nonfungible commodity; but in contemporary markets, money may be quite
productive indeed. John Finnis concludes:
Aquinas’s account of usury, taken with his general theory of com-
pensation, thus identifies principles (not rules made up by moralists
or ecclesiastics) which enable us to see why in his era it was unjust
for lenders to make a charge (however described) in the nature of
profit, but with the development of capital market for both equities
and bonds it was to become fair and reasonable to make precisely
such a charge, correlated with (which is not to say identical to) the
general rate of return on equities.^27Aquinas’s conclusions about lending at interest were adequate given the
financial assumptions and market conditions of his time, but must be ad-
justed to account for contemporary circumstances.
THE CHARGING OF RIBIT (INTEREST) IN THE
TRADITION AND TEACHINGS OF THE
EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN CHURCH^28
Professor John Goldingay teaches at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California.
The Board of Directors of LARIBA asked him in March 2002 to author a
paper that summarizes the prohibition of charging interest on loans in the
Christian (evangelical) tradition, with an eye toward the history of the relax-
ation of the original prohibition. The following is an abbreviated summary
of his work.^29 Please note, in contrast to the Catholic thesis, Goldingay’s reli-
ance on Moses’s (pp) teachings in addition to the teachings of Jesus (pp).
LendingtothePoor
The exhortation in Exodus indicates that it is quite possible for creditors to
keep the regulation forbidding lending with interest, yet still treat debtors
oppressively. The Old Testament refers to this as a personal issue, a commu-
nity issue, a national issue, and an international issue.
Individual lenders are not to take the necessities of life as pledges, such
as an ox or ass, or a garment, or a millstone—or a baby (Deuteronomy
24:6, 17; Job 22:6; 24:3, 9). One oppressive lender is a man who insists on
taking away a widow’s children (so that they can work for him) because of
the family’s debt (2 Kings 4:1).
A story about community controversy in Nehemiah 5 concerns oppres-
sive lending: It may refer to charging interest or to other tough actions, such
The Faith-Based Judeo-Christian-Islamic Foundation 27