even the very pernicious idea of interest (tokos, literally ‘offspring’) must be regarded as a form of robbery—or indeed, of bloodshed—without exaggeration. What, after all, distinguishes the act of acquiring another’s property through covert theft or a murder-robbery on the roadside from seizing what is not one’s own by the charging of interest? What a corruption of language, that the word tokos, denoting a ‘child,’ becomes a euphemism for plunder! What a bitter union, what a perverse and unnatural marriage—fabricated not by nature but by the vice of avarice—between inanimate objects! What intolerable pregnancies give rise to such ‘offspring’! In the natural order, living beings alone are distinguished as male and female (Gen. 1:27), and it is to them that God, their Creator, gave the command, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen. 1:22, 28), so that life might abound through the propagation of living offspring. But what kind of union gives birth to the so-called ‘child’ of gold? From what monstrous pregnancy is it produced? I know the pains of such a childbirth, for, as the prophet declares, ‘Behold, the wicked brings forth iniquity; yes, he conceives trouble and brings forth falsehood’ (Psalm 7:14–15). This is the ‘child’ conceived by greed, born of wickedness, and delivered by the hands of miserliness. The one who forever hides his wealth, swearing he possesses nothing, suddenly becomes fertile when he sees a man crushed by poverty. Then he is found to be pregnant—pregnant in his purse!—and gives birth to the evil ‘offspring’ of profit-seeking. He offers the illusion of help to the one in distress, but pours money upon misfortune as if attempting to quench fire with oil. His loan does not heal the wound, but inflames it further; and just as parched fields in drought spontaneously produce thorns and thistles, so, too, in the afflictions of the poor, the ‘children’ of extortioners multiply unchecked and run amok. It is at this moment that he extends his hand full of money, like a fisherman lowering a baited hook; the desperate borrower, tempted by fleeting relief, bites, and as soon as the hook is pulled, he is disemboweled of all he possesses. Such are the supposed ‘benefits’ of interest. If a man seizes another’s wealth by violence, or in secret, we rightly call him a criminal, a burglar, or something equally contemptible. Yet the one who publicizes his crime through legal contracts, who enshrines his cruelty in financial agreements, is hailed as a benefactor, a philanthropist, even a savior; he is adorned with the noblest of titles. What would be labeled plunder in the hands of a thief is euphemistically termed ‘philanthropy’ when a lender strips his debtor bare under the guise of obligation. Such is the euphemism they give for the devastation inflicted upon those already broken by misfortune.”
Gregory devoted another lengthy homily to the topic of usury, entitled Contra usurarios. In this sermon, Gregory begins by defining the purpose of the law: “For those who love virtue and choose to live according to reason, life is governed by just laws and righteous commandments. Within these, the intent of the Lawgiver is manifest, oriented broadly toward two overarching aims: first, the prohibition of what is forbidden; and second, the exhortation to the active pursuit of what is good.” In short, for Gregory, the Old Testament prohibition against usury and the New Testament command to lend freely without expectation have both aims.
He goes on: “But you—whomever this address may concern—hate the manner of the huckster; being a man yourself, love mankind, not silver. Cease your sinning at this point. Say to those once-beloved interest payments with the voice of John the Baptist: ‘Brood of vipers, depart from me!’ For presently, you are the ruin of those in need … the venom that comes from you brings bitter destruction to the soul. You block the path of life, you close the gates to the kingdom of heaven; for the sake of a fleeting pleasure to the eye and a momentary delight to the ear, you cause an eternal grief. Having said these things, I command you to renounce both profit and interest, and align yourself with love for the poor…. Yet how often you do the contrary! You become an enemy rather than a helper. You do not work with the needy man so that he might be freed from his affliction and repay what he has borrowed; rather, you heap evil upon one already crushed, you strip the naked, you strike again one already wounded, you add burdens to burdens, sorrows to sorrow…. But I urge you: do not live a life that hates mankind under the pretense of philanthropy!”
One can see here the influence Gregory’s older brother had on his fervently critical view of usury and the harsh language with which condemns it. His invective against the inhumane ways of the moneylender continues: “The life of the usurer is idle and avaricious. He knows nothing of the sweat of the farmer nor the ingenuity of the merchant. He remains seated in one place, nourishing beasts from his hearth. He wishes that all things should increase for him without sowing, without labor. His pen serves as his plow, his paper as his field, his ink as the seed, and time as the rain which, in secret, brings about the increase of his money’s yield. His sickle is the demand for payment. His house becomes a threshing floor, where he grinds down the substance of the afflicted. What belongs to all, he regards as his own possession. He prays for men to experience hardship and misfortune, so that they might be forced to come to him begging…. He tallies his profit each day, yet never finds rest from his craving. He lives in direct opposition to the apostolic command: he gives to all who ask, not from a spirit of philanthropy, but out of a motive rooted in the love of money (philargyria).” (It is worth noting that some Roman Catholic authors cite this passage from Gregory, where he speaks of “what belongs to all,” in support of the doctrine of the universal destination of goods.)
Further echoing his brother’s example, Gregory seeks to promote generous lending by reminding his hearers that the Lord Himself repays what is given to the poor: “Give without haggling, and you will see God returning your kindness with an added measure of grace.… To those who spend with piety and perform good works, God repays the reward in multiplied abundance. For when Peter asked, ‘Behold, we have left all and followed You; therefore what shall we have?’—Jesus replied, ‘Assuredly I say to you, everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or fields, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit eternal life.’ Do you see His generosity? Do you perceive His goodness? The shameless usurer toils to double his principal; but God, freely and without necessity or compulsion, gives a hundredfold to the one who refrains from oppressing his brother. Be persuaded, then, by the counsel of God, and you shall receive interest without sin.”
He then returns to castigating and admonishing the usurer: “You demand profit and increase from a poor man, making your wealth from his poverty, as though one should expect sheaves of wheat from land scorched by the heat of summer, or clusters of grapes from a vineyard shattered by hail, or children from a barren womb, or milk from a woman who has never given birth to a child. No one attempts what is unnatural and impossible; for not only do such attempts fail, but they provoke ridicule. Only God is almighty: He Who finds provision in those who have none, Who brings to pass what is beyond hope and expectation, Who once commanded water to flow from the rock and sent bread from heaven, wondrous and unknown, Who sweetened the bitter waters of Marah by the touch of wood, Who opened the barren womb of Elizabeth, Who granted to Hannah the little Samuel, and Who gave to Mary the Firstborn in virginity. These are the works of an almighty hand alone. But you—whomever this address may concern—do not seek interest from bronze or gold, those barren and lifeless materials. Do you not understand that the need for a loan, in appearance, is a plea for mercy? For this reason, also, the law, that introductory scripture of piety, everywhere forbids interest.”
“What benefit is there in making many poor so that the usurer alone might be comforted? If there were not a multitude of usurers, there would not be such a multitude of the destitute…. Everyone denounces the usurers, and yet there is no cure for the evil, even though there be the law, the prophets, and the evangelists. Consider what the inspired Amos declares: ‘Hear this, you who swallow up the needy and make the poor of the land fail, who say, ‘When will the new moon be past, that we may sell grain?’’ For not even fathers rejoice so greatly at the birth of children as do the usurers exult when the month has come to its end and payment is due. And they hide their sin with dignified-sounding names, drawing in their profit as if it were an act of philanthropy…. Clearly mercy has been exiled from the souls of those defiled by the love of money.”
Gregory goes on to describe how, in his own day, countless impoverished families, having taken out loans at interest, were inevitably unable to meet their monthly payments and were subsequently driven from their “ancestral homes.” For many in America today, this may hit a little too close to home.
Toward the end of this sermon against usury, Gregory reminds lenders that the day of judgment is fast approaching: “With what eyes, then, when the day of the resurrection comes, will you look upon the one whom you financially oppressed? For both of you shall be made to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, where it is not interest that is calculated, but lives that are judged. And what will you say when you are accused before the impartial Judge, when this is spoken to you: ‘You had the law, the prophets, and the evangelical commandments. You heard them all crying out with one voice about love and compassion. Some were saying, You shall not charge interest to your brother. Others, He has not put out his money at usury. Others still, If you lend to your brother, you shall not oppress him.’ … Then remorse without profit will overtake you, heavy groanings will seize you, and punishment without appeal will follow. Nowhere will gold come to your aid, nor will silver offer any defense; and rest assured, the repayment of interest will be more bitter than gall. These are not mere terrifying utterances, but true realities, bearing witness beforehand to the judgment before it comes, things it is good for the prudent to guard against, and for those who have foresight concerning what is to come.”
In closing, Gregory addresses those who will say that his preaching is too onerous: “‘But this man’s teaching is a burden to us!’—so you say (for I am not unaware of your grumblings muttered under your breath)—‘He continually disturbs us from the pulpit, laying snares both for those who do good and for those in need.’ Behold, they say, ‘We will no longer lend!’—and how, then, you ask, shall the needy survive? … A fitting objection indeed, but only for those whose minds have been darkened by the shadow of wealth. For they do not possess the sound discernment of mind to comprehend what is being said here…. To such as these, firstly, I proclaim and command free and generous giving. And secondly, yes, I also encourage lending, for a loan is a second form of gift. Yet it must be carried out without interest, surplus, or profit, in the manner that the Holy Word has commanded us.”
On at least two other occasions, Gregory tackled the problem of usury. While I did not include this in the foregoing, he brings up the need for forgiveness of monetary debts in connection with the Lord’s Prayer in Contra usurarios. But he also speaks to this more succinctly in his Fifth Homily on the Lord’s Prayer: “You, the usurer, ask that your debts be forgiven, but how, then, can you strangle your debtor? You pray that the Lord would blot out what is written against you, while you yourself carefully preserve the records of those who are indebted to you? You desire that your own debts be cancelled, yet you increase what you have lent by means of usury? Your debtor is imprisoned, while you are in church? He groans under the weight of his debts, and yet you deem it right that your own debt should be forgiven? Your prayer cannot be heard, for the cry of the one who suffers drowns it out. If you remit the material debt, the bonds of your soul also shall be loosed; if you pardon, you, too, shall be pardoned. You must be your own judge, your own lawgiver. By the disposition you show toward the one indebted to you, you pronounce upon yourself the sentence of heaven.” (One is here reminded of our Lord’s Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.)
Finally, in his canonical epistle to St. Letoius, Bishop of Melitene, Gregory straightforwardly confronts the church’s laxity in dealing with usury: “We so often regard only theft, grave robbery, and sacrilegious plunder as serious offenses…. And yet, in Holy Scripture, excessive gain and usury are among the things repeatedly forbidden, along with appropriating another’s possessions through force, even if such things are carried out under the pretense of commerce.”
The last father we will mention in this part is another Cappadocian named Gregory, this one from Nazianzus. Close friends with Basil and his brother, Gregory Nazianzen (c. 329–390), eventual Patriarch of Constantinople, briefly refers to the evil of usury in the sixteenth of his famous Orations, writing: “A man defiles the land with usury (τόκος) and interest (πλεονασμός; meaning “superfluity”), gathering where he did not sow and reaping where he had not scattered seed, harvesting his gain not from the earth but from the need of the poor.” Given this clear reference to Matthew 25:26, we may reasonably conclude that Gregory Nazianzen likewise understood the Parable of the Talents as a profound subversion of the love of money, in which Jesus merely accommodates Himself to the sinful conditions of man to prove His heavenly point.
We will pause for now in the fourth century. I encourage you, dear reader, to reflect on the words of these important fathers. God willing, in the next part of our series, we will pick up with the canons of a number of church councils and with perhaps the most prolific opponent of usury in the patristic period, Ambrose.
Stay tuned.