The Gods of the Marketplace

I was, to be honest, a little amazed to learn that Harvey Cox is still alive, lazily assuming that anyone whose first big book was published in the 1960s must have died some time ago. But he's not just alive, but set next month to release a paperback edition of The Market as God (Harvard University Press, 2019), 320pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Market has deified itself, according to Harvey Cox’s brilliant exegesis. And all of the world’s problems—widening inequality, a rapidly warming planet, the injustices of global poverty—are consequently harder to solve. Only by tracing how the Market reached its “divine” status can we hope to restore it to its proper place as servant of humanity.

The Market as God captures how our world has fallen in thrall to the business theology of supply and demand. According to its acolytes, the Market is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. It knows the value of everything, and determines the outcome of every transaction; it can raise nations and ruin households, and nothing escapes its reductionist commodification. The Market comes complete with its own doctrines, prophets, and evangelical zeal to convert the world to its way of life. Cox brings that theology out of the shadows, demonstrating that the way the world economy operates is neither natural nor inevitable but shaped by a global system of values and symbols that can be best understood as a religion.

Drawing on biblical sources, economists and financial experts, prehistoric religions, Greek mythology, historical patterns, and the work of natural and social scientists, Cox points to many parallels between the development of Christianity and the Market economy. At various times in history, both have garnered enormous wealth and displayed pompous behavior. Both have experienced the corruption of power. However, what the religious have learned over the millennia, sometimes at great cost, still eludes the Market faithful: humility.

Cox is of course a Protestant, and I hope it will not be taken as an ecumenical felicity if I mention that I shall read his book second. I will do so after I have read The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity by Eugene McCarraher, a Catholic scholar and writer of singular insight whom I have often cited since discovering him a few years back.

McCarraher's big book of 816 pages, is also published by Harvard UP, and released this week. About it the publisher tells us this:

Far from displacing religions, as has been supposed, capitalism became one, with money as its deity. Eugene McCarraher reveals how mammon ensnared us and how we can find a more humane, sacramental way of being in the world.

If socialists and Wall Street bankers can agree on anything, it is the extreme rationalism of capital. At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the “disenchantment” of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and sacredness. Ignoring the motive force of the spirit, capitalism rejects the awe-inspiring divine for the economics of supply and demand.

Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether or not it is acknowledged. Capitalist enchantment first flowered in the fields and factories of England and was brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit. Later, the corporation was mystically animated with human personhood, to preside over the Fordist endeavor to build a heavenly city of mechanized production and communion. By the twenty-first century, capitalism has become thoroughly enchanted by the neoliberal deification of “the market.”

Informed by cultural history and theology as well as economics, management theory, and marketing, The Enchantments of Mammon looks not to Marx and progressivism but to nineteenth-century Romantics for salvation. The Romantic imagination favors craft, the commons, and sensitivity to natural wonder. It promotes labor that, for the sake of the person, combines reason, creativity, and mutual aid. In this impassioned challenge, McCarraher makes the case that capitalism has hijacked and redirected our intrinsic longing for divinity—and urges us to break its hold on our souls.

Austerity Britain

This book has nothing especially to do with Eastern Christianity; but I make note of it in case there are others who would be interested in the history it recounts so splendidly: David Kynaston, Austerity Britain 1945-1951 (New York: Walker & Co., 2008), viii + 692pp.

It's been out for a decade, but I just found a copy in a used bookstore a few weeks ago, and read it not merely with interest but with something approaching delight in the prose and the author's deft control of what, in lesser hands, could easily have been a sprawling and uncontrolled narrative bloated on masses of data. It has won consistently, and deservedly, high praise from all the reviews I've seen. You might think, given the unrelentingly grim era it covers, and the masses of data it draws on, that this book would be a plodding dullard, but you would be wrong. The author's wry outlook and propensity for finding the telling detail without being overwhelming is excellent.

I read it because I wanted to understand in more detail what drove my Glaswegian grandparents to flee to Canada after the war, my grandfather leaving in 1948 to find work and a home, and my grandmother, with my mother and her brother, following in 1949. They never really talked in a lot of detail about why they left, other than vaguely mentioning "greater economic opportunities." And, regrettably, I never thought to ask them about all this when they were still alive.

One thing, after reading Kynaston's book, that is now clear to me is the timing: my grandfather left in early 1948, not long after the worst and coldest winter (1947) in modern British history. Now I understand why, whenever I visited their house in Canada, the heat was always utterly unbearable: 85 degrees and above. You absolutely sweltered in their house (or in the car, if driving with them) and longed to go outside and roll in a snowbank. But for them it could never be too warm.

I knew that they had had many close calls during the war, living as they did along the River Clyde, then the largest shipbuilding site in the British Empire and thus an object of particular attention from the Luftwaffe; and I knew, vaguely, of the rationing; but I knew nothing of the detail and extent of the destruction--how many hundreds of thousands were living in the barest of "houses" with no plumbing, dozens packed into a few rooms without heat; and I did not understand how grim and far-reaching was the rationing--until reading Kynaston's book, which shows how the rationing got worse after the war, and in some cases things that were never rationed during the war ended up so afterwards. Again a piece clicked for me: my grandmother used to apply butter to her bread with a trowel, half an inch thick. Now I understand why--as, also, I understand why every meal included as fat a roast (pork, beef, ham) as they could lay their hands on. Oh, and the sugar. My grandfather was notorious for putting huge quantities of sugar on everything along with gallons of cream. They were making up for what they had not known for so long during a pivotal and memorable part of their life.

These factors--food, the cold, and the need for basic housing for hundreds of thousands of people--when combined with the huge numbers suffering from medical conditions they could not afford to treat also helped me understand the seemingly mysterious 1945 election with Labour's massive majority: it wasn't a repudiation of Churchill (whom my grandmother taught me to revere), who remained hugely popular and venerated; but it was a long-simmering desire for much better social conditions after enduring so much hardship in the war. (This election, I'm somewhat chagrined to admit, was also, I recall, one of the factors that my grandparents said drove them to leave. My grandfather's family were small business owners who felt like Labour would destroy the economy.)

Thus, for those interested in politics, this book covers, of course, the Labour government under Clement Atlee, when dramatic social changes--not least the National Health Service--were brought in. Had members of that government--in particular the fascinating and fiery orator and Welshman Aneurin Bevan--had their way, the changes might have been even more dramatic. The battles Bevan (who grew up in the staggeringly horrid conditions of the coal mines of Wales) fought against other more right-wing Labour ministers and members--to say nothing of the reactionaries in the British medical establishment--are retold in this book, making it of interest to those who follow, as I do, some of the intellectual developments of postwar British politics of the left. Nobody who doubts the existence of "class warfare" can do so after reading Kynaston's fascinating book--the first of a series, followed by, inter alia, Family Britain 1951-1957, and Modernity Britain 1957-1962, both of which I look forward to reading.

Asceticism as Cure for Consumerism: An Interview with Fr. Gregory Jensen

With the impending release this week of the papal encyclical on ecology, attention is once again focused on the social outworkings of the Christian gospel. As I noted recently, it has often been said that Orthodoxy has not developed its social teaching as much as the Catholic Church has. This is not a point of triumphalism but rather a recognition that--as with so many other things--most of Orthodoxy until 1991 was living under tyrannical rule, either Islamic or communist, and thus in no position to make these developments.

But as with so many things in Eastern Christianity in the last quarter-century, we are now happily seeing a stream of books emerge each year to fill in some of the gaps. One such book has just been published. Written by the Orthodox priest-scholar Gregory Jensen, The Cure for Consumerism (154pp.) is the second volume in a new series devoted to Orthodox Christian social thought published by the Acton Institute. I asked him for an interview and here are his thoughts:

AD: Tell us about your background

Let’s see, my wife and I have been married for 30 years and I’ve been a priest for 18. These are probably the two most important things I can tell you about myself not just personally but also as a scholar. Everything I do flows out of my experiences as a husband and a priest.

Professionally, academically, I did my undergraduate work in psychology at the University of Dallas. After graduation I stayed on for an MA in theology (and meet my wife—I had a good year!). My thesis was on ethics in psychotherapy, which got me interested in exploring issues of fundamental anthropology in the social sciences.

In 1995 I received my doctorate from Duquesne University’s Institute of Formative Spirituality where I was able study with the late Fr Adrian van Kaam. Both a Catholic priest and a psychologist, van Kaam was instrumental in establishing a critical—but appreciative and collaborative dialogue—between psychology and Christian spirituality.  

Like many other programs in spiritual formation, IFS was an interdisciplinary program in personality theory, religion and pastoral practices. So on the graduate level, my academic background is in moral theology and personality theory. This allowed me to write a dissertation—that still sits accusingly on my shelf waiting to be reworked for publication—exploring phenomenologically the psycho-social structures and dynamics of communion in Orthodox liturgy (you see why it needs to be re-written!). My published work is in Christian spirituality, psychology, and now economics and property rights.

AD: Tell us what led to the writing of this book in particular

The short answer is that Acton asked me to do so. The slightly longer answer is that The Cure for Consumerism is based on a presentation I did at Acton University, the Acton Institute’s “four-day exploration of the intellectual foundations of a free society” (see here for more details). I’m doing the presentation again this year (“East Meets West: Consumerism and Asceticism”). It has been well received not only by the sprinkling of Orthodox at AU (all of whom are my friends) but also by Catholics and evangelical Christians. So Acton saw there was some interest in the project beyond just Orthodox Christians.

There needs to be moral limits on human consumption. Unfortunately, we often equate moral limits with merely curtailing consumption. And to be fair, yes sometimes I need to make do with less--but not always. The moral problem of consumerism is not, however, solved by telling people merely to consume less but rather by helping each other consume in ways that are morally better. Learning how to do this is part and parcel of the ascetical life.

I think the book provides Christians and others of good will with a framework to respond to consumerism in a manner that is both anthropologically and economically sound. Evidently the folks at Acton agreed and so they asked me to write the book.

AD: Your book is vol. 2 in the Orthodox Christian Social Thought Series from the Acton Institute. Do you know what has prompted them to start this imprint rather than, say, a more traditional Orthodox publisher?

I’m not sure why Acton took the path they did. You might want to direct that question to Acton. But as a scholar, I prefer to work in an interdisciplinary environment. That was my doctoral program after all. Being able to have conversations about consumerism with other Orthodox Christians is helpful to be sure but insufficient.  Doing research for the book meant talking with Christians in other traditions, pastors, lay business leaders and other professionals as well as with economists (only some of whom are Christians).

While I’d be happy to do so if asked, I’ve never written for a traditional Orthodox publisher so I can’t speak to what that experience would be like. For me at least, I want to get feedback from a broad range of sober scholarly and pastoral voices. Working with Acton helped me do this and further helped me to write a book that, while clearly Orthodox in its sources and themes, can speak to a broader audience. I’m writing as an Orthodox Christian but for men and women of good willing trying to live out their economic lives in a morally good, and even holy, manner.

AD: The back blurb of your book notes that in all the railing against “consumerism” on the part of churchmen and moralists, one thing is overlooked: a massive drop in poverty worldwide since 1970. Tell us more about this development.

If you take a slightly longer historical view, the decrease in poverty is more dramatic still. Over the last 200 years, the percentage of people living in poverty has fallen while the population has increased dramatically. The economist Max Roser points out that “In a world without economic growth, an increase in the population would result in less and less income for everyone, and a 7-fold increase would have surely resulted in a world in which everyone is extremely poor. Yet, the exact opposite happened. In a time of unprecedented population growth we managed to lift more and more people out of poverty!” 

It is economic growth that lifts people out of poverty. There is a place for foreign aid, and there’s a place for government assistance, but what people need isn’t just compassion but also work. St John Chrysostom says the hand of compassion is extended because work isn’t available (or in some extreme cases, possible). Human beings are made to work. 

For people to acquire gainful, and dignified, work we have to create wealth. We need to do this not only to pay a just wage but also to expand the opportunities men and women have for education and access to health care--to take only two examples.

Unfortunately, many Christians hold what Jeffrey D. Sachs in an op-ed calls an “anti-market sentiment.” Yes, as he says, “Economic growth and poverty reduction can’t be achieved by free markets alone.” We can, and should, argue over the exact mix of public and private expenditures. Whatever the mix, lifting people out of poverty requires “economic growth, and hence a market economy, is vital.”

AD: You begin your book with a story from the Desert Fathers to illustrate the connection between asceticism and economic life, a connection that seems to me often overlooked. Tell us a bit more about how you see that connection.

Consumerism, is not so much a denial of our nature but rather the frustration of our natural desire to experience communion with God, our neighbor, and creation. Asceticism is about forming, reforming, and transforming my consumption so that creation is once again an experience of communion with God and neighbor.

Human beings are by nature consumers and if we weren’t then receiving Holy Communion would be sin. Our Lord says, “take and eat; take and drink.” We are to “taste and see that the Lord is good” and are invited to the “wedding feast of the Lamb.” Again, we are by nature consumers but our consumption must be in harmony with the Divine Will.

But communion is always personal and the ascetical tradition of the Church takes this into account. Yes. there are limits to human consumption (e.g., gluttony, greed, avarice, and sexual immorality of all types are forbidden) but within those limits we have great freedom to form our lives. Ascetical struggle, like the life of communion it serves, is always personal. An ascetical approach to our economic life requires more than a simplistic, and let’s be frank often ideological, call to consume less.  To do so inevitably means that I’m imposing my own ascetical rule on you. So yes, fast, pray, and give alms according to your conscience and circumstances (hence the story of the rich monk and the poor monk with which I begin the book).

AD: You then recount the life of St. Mary of Egypt, by many accounts an “extreme” example of asceticism. How did you see her life as relevant to a book about economics and consumerism? 

Our economic lives, our lives of social involvement, and our spiritual lives are not meant to be separate but to work together in harmony. Communion is also a consonance, a harmony of the different aspects of our life, working together for God’s glory and our own salvation. St Mary of Egypt embodies all of this.

Listening to St Mary’s life every year, I’m often struck by how she didn’t enjoy her sinful life; she takes neither physical pleasure or financial profit. She didn’t prostitute herself for gain but to degrade herself and others. She was, as we hear in the services of the Church, a slave to her passions.

At the very end of her life she is able to free herself by God’s grace from the passions—and I suspect profound sexual traumas of childhood—that enslaved her. Not only does she receive Holy Communion (for only the second time in her life) from Zosimas but also, for friendship’s sake, she has a little taste of the food he brought her. Communion with God, neighbor, and the material world all converge in her and all are the fruit of her ascetical struggle. St Mary makes clear, in very dramatic form, what is true for all of us: that we can live lives that are whole and integrated.

AD: Toward the end of your chapter on Orthodox criticism of the free market, you note that a “systematic treatment” of economic issues from an Orthodox perspective is often elusive, and more “homiletical” than systematic. I’ve often talked to my students about this frustration when it comes to Catholic social teaching, but I present it to them as a feature, not a bug: that is, the OST/CST is designed to be somewhat vague and exhortative so that actual individuals in concrete circumstances can figure out how to implement it in details fitting their contexts. Would you agree?

I would agree that it is a very good thing that both OST and CST avoid making prudential decisions and so avoid imposing solutions without concern for the lives of actual individuals and concrete circumstances. So yes, the homiletic character of both is a feature not a bug. What I was getting at was something more basic: especially in English, there really isn’t much research and writing being done in OST.

AD: “Consumption: Vicious and Virtuous” is the title of your fifth chapter. Tell us more about how you see virtuous consumption, especially as I think many middle-class Christians seem to suffer from at least a little guilt in what they consume, feeling as though they are somehow depriving others of food or shelter or whatever by the very act of consumption. Do too many Christians operate on a zero-sum approach to consumption today?

What we can do--and this is what I mean by “virtuous consumption”--is work to help create opportunities to expand the circle of economic activity to help more people enjoy the benefits of a market economy. For example, if you hire a maid service to clean your house, you are providing work for someone who (typically) has very few skills and who might otherwise be on welfare (or worse). These jobs are low on the economic ladder but they can (and often do) serve as a starting point for people to move up economically. The point here is that economic self-interest and altruism are not inherently opposed. Unfortunately, you may think this if you hold to a zero-sum economic model.

At its most benign, zero-sum economic thinking is neurotic. Somewhat more worryingly for me as a pastor, I think it reflects a lack of gratitude (thanksgiving, eucharistia) to God for the material blessings He has bestowed on us. Feeling guilty only paralyzes us and keeps us from wisely appraising our own economic decisions. Let me explain.

A “zero-sum approach to consumption” says that wealth is only destroyed, never created. The reason is that the total amount of wealth is fixed; and while it can be redistributed, doing so creates winners and losers. Ironically, this is the thinking that leads to consumerism since a zero-sum economic model ultimately say that I have to take from you before you take it from me. Now, in fairness, I may have done exactly that but that makes a thief. If we assume that the whole economic system is zero-sum, well then yes, the middle class are thieves and robbers just like the “1%.” But, even the poorest Americans—who are almost always better off than the poorest Africans or Asians—are also guilty.

This is simply not true. While there is much work to do, even in my lifetime humanity as a whole has become dramatically, unbelievably, better off economically. What we want for ourselves we should also want for others. If it’s wrong for me to be middle class then it is wrong for the poor of Africa or Asia or of inner-city America.

AD: Though you grapple with modern economic issues, your book is shot through with a very healthy dose of the Fathers, and of considerable quotation of, and meditation upon, liturgical texts. This was all, it seems, in service of a larger theological vision of the human person and human community, yes?

While I think the free market and economic development are good things, they aren’t ends in themselves and they aren’t sufficient for all our needs, but they are morally good. At the same time there are moral limits for our economic life just as there are for the rest of life. One of the reasons I like working with Acton is they (and I) aren’t free market fundamentalists or anarcho-capitalists (nor, by the way, are they or I libertarians). They (and I) argue that for the free market to remain free requires not only the rule of law but also the cultivation of the moral virtues. Economic development likewise requires not only technical expertise but moral wisdom. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who defend the free market fail to make this clear.

Understandably scholars and bishops take what are typically secular and materialistic defenses of the free market and economic development at face value and assume that these defenses exhaust the moral and practical justification for the free market. As I see it, a central task of OST is to ask if there isn’t a deeper, moral foundation to a market economy and economic development. Logically, we need to answers these questions before we can criticize specific economic or policy decisions.

AD: You conclude (p. 145) that “consumerism is consumption misdirected.” Tell us a bit more what you mean by that.

I mean here that consumption, being a consumer, is in the service of communion with God, neighbor and the creation. Consumerism, on the other hand, sees consumption as the goal. This means that in consumerism what matters is not wealth creation—which as I said earlier is especially important if we care for the poor—but wealth destruction. It is wholly a negative phenomenon.

AD: Tell us your hopes for this book, The Cure for Consumerism and who in particular will benefit from reading it.

Like the other social sciences, economics develop as a science within the mixed blessing that is the Enlightenment. To put our economic life on a sound anthropological footing means seeing through and beyond the anthropology of the Enlightenment. This in turn means asking what it means to be a person created in the image of God and called to live and work as a member of not just “a” human community but multiple, often overlapping, intersecting and not infrequently diverging human communities. The family and the Church are our twin foundation here but I belong to other communities well. I think the liturgy and the classical spiritual writings (East AND West) can help us understand how these different communities are meant to function and relate to each other.

For example--and I’m not arguing policy here: I’ve heard people say the Church Fathers teach that we have an absolute obligation to help the poor. Fair enough. They then go on to say that therefore any cut in social services or unwillingness to increase the SNAP budget is a violation of Christian charity. While I appreciate the good intention here, I’m not sure this is the case. Even if it is, though, appeals to the Fathers to justify government expenditures fails to take into account some important parts of patristic teaching.

For the Fathers, not only do the rich have an obligation to the poor but the poor have their own moral obligation in the economic realm. If the situation allows for it (and in the ancient world, it often didn’t) the poor are to work and support themselves and their family and not become a burden on the Church. They also have an obligation toward the rich. They owe their prayers, their gratitude, and a kind word to the rich. This is something that isn’t (and I don’t think can be) part of a state welfare program.

So those who argue from the Fathers in favor of government spending are picking and choosing just as surely are those who argue that government has NO obligation to care for the poor. Both for reasons of morality and public policy this all needs to be sorted out, and I hope my book can play a small part in doing so. My work is a very modest attempt to help Christians and others of good will navigate the moral challenges of a market economy, especially (though not exclusively) in their personal lives.

AD: Having finished the book, what projects are you at work on now?

Some of the research for the book was also done when I was a Lone Mountain Fellow at the Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, MT. PERC is a secular group primarily concerned with researching free market solutions to environmental issues but I found them very supportive of my own theological perspective. I hope to go back there in the near future and work more on property rights in OST. Early monastic literature and the canons of the Church both I think assume what a basic right to property as part of what the Moscow Patriarchate calls the human vocation to labor and right to “the fruits of labour.” The latter includes “the right to own and use property, the right to control and collect income, the right to dispose of, lease, modify or liquidate property” (Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church VII.1). But, as my wife says, the future belongs to God.

The Evil of Moneylending

Just released late last year is a book that manages to be both 'ancient and ever new,' that is, to draw on ancient sources still relevant today in our ongoing discussion about fiscal issues and policies in  the world's economies: Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen, They Who Give from Evil: The Response of the Eastern Church to Moneylending in the Early Christian Era (Pickwick, 2012), 207pp. I asked the author, who teaches at Pacific Lutheran University, for an interview and here are her thoughts:

AD: Tell us a bit about your background.

BLI: Well let me begin by saying “thank you” to you for this opportunity to answer some questions about myself and my work. I was born and raised in western Washington State, on the Puget Sound. I completed my Bachelor’s Degree in English and Education, and taught English in the public school system in Oregon state for a few years. Though I enjoyed my job and knew that I was called to the vocation of teaching, still I desired to study the early history and theology of the Christian church. I took a leave from teaching and returned to school; I completed my Master’s degree in theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, and then my PhD at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto. After I graduated I returned to teaching, but not to the junior high classroom. I returned to the Pacific Northwest, where I teach as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University.

AD: What led you to write this book in particular?

BLI: This began as a dissertation. I was directed towards this topic by my Doctor-Father, T. Allan Smith at the Faculty of Theology (St. Michael’s). Many dissertations emerge from places of deep passion for students; this was not my situation. That said, I found myself quite wooed by the topic of usury and by those about whom I was writing; quite quickly, their concerns became mine. I cannot help but think that this had something to do with the fact that I did not grow up with wealth and as a graduate student I was deeply in debt.

After I completed the dissertation I assumed that I would put this away and move on, but people were interested, and so I kept working on it. From the dissertation I produced an article for the Journal of Early Christian Studies, a chapter for the book Reading Patristic Texts on Social Ethics: Issues and Challenges for Twenty-First-Century Christian Social Thought (Catholic University of America Press, 2011) and another chapter for a forthcoming compendium on the social justice theologies of the patristic authors. While these projects seemed to close the chapter on this topic for me, enough people encouraged me to revisit the dissertation and revise it for publication as a monograph. I found myself rewriting large sections in light of what I have learned since 2004, and so I am ultimately glad that I revised the work for those who are interested in the social justice theologies of early Christian authors.

AD: Your title already "telegraphs" a rather stark view of many early Christian leaders about money-lending. In what did the evil consist? 

BLI: The evil for patristics lies in the deception of the one who lends, and this is an attitude that has quite ancient roots. The one who lends operates under the pretext of helping someone in need; while it appears as if the lender is offering assistance, in fact they are setting up a condition of debt from which it is often unlikely that the impoverished individual will successfully emerge. I compare this in my book to a usurer throwing an anvil rather than a rope to a person who is drowning. That said, the one who borrows is not off the hook, and individuals are cautioned—especially in the works of Basil and Gregory—to refrain from borrowing money for an extravagant lifestyle. In such cases, they are not innocent.

AD: You open with a chapter on Basil and Gregory of Nyssa and most of your focus is on them. What led you to them in particular? 

Well they are exceptional because they are the only two Greek patristic theologians to write sermons dedicated solely to this topic. Other writings on usury were simply tangential portions embedded in writings that had other intentions. In the Latin west there is Ambrose, but his sermon on this topic draws directly from Basil. So I was interested first in the scarcity of the topic, then on the fact that these two brothers—from affluent families, no less—are both writing on usury, and they are the only ones devoting concentrated attention to it. Then I was intrigued by secondary scholarship that seemed to dismiss Gregory’s contribution though my interpretation was that Gregory had something unique to offer. My desire to go forward with this project was supported by the patristic scholar Paul Fedwick, who felt that it was a good time to reassess the value of these sermons, most especially that of Gregory.

Basil the Great

AD: Are there other patristic sources, in addition to Basil and Gregory, who are important for or influential upon the questions of moneylending?  

It is worth pointing out that patristic theologians of both the Eastern and Western realms of the Empire were in agreement on the subject of usurious lending; though legal, usury was understood as contrary to divine law, and therefore any interest at all was condemned. This does not mean that the patristics did not recognize that lending did take place; it just meant that they did not agree that it should. In the Eastern Empire, Clement of Alexandria relies on biblical precedent in the Hebrew Scriptures for his statements in the Stromata against usurious practices, and Cyril of Jerusalem lists usury in his On the Ten Points of Doctrine within a list of sins that includes tavern-hunting, necromancy and witchcraft! Gregory of Nazianzus also condemned the practice in his poignant Oration 16. John Chrysostom is probably the most important and condemning of the practice; apart from our brothers Basil and Gregory, he has the most to say about moneylending and wealth in general. Many of Chrysostom’s homilies argue that the only investment worth making is in heaven; therefore one should give to the poor as Christ and earn interest for themselves in heaven, not on earth. Of the Latin fathers, perhaps the most important is Ambrose’ De Tobia; though his text lifts whole sections from Basil’s sermon, nevertheless his contribution is both important and provocative. It is worth noting also that the patristic theologians East and West inherited their attitudes from philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria, Plutarch, Aristotle and Plato. In this way, the Christian authors stand in a tradition of great thinkers on this topic.

AD:  Some Christians today would say that these early strictures about interest, usury, and related notions are no longer applicable because the economies of our time--at least in most of Europe, North America, and Australasia--are so vastly different. What are your thoughts on that?  

Yes, I hear this often. But while our economic systems and structures for handling finance have radically changed, people have not. We continue to have problems associated with greed and abundance, and we continue to fail to solve the problem of scarcity. A great example of this is that in late November—just after the holiday in the United States devoted to domestic arts—I read in the news that between thirty to fifty percent of food is wasted globally due to problems with storage, rigid adherence to expiry dates on packages and a need for fruits and vegetables to match an aesthetic criterion that is unreasonable. It takes no technology to fix this problem; it takes only a willingness to be morally responsible to the needs of the people and the planet. One might choose to purchase and eat food that is not perfect, or to not buy foods in bulk if they may go to waste. Or, if something might go to waste one could quickly share it with someone who might need it. These are three simple solutions, and this same type of thinking is found in the writings of Basil and Gregory. For example Basil (drawing on the works of Plutarch and from Proverbs), encourages those in need to avoid borrowing if they can, and to look first to their own resources first before enslaving themselves to money-lenders. He writes “Do you have metal plates, clothing, beasts of burden, utensils of every kind? Sell them; permit all things to go except your liberty.” This is as good a suggestion today as it was then, so while the systems are different, I think that the solutions are still appropriate. I do think that these early strictures about interest and usury are as applicable today as they were in the fourth century.

AD: The end of your first chapter references the subprime lending and mortgage crisis that sent much of the world into economic tumult in the last five years. Were they alive today, what advice would the Cappadocian brothers give to these problems?

I think that Basil would not have soothing words to say to those who tried to live beyond their means and borrowed too much, but I also think that he would take banks to task for holding out the promise of low interest to people who are not able to understand fully what financial deal they are making. I think that we can turn to John Chrysostom for the most extreme response to the evil of the type of lending that has been so disastrous for our country, for he equates a moneylender in his Homily Five on Matthew with a murderer: “under the cloak of kindness he digs the pitfall deeper, by the act of help burdening a man’s poverty, and in the act of stretching out the hand thrusting him down, and when receiving him as in harbor, involving him in shipwreck, as on a rock, or shoal, or reef.” Elsewhere Basil agrees with this sentiment, that one who has it in their good to do power but instead does evil is equated with a murderer, and Gregory refers to a usurer as a “murderous physician” who kills rather than heals. This is not an image of their own making, for the Hebrew Scriptures equate financial sins with murder, and Psalm 15—the Psalm on which Basil and Gregory focus their sermons—notes that the usurer will not be counted among those who will dwell on the Lord’s “holy hill.” Even Cato the Elder when asked “What do you think of lending at usury?” replied, “What do you think of killing a man?” So, what do I think of those who lent to those who did not have the capacity to pay their mortgages? Well, what do you think of killing someone?

AD: You note (p.109) that no Father was as adamant as John Chrysostom in his denunciations of affluence and usury. What are the problems he sees? Is his thinking broadly representative of the other sources you look at? 

I would agree that he is broadly representative of the sources, not only in his theology but also in his method. Like the other Fathers whom I highlight in the text, Chrysostom includes usury in homilies devoted to other subjects, but the financial concerns are brought into the discussion as part of something larger. As well, with respect to the problems that he sees regarding unjust financial transactions, Chrysostom is largely concerned with the direction of people’s investments. In other words, they are investing in transitory, material things rather than in that which is divine, or Heaven. Of course this seems odd to many who do not come from an Orthodox or Catholic background with a tradition of the Fathers; how can one invest in Heaven? To understand what this means for the Fathers, one has to understand something of their anthropology and theology. If God is accessible through God’s uncreated energies, then investing in Heaven is possible in the “here and now” because when one aids someone in need, then one is responding to God. This is a concept that all of the Greek Fathers seem to share, but it does seem that for Chrysostom it is a theme to which he returns many times. Gregory of Nyssa also promotes this same way of thinking about giving as “investing in heaven,” going so far as to call God a debtor to us! But of course what he means by that is that God, who gives from God’s abundance, is the model for giving.

 AD: How do you, and the Fathers, understand the problem of moneylending in directly theological terms? That is, usury is condemned (presumably) not just because of socioeconomic problems it creates for people, but also because such practices do not reflect who God is. What images of God, what descriptions of His nature, emerge from the Christian tradition's treatment of usury? 

BLI: All of the Fathers on whom I write are approaching their topic through the lens of asceticism and monasticism. In other words, they are individuals who have intentionally divested themselves of unnecessary wealth and they live among a community that supports that ideal. Of course, we have to recognize that they lived during an age when ecclesiastical leaders were expected to be connected to monastic communities and being an “ascetic” had become rather part of the job description of the professional religious. Further, they had communities that supported them spiritually, emotionally and materially, so to divest oneself of wealth while still be provided for is hardly the same thing as divesting oneself of wealth and not knowing a single soul in the city. As well, these were all individuals who were classically educated, and so their image of God is very much shaped by that education. Their theology has an impact on their understanding of economic practices as each moment, each financial interaction, becomes for them—and for us as well—an opportunity to meet God in the poor. However, this also means that something of God’s nature (the divine energies) cannot be approached or known as long as human nature is dressed in the garments of sin and stained by avarice. Gregory of Nyssa, in his Sermon 5, Forgive us our Debts, writes that an evil response by the wealthy to the poor distorts the inherent goodness of creation. This is ultimately, for Gregory, tied up in his Christology, for a proper understanding of shared human nature on the part of the giver will move both the giver and the receiver towards an original state of purity. In this way, acts of benevolence and goodness clarify the divine image that both parties are capable of demonstrating. “For as you practice goodness,” he writes, “you are clothed in Christ and as you become like Christ you become like God.”

AD: Sum up for us what you hope to accomplish with this book, and then tell us what you are working on now.  


First, I hoped that this book might provide a helpful history of the development of lending in the Greek, Roman and Hebrew cultures. Many times books on economic history are pretty formidable, and so I attempted to write a history that would be accessible to those with more than a passing interest but yet not necessarily students of ancient economies or legal systems. Second, I felt strongly that Gregory of Nyssa did not receive due treatment in secondary materials that analyzed his work; it felt too often that his sermon was treated as a mere copy of Basil’s, when in fact it was Ambrose who lifted who passages out of Basil’s sermon! I think that many times Gregory’s writings on similar topics of Basil’s were his way of saying “I have something to contribute as well,” and that is an attitude that we should model. I think it would have been challenging to have been the sibling of Basil, and even though Gregory has in no way suffered with respect to academic treatment of his theology, still, with respect to this one sermon I felt that it warranted—and that he deserved—a closer look.

What I am working on now is something quite different. I am completing for Ashgate a manuscript on the writing of John Moschos, a late sixth, early seventh century monk who composed a document known as the Pratum Spirituale, or The Spiritual Meadow. Along with his companion Sophronios, Moschos traveled around Palestine and Sinai and collected what we call “beneficial tales,” very brief stories most often focused on monastic life. Moschos is an enigmatic figure, and my manuscript seeks to uncover through close analysis of select tales in his text what we might be able to learn of the social history of the early Byzantine monks and lay people at a turning point in the history of the Eastern Empire. Now this seems like a project that is unrelated, but it is actually the topic of finances that led me back to Moschos’ Pratum. Years ago I realized that many of the tales dealt with—in some way—problems of scarcity, greed and financial suffering. So when it was time to embark on a new scholarship project I found my way into the text through, once again, the theme of social justice.