The following essay is an excerpt from Jacob Imam’s Against Usury and for Money? Reading the Parable of the Talents after Liberalism, originally published in Issue 3 of New Polity magazine.
Hard Hearts
Scholars often cite the Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25:14-30) (or the Parable of the Minas, as Luke 19:11-27 has it), as Christ’s endorsement of interest in the New Covenant. [1] Matthew Henry offered an early liberal interpretation that the Rich Man scolded his servant for not, at the very least, giving his money to the bank to accumulate interest. [2] Samuel Gregg in his book For God and Profit, reapplies St. Ambrose’s spiritual reading of this parable to an economic reading of it: “A master rebukes his servant for failing to invest his money fruitfully.” [3] Jay Richards similarly and more directly says, “If you’re looking for Jesus’s views on interest, this is the best clue there is… He would never have told this parable if he thought it was always immoral to accept interest for lending money to someone.” [4] But there is an odd disconnect between this interpretation and the unequivocal patristic and scholastic condemnation of usury. [5] St. Ambrose classified usury among the sins that lead to death: “If anyone takes usury, he commits robbery and no longer has life.” [6] St. Augustine even claims that the civil courts that allow and demand interest contradict the law of charity:
And what about lending money at interest, which the very laws and judges require to be paid back? Who is more cruel: the one who steals from or cheats a rich man or the one who destroys a poor man by usury? What is acquired this way is certainly ill-gotten gain, and I would wish restitution to be made of it, but it is not possible to sue for it in court. [7]
And in the Middle Ages, alongside a large host of scholastics, Saint Bernadine of Siena condemned the usurer from the pulpit: “Usurer, thou who hast lent and robbed for so long a time and hast drained the blood of the poor, how great evil hast thou done and how grievous a sin against the commandment of God!” [8] So there must be an alternative exegesis, a more authentic interpretation of the parable that does not divorce itself from the tradition.
In fact, it is not only the tradition that gives immediate pause to this interpretation — it is the word choice itself. In the last servant’s preamble prior to telling his master that he hid his talent, he states: “Master, I knew you to be a hard man (sklēros), reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow” (Mt 25:24). The word “hard man” in Greek is the same as the prefix, sklēros, of the word with which Christ charges the Israelites, hardhearted (sklēro-kardian), for whom Moses gave the allowance of divorce. Christ is likening usury to divorce in terms of the severity of heart that it requires to do either. Moses’ allowance to charge interest on loans to aliens is a similar allowance as to the permissibility of divorce.
The word for “bank” that Christ uses, both in Matthew and in Luke, is τράπεζα (trapeza). The Gospel writers use this same word to describe the tables of the money changers in the temple which Christ overthrew for profiting in His Father’s house. If Christ were recommending that the servant gain interest at the banks of someone as impious as the money-changers, then the master would have been responsible for his servant’s actions and guilty of usury at the hands of the very pharisees whom he condemned. This is not a possible interpretation.
Understanding the Parable of the Minas
In constructing a positive interpretation of the passage in question, I want to specifically focus on Luke’s telling of it, which is less often heard than Matthew’s.
[Jesus] proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.
Luke offers two explanations as to why Jesus tells this parable. First, they were walking from Jericho to Jerusalem — the city of King David. Second, the people misunderstood who the Messiah was. This misunderstanding is present in every gospel: In both John and Luke’s gospels, Christ had to escape from the crowds and the pharisees, who believed Him to be blaspheming (cf John 10:31-39; Luke 4:30). The “messianic secret” is a strong motif throughout Mark’s gospel — Christ continually tells the people He has healed to say nothing, presumably because they do not understand who He is. Many modern commentaries state that the people mistakenly believed the Messiah would be a political savior, rather than a spiritual one. As William Wrede writes, “Jesus was anxious not to give a wrong (political) idea of his intentions.” [9]
But this is far from the truth: the true Messiah was to be a prophet, priest, and king. The people are mistaken, not in their expectation of a kingdom, but in expecting it to be established “immediately.” Christ clarifies His kingly role in this parable. The dual impetus for telling it sets the stage for its meaning: Christ has come to bring a new form of Davidic kingship, one that the people were not expecting. In the story that follows, Christ is not the servant that hides the mina, as some commentators mistake, but the nobleman-become-king.
He said therefore, “A nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom and then return. Calling ten of his servants, he gave them ten minas, and said to them, ‘Trade with these till I come.’ But his citizens hated him and sent an embassy after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to reign over us.’
He gives his servants generous sums to trade while he is away. Minas were not regulated coinage, but standard weights. There is a difference between this non-regulated currency and the coins that the Romans and Temple authorities minted: minas could not easily be taxed, alloyed, devalued, or tracked. Even as early as Aristotle, people have identified these financial techniques as mechanisms by which kings grew in power over their subjects. [10] In each case it allowed kings to take the wealth of their citizens while making those citizens have a greater felt-sense of dependence on them. [11] As I have called it elsewhere, these were — and still are — techniques of human sovereignty. [12] By distancing from coinage, Christ is distancing from these techniques. In fact, this parable is told immediately after Zacchaeus repents from his life as a tax collector — one who participates in the sovereign’s mechanisms. [13] The weight of gold or silver did not respond to any particular coinage. It was pure weight. In today’s terms, a gold mina was worth approximately $35,000, but that was not necessarily the buying power in Christ’s time. [14]
Luke adds the detail of the citizens (as opposed to the servants) sending an embassy after him. Scholars have arrived at a near-consensus that this alludes to a story of Herod Archelaus. [15] Josephus records the story of this Herod — the son of Herod the Great — who went to Rome for his coronation at the hand of Caesar Augustus. As the citizens hated the Nobleman in the parable, so did Archelaus’ subjects:
The inclinations also of all Archelaus’s kindred, who hated him, were removed to Antipas, when they came to Rome; although, in the first place, every one rather desired to live under their own laws [without a king], and to be under a Roman governor. [16]
These people hoped for no king but Caesar, but, at least, wished for Antipas instead of Archelaus. Caesar listened to the people’s appeal, which included the complaint that Archelaus “barbarously” slew a multitude in the temple “in the midst of their own sacrifices.” [17] Archelaus attempted to respond to this charge, claiming that the people he killed were breaking the law and the will of Caesar. And once Caesar had heard both sides, he:
Dissolved the assembly for that time; but a few days afterward, he gave the one half of Herod’s kingdom to Archelaus, by the name of Ethnarch, and promised to make him king also afterward, if he rendered himself worthy of that dignity; but as to the other half, he divided it into two tetrarchies, and gave them to two other sons of Herod, the one of them to Philip, and the other to that Antipas who contested the kingdom with Archelaus. [18]
Not only did Herod Archelaus never receive the kingdom, but the land he ruled over as ethnarch (subject to a Roman governor) instead of as king was half the size that he would have otherwise received. Thus, while there are certain similarities between the stories, Christ distances the Nobleman from Herod insofar as the embassy against the former did not work: “When he returned, having received the kingdom…” (Lk 19:15) — he received his kingdom and title. Christ’s rule could never have been disrupted because the “lord of words,” as Josephus called Caesar, shared one essence with the Word himself. [19] Christ is telling this parable to juxtapose the kings of the earth from himself as the King of Kings.
Luke continues:
He commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by trading. The first came before him, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made ten pounds more.’ And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’ And the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made five pounds.’ And he said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities.’
This king does not ask for money back — neither what he gave nor what they made. Origen identifies this same phenomenon: “What you have offered to God you shall receive back multiplied… If you have caused five to be multiplied to ten, then they are given to you… We therefore appear at least to engage in business for the Lord, but the profits of the business go to us.” [20] As the king’s seat of authority goes unthreatened by his citizens’ disapproval, so is his power uncompromised by giving away his riches, which are not the means by which he gains or maintains his reign in the first place. This is a very different type of king than Herod or Caesar. His reign cannot be jeopardized; his coronation is not by election; but his goodness is overabundant.
Then another came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your pound, which I kept laid away in a napkin; for I was afraid of you, because you are a severe man; you take up what you did not lay down, and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘I will condemn you out of your own mouth, you wicked servant! You knew that I was a severe man, taking up what I did not lay down and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank, and at my coming I should have collected it with interest?’ And he said to those who stood by, ‘Take the pound from him, and give it to him who has the ten pounds.’ (And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds!’) ‘I tell you, that to every one who has will more be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them before me.’”
In his work on the New Testament, Robertson argues that Christ was advocating that the last servant ought to have indulged in gaining “proper and legal interest,” as opposed to gaining it illegally. [21] While this may have been proper for the classical rulers of the Roman Empire, it was impermissible for the people of God. Indeed, this appears to be Christ’s very point: usury is too hard-hearted for a citizen of the Kingdom of God. The king himself has already proven that he does not operate as a bank does: lending money out and asking for the increases. It is contrary to his technique of rulership — so common among the Kings of the earth — to oppress his people by making them work without increasing in wealth. What we are witnessing in this passage, in contrast to the usury-economy of the kings of the earth, is the gift economy of God’s kingdom.
The king’s response scolds the man for inconsistency. If the servant believed him to be a thief, then the very least he could have done was steal for his master in a way that would not have put the servant himself at any risk — by putting money in a bank. If the servant had done this, his master would have been responsible for his servant’s actions and guilty of usury. But Jesus does not validate the idea of usury; rather, He identifies it for exactly what it is, theft: “You take up what you did not lay down and reap what you did not sow.” [22] This is an important component of corrupt kingship that Samuel describes when the Israelites call out for a king: “he will appoint some to plow his ground and reap his harvest” (1 Sam. 8:12). Thus, what Christ says to the servant is this: “if you thought I was a hard, corrupt ruler, why did you not then charge usury?” But he is not a hard man — not in the way in which the servant thinks.
Like Herod Archelaus, the king in this parable ends up slaying those “who did not want [him] to reign over them.” There is still severity in God’s kingdom, but, as Origen said: “He is indeed hard to those who abuse the mercy of God to suffer themselves to become remiss and use it not to be converted.” [23] The unfaithful servant seems to have done little wrong — he did not risk an investment, he did not actually charge interest on a loan. But what he stored the mina in reveals much about his deed and spiritual disposition: he stored it in a facecloth. A sundarium, in both Latin and Greek, is often translated as a napkin or a towel. The only other time that the word is used in the Scriptures is John 20:6–7, which covered Christ’s face in his burial. Thus, the third servant had buried his mina. It was dead. With a spiritual reading, it is clear that he refused to cultivate the gifts the Lord bestowed upon him; he was hoarding, not cooperating. He failed to participate in the life of grace. Contrary to the unfaithful servant’s miserliness, God is truly generative: he does not take life but gives it in abundance. Under an economic reading it is similar.
I believe that usury is a synecdoche for a variety of vicious economic practices. Usury renders the rich richer and the poor poorer; it is where certain people work hard and gain little while others accumulate wealth without work. The usurer is motivated by profit; he attacks the common good; and he renders all things for sale — even money. This certainly does not imply that the servants were not to engage in trade. That was their very marching order. Christians are to cultivate the wealth of their community, multiplying their riches — but not by theft and not at the expense of others. Indeed “saving” one’s money, burying it, similarly harms one’s community. By indefinite saving, people are not actively engaged in cultivating the common good. With this understanding, this parable truly does become a typological parallel with the life of grace. God gives us his grace that we may participate with him — but he never asks for it back. . . .
Read the entire essay in Issue 3 of New Polity Magazine.
[2] Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 1750.
[3] Samuel Gregg, For God and Profit (Spring Valley, NY: Crossroads, 2016), 183.
[4] Jay Richards, Money, Greed, and God (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), 156.
[5] For a summary of this, cf. Robert P. Maloney, “The Teaching of the Fathers on Usury: An Historical Study on the Development of Christian Thinking” in Vigiliae Christianae 27.4 (1973), 241-265. Notice also that the ancient prophet Nehemiah scolded his people for exacting 1% of interest: “Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the hundredth of money, grain, wine, and oil which you have been exacting of them” (Ne 5:11). The condemnation runs consistently throughout the Old Testament.
[6] De bono mortis 12.56 [PL 14, 566].
[7] Augustine of Hippo, Letters (131–164), ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, vol. 20, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 301–302.
[8] Saint Bernadine of Siena, Sermons, ed. Don Nazareno Orlandi, trans. Helen Josephine Robines (Siena: Tipografia Sociale, 1920), 174.
[9] William Wrede, The Messianic Secret trans. J.C.G. Greig (London: James Clarke, 1971), xx.
[10] See Aristotle’s Economics, book II for examples of kings doing this to overpower their people.
[11] For examples, see Book II of Aristotle’s Economics.
[12] Cf. Jacob Fareed Imam, “Destroyer of Gods” in New Polity 1.2 (2020): 50–59.
[13] Recall Gregory the Great: “It is one thing to earn a living by fishing, and another to amass money from the profits of receipt of custom. For there are many trades which can scarcely if ever be practiced without sin” Homiliae in Evangelia XXIV (col. 1184c).
[14] R. B. Y. Scott, “Weights and Measures of The Bible” in The Biblical Archaeologist 22.2 (1959): 22-40. Minas were worth different weights in different areas and eras in the ancient world. But the sacred mina of the Jewish legal scholars approximated 570.6 grams.
[15] Cf. Brian Schultz, “Jesus as Archelaus in the Parable of the Pounds (Lk. 19:11-27)” in Novum Testamentaum 49 (2007): 105-127, 109. One commentator who denies this connection is Bernhard Scott, Hear Now the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 223; another is François Bovon, L’Évangile selon Saint Luc 15,1-19,27: Commentaire du Nouveau Testament IIIc (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2001), 257-258.
[16] Flavius Josephus, War 2.22
[17] Josephus, Wars 2.30. It continues: “There was such a vast number of dead bodies heaped together in the temple, as even a foreign war, should that come upon them [suddenly], before it was denounced, could not have heaped together…”
[18] Josephus, Wars 2.93–94
[19] Josephus, Wars 2.29
[20] Origen Hom. Gen. 8.10
[21] A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1933), Lk 19:23.
[22] The above was St. Gregory of Nyssa’s own definition of usury. In De beneficentia, St. Gregory excoriates evil-doers who hypocritically practice outward acts of piety such as fasting. In doing so he employs terms associated with usurers: Renounce dishonest profits! Starve to death your greed for Mammon! Let there be nothing in your house that has been acquired by violence or theft. What good is it to keep meat out of your mouth if you bite your brother with wickedness.... What kind of piety teaches you to drink water while you hatch plots and drink the blood of a man you have shamefully cheated?
[23] Origen in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Matthew, ed. John Henry Newman, vol. 1 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1841), 858.