# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S326
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

326                    Fifteen Theses on Usury.

lending at usury is a lie and a fraud, and is therefore forbidden by
the moral law.

3. Lending at usury is contrary to justice and fairness. These require
that like be repaid with like. Now since the usurer demands that,
because he has given up for a time, for the debtor's benefit, the
possession and use of a good — namely the capital — the debtor should
in return give up forever, for the creditor's benefit, the possession
and use of a good — namely the interest — this demand, and with it
lending at usury, is contrary to justice and fairness, and thus
contrary to the moral law.

4. If usurious interest is conceived by the usurer as a rightfully
demandable repayment for the benefit rendered by the lending, then
lending at usury is a factual denial of God, and is therefore forbidden
by the moral law. For the moral law requires that the benefactor
regard his work as repayment for what God has done for him. Now the
usurer, in claiming for himself a repayment for his benefit, thereby
denies that his work was the discharge of a debt; he turns the debt
into a demand, and thus denies his debt and, with it, God himself.
(Luke 17:10.)

5. The moral law forbids every action that proves harmful and
destructive in its consequences. Now lending at usury has ruined not
only whole families but, according to the testimony of history, whole
states; it is therefore forbidden by the moral law.

6. The Old Testament prohibition of lending at usury has been
recognized by the whole New Testament church as belonging to the moral
law and binding upon all men. The exceptions are only apparent. For
when in more recent times Christians have regarded certain kinds of
lending at usury as permissible, this did not happen because they held
lending at usury to be a matter of indifference, but on account of a
logical error, in that they did not reckon these kinds under the genus
of lending at usury.

That lending at usury has been regarded by the church of the New
Testament as forbidden by the moral law is proved, among other things,
by the following decisions of various councils, which dealt with the
interest permitted by civil law: The Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325: "Since
many enrolled among the clergy, following greed and shameful gain,
have forgotten the divine Scripture which says, He who does not give
his money out at usury, and, while lending, demand the hundredth part
[centesimas] — the holy and great Synod has therefore held it