The Ethics of Banking: Conclusions from the Financial Crisis (Issues ...

Credit and Credo, Economic Success and “Manifest Destiny” 159
certainly understood, was not accepted as a justification for charging interest. In
Scholastic theology, the debtor only has the duty to repay the loan in full, with the
proviso of preservation of its value. Compensation for inflation would therefore be
perfectly legitimate, for Scholastic thinkers, but no payment in excess of the amount
of the loan, the principal, and the amount to compensate for inflation.
Bullinger, on the other hand, recognizes the “good” form of interest as economically
useful. He develops the first ideas towards a theory of interest: interest is
compensation for sacrificed utility. “He who lent the money could have bought
some good with it, of which he would have had all the use.” (21st Sermon, 116b
own trans.). 20
As early as 1531, Bullinger was the first reformer who allowed interest-taking
within bounds laid down by authority. In Zurich, these bounds remained in the
region of between five and six percent per annum until well into the nineteenth
century. Bullinger’s influence in the Calvinist world was considerable. During
Holland’s golden age in the seventeenth century, it is reported, the texts read aloud
to sailors on board Dutch ships were the Bible and Bullinger.
From this historical sketch, it is clear what a turnaround preceded the financial
crisis. For centuries, interest and later the rate of interest was the central question
of economic and business ethics. With the easy money of recent decades, the problem
is no longer the rate of interest but rather the conditions on which lending is
approved and low interest rates are granted, and above all the structured products in
which credit is packaged. It is no longer the case that too little credit is available, but
too much.
In the USA, great value is traditionally attached to creditworthiness, but also to
the principle of not giving credit too lightly. Calvinists set great store by a good
“credit history”. In the USA, taking on and paying off debts – establishing a “credit
history” – is a necessary part of everyone’s biography. The reason is simple: how can
anyone know whether a borrower will repay his debts or not without looking into his
track record? Someone who has repaid debts in the past will probably do so in future,
although this is not certain. The criteria for acceptance by a credit card organization
are one example. In 2002, the most important qualification for receiving a credit
card, in the eyes of the issuing bank, was not the size of the applicant’s income
of the whole of reality in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae], in: P. KOSLOWSKI: Die Ordnung
der Wirtschaft. Studien zur Praktischen Philosophie und Politischen Ökonomie, Tübingen (Mohr
Siebeck) 1994, pp. 64–88.
20 Original source: “Der das gält vssgliehen, hette mögen ein gout darumb kauffen, von welchem er
alle nutzung gehabt hette.” HEINRICH BULLINGER: Sermons 21 and 22 from the decades (1549–
1551), after the German translation by Johannes Haller, Zurich 1558: “Die Ein vnd zwentzigste
Predig. Von dem vierdten gebott der anderen Tafel/welches in der Ordnung der Zehen gebotten
das achtet ist/Du solt nit stälen. Bey wölchem geredt wirt von der eygenschafft zeitlicher güetteren/vnd
wie man die recht vnd mit Gott überkommen sölle. Auch von mancherley geschlächten
vnd gattungen dess diebstals.” [The twenty-first sermon. Of the fourth commandment on the other
tablet/which in the order of the ten commandments is the eighth/Thou shalt not steal. Which talks
about the ownership of temporal goods/and how one shall transfer it rightly and with God. Also of
many kinds of theft. Own trans.]