Religion Vs Usury Essay

Usury as used in this article means interest or fees charged on loans or loans on which interest or fees are charged and not just exorbitant interest or fees. Loans may be of money or other goods. Anti-usurers are opponents of usury. During the Middle Ages, moralists, the scholastics, claimed that charging interest on loans, usury, was immoral and, therefore, unlawful, although people devised convoluted ways to circumvent this prohibition against charging interest. Even today, some moralists maintain that charging interest on loans is immoral and should be prohibited. They base their argument against usury in part on the teachings of Aristotle and in part on the laws of Moses. Since the Reformation, primarily since Calvin, most moralists have ceased believing that charging interest on loans is immoral. (Some have accused Calvin of being a crypto-Jew or an agent of the Jews for justifying usury.) Moralists of the Middle Ages claim that if a lender charges interest on a loan, exacting hire for money lent, he is guilty of the sin of extortion. Modern moralists, as Dabney calls them, disagree. They hold that reasonable …show more content…
The scholastics interpreted “stranger” to be anyone who was not a Christian. Consequently, a Christian could not charge interest on loans to another