IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hop/hopeec/v43y2011i4p683-698.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"Money Is a Sterile Thing": Martin Luther on the Immorality of Usury Reconsidered

Author

Listed:
  • John D. Singleton

Abstract

In the history of economic thought, Martin Luther is frequently identified with medieval Scholastic doctrine. His belief that “money is sterile” is offered in support of this assessment. However, this obscures the fact that Luther rarely invokes this line of reasoning in his writings on usury and that his argument for its immorality is not dependent upon the proposition. These facts, which differentiate Luther from the Scholastic writers, are consistent with his opposition to Aristotelian natural philosophy and the influence of nominalism on his thought. In order to establish the immorality of the census contract, condoned by the German Scholastic theologians, Luther reconstitutes the argument. The unappreciated significance of Luther's thought is therefore twofold: (1) there exists a burgeoning degree of independence between the positive analysis of usury and the reasons for its immorality; and (2) individual conscience and personal interpretation are left the arbiters in determining ethical practice.

Suggested Citation

  • John D. Singleton, 2011. ""Money Is a Sterile Thing": Martin Luther on the Immorality of Usury Reconsidered," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 43(4), pages 683-698, Winter.
    • Handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:43:y:2011:i:4:p:683-698
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hope.dukejournals.org/content/43/4/683.full.pdf+html
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Philipp Robinson Rössner, 2019. "Martin Luther and the making of the modern economic mind," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 66(3), pages 233-248, September.
    2. Steven C. Heuvel, 2019. "Discerning the role of the Church in relation to economic life: a perspective from the theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 66(3), pages 249-263, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:43:y:2011:i:4:p:683-698. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Center for the History of Political Economy Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?viewby=journal&productid=45614 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.