The Gift_ Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World - Lewis Hyde [76]
But [he says] what will you say to Christ who … forbids to demand repayment of a loan and commands to lend without the hope of receiving equal value in return? I answer: Christ is speaking to Christians, who are above every law and do more than the laws ordain; but Moses provides laws for people in civil society, who are subject to the government and the sword, so that evildoers are curbed and the public peace is preserved. Here, therefore, the law is to be so administered that he who has received a loan pays it back, although a Christian would bear it with equanimity if such a law did not come to his aid and a loan were not repaid … The Christian endures it if he is harmed … although he does not forbid the strictness of the avenging sword.
Law and faith are already separated here. A second example from the same years will flesh out the tone of this division. In 1523 James Strauss, one of the more radical priests, suggested not only that no one should charge interest, but that debtors should resist their creditors or themselves share in the sin of usury. The peasants were delighted, but the local clergy and landowners complained to the electoral government, which in turn asked Luther for his opinion. Luther opened his reply by saying that it would be “a noble, Christian accomplishment” if all usury was abolished. Then he gets practical. Strauss, he says, does not “sufficiently deal with the risk” that a businessman takes when he loans capital. Further, “by using high-sounding words, he makes bold the common man … Perhaps he thinks the whole world is full of Christians …” The reply is typical of Luther’s approach: he opposes usury on moral grounds but distinguishes between civil authority and Christian ethics, and in the end cedes to the princes the right to decide economic questions.*
In these fights, Luther stands personally torn in the conflict that tore the Middle Ages apart, the fight between sacerdotium and imperium, between church and state. He resolves the opposition by authorizing it. For whatever reasons, by the sixteenth century power had come into the hands of the holders of private property. Those religious leaders who survived were the ecclesiastical statesmen willing to recognize the civil authority of princes, and even to serve them. Some in fact became the economists who helped the princes develop the details of a cash economy. The German theologian Philipp Melanchthon, for example, stepped into a dispute in Denmark in 1553 and helped King Christian III organize the structure of interest rates.
Those reformers and movements (such as the Anabaptists) that did not recognize the new sense of property did not survive. Thomas Müntzer, another radical priest, actively supported the peasants in Saxony and stood in clear opposition to Luther and his advice to statesmen:
Luther says that the poor people have enough in their faith. Doesn’t he see that usury and taxes impede the reception of the faith? He claims that the Word of God is sufficient.Doesn’t he realize that men whose every moment is consumed in the making of a living have no time to learn to read the Word of God? The princes bleed the people with usury and count as their own the fish in the stream, the bird in the air, the grass of the field, and Dr. Liar says, “Amen!” What courage has he, Dr. Pussyfoot, the new pope of Wittenberg, Dr. Easychair, the basking sycophant?
What a clear voice! The authorities caught up with this man, tortured him, and cut off his head.
By the end of the Reformation the power to judge the morality of property rights rested in the hands of secular rulers. There is a story about a group of ministers in Regensburg who, in 1587, questioned the validity of the 5 percent contract. They were dismissed from their posts and exiled from the town by the Protestant magistrates.