For almost the entire sweep of Christian history, the overwhelming consensus of the Church — East and West, Catholic and Protestant — was simple and stark:
Taking interest on loans is a grave sin.
Not "high interest." Not "predatory interest." Interest, period.
The Latin word was usura, and for fifteen centuries it was ranked alongside murder, adultery, and idolatry as a mortal offence that barred a man from the sacraments and (unless repented) from Christian burial.
That is not fringe opinion. It is the unbroken witness of Scripture, Fathers, Councils, Popes, and Reformers until the modern era finally wore the Church down.
1. The Biblical Foundation (c. 1400 BC – AD 100)
Exodus 22:25 – "If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not exact interest from him."
Leviticus 25:35-37 – "You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit."
Deuteronomy 23:19-20 – Interest is forbidden to a "brother" (fellow Israelite), but permitted to a foreigner.
Psalm 15:5 – The man who "does not put out his money at interest" is the one who "shall never be moved."
Ezekiel 18:8,13,17 – The usurer is grouped with the worst sinners and will "surely die."
Nehemiah 5 – The great covenant renewal includes a public oath to "exact no usury" from fellow Jews.
Luke 6:34-35 – Jesus raises the bar: "Lend, expecting nothing in return."
The New Testament never rescinds the Old Testament prohibition; it radicalises it.
2. The Patristic Era (AD 100 – 700)
Every major Father who touches the subject condemns interest without qualification:
Clement of Alexandria: "The Law forbids usury… the taking of any gain whatever."
Tertullian: "Usury is a kind of homicide."
Basil the Great: "The bite of usury is worse than the bite of an asp."
Gregory of Nyssa: Calls usurers "bloodsuckers" who grow fat on the tears of the poor.
Ambrose: "If someone takes usury, he commits robbery and no longer has life."
Jerome: "A man who lives by usury is a monster."
John Chrysostom: Preached entire homilies against interest, saying the usurer "is no better than a devil."
3. The Medieval Church (AD 800 – 1500)
Charlemagne's capitularies (AD 813) outlaw interest across the empire.
The First Council of Nicaea (325) forbids clergy from usury; later councils extend the ban to all Christians.
Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140): "Usury is wherever more is asked than was given."
Second Lateran Council (1139): Usurers denied Christian burial.
Third Lateran Council (1179): Usurers excommunicated.
Council of Vienne (1311): Anyone who says usury is not sinful is a heretic.
Thomas Aquinas (Summa II-II, Q. 78): Money is sterile; charging for its use violates natural justice. Even "moderate" interest is forbidden.
For a thousand years the Church's position was so absolute that Christians were effectively barred from banking. Jews, permitted by Deuteronomy 23:20 to lend to Gentiles, filled the gap — an arrangement that bred both wealth and resentment.
4. The Crack in the Wall: The 16th-Century Shift
John Calvin (1509–1564) is the hinge figure. In his 1545 Letter on Usury he argued:
The Old Testament prohibitions were ceremonial and tied to Israel's agrarian economy.
In a commercial society, capital is productive, not sterile.
Interest is lawful provided it is not oppressive to the poor.
Calvin still condemned loans to the needy at interest and capped rates at 5%, but the dam had broken. Within a century most Protestant nations had legalised interest. Catholics followed more slowly, but the Fifth Lateran Council (1515) had already begun the slide by defining usury as "profit without labour, risk, or expense"—a loophole big enough to drive a banking system through.
5. The Modern Capitulation (1700 – Today)
By the 19th century the Church had effectively surrendered:
The 1830 Holy Office decree allowed confessors to absolve bankers who charged "moderate" interest.
The 1917 Code of Canon Law dropped the word "usury" entirely; the 1983 Code mentions it only in passing.
Today most evangelical, Catholic, and mainline bodies are silent or openly celebrate "responsible lending."
Meanwhile the world is drowning in interest-bearing debt:
U.S. household debt: $17.9 trillion
U.S. federal interest payments (2025): projected to exceed $1 trillion annually
Global debt-to-GDP: 350% and rising
6. A Pro-Christian Reckoning
From a faithfully Christian position, the historical record is clear: the Church was right for 1,500 years and wrong for the last 400. The modern acceptance of interest is not progress; it is apostasy dressed in economic necessity.
The biblical and patristic witness is not obscure. It is unanimous. Interest turns a brother into a commodity, love into a transaction, and the borrower into a slave (Proverbs 22:7).Within the covenant community, profit from a loan is exploitation.
We have allowed the spirit of Mammon to rewrite theology. The same Church that once denied sacraments to usurers now takes collection in interest-bearing bank accounts and invests its pension funds in the bond market.
The Christian tradition does not need to be "updated." It needs to be recovered.
Until then, the borrower is servant to the lender — and the Church, once the conscience of the West, has become the chaplain of the globalist creditor class.
https://www.infowars.com/posts/a-brief-history-of-interest-in-christian-thought