A Response to Dougald Lamont in Hopes of Helping Strengthen His Argument
In which the writer does some casual exegesis.
My usual contemplative work will resume after this analytical piece.
A Preface for the Internet Age
I shouldn’t have to write this first bit, but with the internet being what it is I might not have a choice: critiquing Mr. Lamont’s work does not mean I harbour ill will toward him. Indeed, I agree with his aims as far as I can understand them. He wants to see a more economically just world, and so do I. He reckons that must include ensuring people are free of debt peonage, and so do I. He, as a politician, has both lost out and gained because of an inherently bullshit first-past-the-post electoral system, and I, as a citizen, have… I’ve… hm… yeah, I’ve always lost out to that particular bullshit. Oh well. Debt peonage is the important part here.
The following analysis is brief, incomplete, and nothing more than pointing out the biggest holes in Mr. Lamonts article entitled “What would Jesus do? Christ's Biblical teachings on economics and finance are crystal clear.” My goal is to help his future arguments around Biblical topics become stronger. For the sake of time I’ll only address the Biblical portions and leave the historical issues aside, and, let’s face it, I won’t even address all the Biblical bits. For the sake of not being a pedantic jerk I’ll be keeping things light and chilled out. No “big guns” or “total ownage” or “sick burns” here. I reserve those for when I punch up to power abusers face-to-face. Readers should also know that the argument in Mr. Lamont’s article may not be his own, but rather one he’s passing on from a book, which I address below.
Why do I think I’m capable of this assessment? I’m trained as a pastor, hold a master’s degree in theology, and have a whole lotta related study and practice. And this is the internet, so any schmo can say whatever they want, right?
The Bible is Mute
An interpretive principle I use1: the Bible is not inerrant or univocal.2 It’s a collection of many forms of literature pulled together from myriad human sources. Holy literature, astounding literature, relevant literature, offensive literature, historical literature, mystical literature, what-the-heck-just-happened literature, poetic literature. All the literature that scores of people can create over generations. It therefore contains all the foibles and beauty one would expect of humans trying to achieve their rhetorical goals and serve God through their efforts, trials, and joys. Scripture has survived not because it has the power of speach, but because people have continued to find it important and useful in all the ways humans can.
Indeed, some Biblical topics folk once labelled “clear” have faced revisions based on better translations, access to earlier manuscripts, and certain concepts reaching the end of their usefulness. We’re always reassessing the text in the light of our circumstances as individuals and communities, then attempting to apply what we perceive therein through innovations that answer current questions and serve current needs. Those needs could be anything. Sometimes it’s about generating and maintaining identity markers and authority over and against people. Sometimes it’s about trying to answer “why”. Sometimes it’s about grabbing anything and everything to use as a prooftext. Sometimes it’s about looking for great poetry.
So already in Mr. Lamont’s title the term “crystal clear” sets up a potential problem. Some things are clear, like the name of a figure called Moses, but most of the time when folk say things like “what the Bible says about such-and-such is clear” they’re explaining “I prefer this interpretation”. That’s fine. Except the Bible doesn’t say anything. We do. This has been true about scripture since before the Bible was a notion. Interpretation is all we have. The question is whether we’re going to read ourselves into the text to justify our positions, or approach the text on its own terms and try to understand it as the author intended, then wrestle with it for as long as it takes. Which could be forever.
Even if we can get perfect clarity about intention we’re not obligated to accept what the author is saying or assuming. I hold the conviction, for instance, that women should not be property. Most of the Bible assumes women are property, or at least lesser humans, because that’s how the authors’ world functioned. I can make strong, scripture-based arguments based on my conviction, but trying to pretend certain realities of the text don’t exist or twist them to my ends would be intellectually dishonest. The Bible — the holy scripture of my belief system — comes from a time that takes women’s lower social status as a given. I have to deal with that on its own terms.
The Argument’s Source and The Lord’s Prayer
Mr. Lamont’s article, in my understanding, derives from a book by Michael Hudson called ...and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year. I don’t know to what degree Mr. Lamont relies on the book, nor do I hav access to the book. I’m more interested in Mr. Lamont’s interpretation anyway except where he makes explicit mention of Hudson. There is an interesting note about the book first, though. The ad copy for its listing boasts, “this interpretation [debt cancellation] has been all but expunged from our contemporary understanding of the phrase, ‘...and forgive them their debts’ from the Lord’s prayer.”
Two problems: that phrase appears in neither the Lukan nor Matthean account of the Lord’s prayer, and the ol’ “a nefarious passive voice has kept a big Biblical secret from you for too long” approach never delivers on the promise of a grand revelation. Granted this is ad copy, which tries to generate scandal and sensation by definition, but my point is that, for the most part, it’s hard to surprise people about something they’ve studied for a couple thousand years. I’ve encountered the debt cancellation interpretation before. Lots of people have. There’s a reason it’s not dominant no matter how much some want it to be.
But there’s a bigger challenge in Mr. Lamont’s article than dishonest copywriters hocking the book he read. Mr. Lamont maintains that Matthew 6:12 should read “and forgive us our debts, and we forgive our debtors”. I agree. The Greek is unambiguous. But how are we to understand what the phrase means? This is where Mr. Lamont’s contention starts to break down. For him it literally means forgiving monetary debts. The end. He provides a link to a Stackexchange discussion on the topic. Putting aside whether participants hold the qualifications to present some kind of scholarly consensus, Mr. Lamont hand waves the final conclusion away so the discussion favours his position.
By doing so he ignores two important points: first, the pericope3 in Matthew doesn’t end with the Lord’s prayer. Verses 14 and 15 have Jesus explaining, “for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses”. That changes how one may interpret “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” two verses prior. Mr. Lamont has to contend with that somehow in order for his argument to work. He also has to address the fact that there’s another version of the Lord’s prayer in Luke. The line in question reads “forgive us our sins, for we also forgive those indebted to us”. The second part uses the same word from Matthew, but the first part uses one that cannot mean “debt”.4 Then there’s Mark 11:25, which uses the same language as Matthew’s explanatory verses. Mr. Lamont has to reckon with why this is and what it implies.
Jesus Reading in the Synagogue. Or not.
Mr. Lamont cites the pericope in Luke 4 wherein Jesus goes to the synagogue, reads, and teaches. His contention is that Jesus refers to debt cancellation via the concept of jubilee. The most obvious issue is, again, that Mr. Lamont doesn’t account for the fact that all the synoptic gospels contain this story, but only one — Luke — mentions that Jesus read something. Mr. Lamont could be correct, but those other two synoptics, composed earlier than Luke, create a challenge. Sure, the people tossed Jesus out on his ass5 in every version, even John, but the reason isn’t hands down same across each one. This alone creates a challenge for Mr. Lamont’s assertion that Jesus shamed his audience for not engaging in the debt cancellation program of jubilee, so they ran him out of town.
Then there’s the reading Jesus chooses in Luke, which are bits and pieces of Isaiah 58 and 61. The fulcrum of Mr. Lamont’s argument,“the year of the Lord’s favour”, is from Isaiah 61:2, and is the first half of the sentence. The second is “and the day of vengeance of our God”. This whole chapter is a poem with the speaker announcing God has anointed them to proclaim good news. What good news? This chapter of Isaiah is from “trito-Isaiah”, a collection of oracles and sayings from different prophets after the Israelites had returned from the Babylonian exile. So this is ex eventu, meaning someone wrote about a past event as if it was yet to come. Isaiah 61:2 echoes 49:8 with its “in a time of favour I have answered you”. Chapter 49 is from Deutero-Isaiah, which probably came about during the exile. So in 49 you have God promising to liberate the Israelites from Babylon and return them to their land, then in 61 you have someone proclaiming it will happen after it already did. It’s good news alright, but not in the way Mr. Lamont asserts.
Let’s pretend that Jesus was citing Isaiah 61 for no reason other than to evoke jubilee. The version of jubilee in question is Leviticus 25, where there’s language of returning people to their land. The chapter does mention debt cancellation. Sort of. The part about returning people to their land covers Israelites who end up so impoverished they’re prepared to sell themselves as slaves. The chapter states that rather than slavery they sell their land and become hired hands to work it for the new owner. At jubilee they and their land return to each other, which is what what the Israelites hoped for throughout their captivity. But none of this applies to non-Israelites. Those folk were chattel slaves forever. Further, not all land in all places reverted to the original owner in the jubilee year. There’s also more also going on than economics across the multiple books, authors, editors, and years that separate the Hebrew scripture references to jubilee.
Jesus Flipping Over Tables in the Temple
Next Mr. Lamont addresses Jesus strolling to the temple in Jerusaleem and wrecking up the place, which Mr. Lamont asserts was an act to destroy debt records of money lenders. The first issue is stating that Jesus “was going to Jerusalem at the time of passover, whose date coincided with the Ides of March”. Two problems here: the lunisolar calendar used to determine the date of Passover shows that Jesus would have arrived 2-4 weeks after the Ides of March depending on the exact year. It might be moot anyway since, according to one gosepl, Jesus didn’t arrive at Passover.
But there’s a larger challenge for Mr. Lamont’s assertion: the absence of money lenders. The narratives have money changers, but no lenders. Folk had to pay the temple in a specific currency, so anyone who had the wrong one went to a money changer to swap currencies. No doubt the changers were a self-regulated outfit that set obscene rates for their services, but they weren’t lenders. It’s possible lenders were present. It’s possible Jesus messed up their ledgers. It’s possible he pinned their fedora hats to the wall with throwing stars. But the text doesn’t say anything about those things. The authors did not include lenders because lenders were not part of their goals. The only way to make the argument about debt cancellation work is to say the lenders were probably there. They’re not, however, in evidence as far as discussing events as the authors wrote them down.
A Better Source and a Humble Prayer
This tendency to inject scenarios and elements that are not in evidence is common. Projecting information into the text is the only way some interpretations work, and people do it all the time. I figured it was Mr. Lamont’s powerful desire to use anything and everything at his disposal to say “it’s not okay to treat people this way”. That may not be responsible to the text, but I understand and support the goal.
But it may be that Mr. Lamont is presenting Hudson’s arguments entirely. I raise this because he cites Hudson’s interpretation of some of the ten commandments. Interpretations that suggest a resolve to read into the text just like importation of money lenders. That makes sense since Hudson’s main interest, if I may simplify too much, is in how private debt is a major issue that serves only rentiers. Again, I agree. But if he’s appealing to the Bible in this way there are many biblical scholars who would eviscerate those sections of his book. If they thought it was worth the bother.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with applying a certain hermeneutic, but that’s different from trying to exploit select elements of scripture by forcing them into service of a presupposition. The Book of Belonging is a good example of the former. The author and illustrator deployed what one might call a hermeneutic of belonging to tweak certain Biblical stories and emphasize that we all have belonging in and through God. The result is delightful and gosh darn purdy. Not one of their stories would pass an exegesis class, but they don’t pretend otherwise. They don’t pretend they crafted and exegetical interpretation based on scholarship. They don’t pretend anything. The pair chose a way to interpret certain stories, went exploring through scripture, and had an enormous amount of integrity in reporting what they found. Their approach is “look at this cool piece of moss we found!” Not “we’ve blown this thing wide open and determined what Jesus meant for sure this time”.
Mr. Lamont’s article, by comparison, contains much “could be/might be”, which points to wanting something to be true rather than having the evidence to persuade anyone it is. There’s always plenty of room for what’s not impossible, but he denies space for what’s most probable. “Not impossible” is why there are people using the Bible to victimize others, scare the hell out of folk, and “prove” Earth is flat.
I don’t believe that’s Mr. Lamont. Still, any time someone insists on a specific, measurable historicity of the Bible to “prove” their forgone belief they run into trouble. Anyone can claim anything they want about the Bible, or anything else, but the source tends to resist that by existing. Authors, scribes, and editors had their own ideas and goals. We can twist those as hard as we want, but that does violence to the text and spins out compounding problems for us as interpreters. Textual blowback.
Besides, there exist better ways to provide a Jesus-driven impetus toward justice, economic and otherwise. Just look at the entire black prophetic tradition.
May be all learn from those who have experienced the worst of what power mongers have to offer, and respond with everything we have in being with them.
UPDATE
Mr. Lamont provided two replies. I’m disappointed that he doubled down rather than engaging the substance of what I put forth here. Oh well.
I’ve annotated his replies in segments below. His words, which I copied and pasted, are in italics. Mine are plain. I will, of course, give Mr. Lamont the final word if he so chooses. (Unless he insults my mother or something else that warrants a response.)
Reply #1, in response to my comment on his article letting him know I prepared this article. [Mr. Lamont added this reply below his second one, attached to the note that accompanied publication of this article, later in the day as well.]
While I appreciate it the criticism, Hudson’s book and the addition material I added pointing to the effectiveness and tradition of debt forgiveness in the near east as an actual historical phenomenon is being sidelined in favour of biblical hermeneutics.
I admit to confusion over this one. In part because I’m not clear on Mr. Lamont’s intended meaning, but also because he deployed the Bible in his original argument. Arguing on grounds of historical example is a separate thing. If anyone argues on the grounds of the Bible they open themselves to critique on those grounds and to the host of disciplines that come to bear on Biblical study. If Mr. Lamont feels the historical record trumps critical Biblical interpretation and study that’s fine, but if that’s the case why use the Bible at all? Especially if the Biblical argument is so weak it undermines the main argument about debt forgiveness.
I know plenty of people open to the idea of debt forgiveness who would hesitate based on the weak Biblical argument Mr. Lamont puts forth. It’d be a guilt-by-association thing. Not okay, but a reality nonetheless. I agree that debt forgiveness is a must, and that contemporary renegotiations of Biblical jubilee are abundant, powerful, beautiful, and deserving of more airtime. I wrote this article because Mr. Lamont’s arguments grounded in scripture were unsound and not even required. Groups like the Simple Way have already engaged in contemporary notions of jubilee without falling into unsound arguments.
Passover and the Ides of March occurred at close to the same time - Jesus entered the temple to challenge the moneychangers, and I cited the historical evidence that temples were also banks, and that a temple was burned to destroy the debt records.
Close is not the same as coinciding, which is what the original article suggested and upon which part of the argument rested. That’s why I brought it up. It’s a hole in the argument that’s easy to close.
The historicity of temples as banks or people burning debt records is not in view during the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ visit to the temple. The authors who wrote down the event had their own concerns and were trying to tell their own audience something. In doing so they chose the mention money changers and sellers of sacrificial animals, not banking or debts. We can only speculate about why they left certain things out, but they did. They figured, like every author, that some things were more important than others in order to meet their goals. That was their choice as individuals. If anyone is going to leverage their work to prove something they have to engage what’s there. It’s intellectually dishonest to introduce scenarios that were never in evidence.
What Jesus was asking for was the immediate social and economic reform that would come with a Jubilee, and which would start a new era of peace and prosperity, as an alternative to conflict and collapse.
Taking this statement together with everything else, including the original article, Mr. Lamont is begging the question by ignoring data the problemetizes his argument and, in effect, stating that “we know Jesus was saying this because that’s what he was saying”. The fact someone wants it to be true is beautiful, but appealing to the Bible to somehow make it true causes the argument to fall down. I want it to be true too. Of course I do. I’m a Canadian wage slave who feels like he’s living on a wish and a prayer most of the time. Alas, the evidence does not support what I want. That’s painful, but the only way around the evidence is taking a dogmatic position and ignoring it.
This actually happened as a successful practice for thousands of years.
If that is so the historical record can prove it, but Bible-as-univocal-proof text cannot.
What Hudson argues is that the practical demands of actual debt-relief ended up being treated as a purely spiritual reward that people would get in the afterlife.
Hudson may be able to prove that through some kind of historical analysis. But by making a reductionist argument this way he’s revealing a need to make a deeper study of both theology and the scripture from which people derive and innovate theology. He could well be right about everything else; he’s not right about a reductionist approach.
This also seems to ignore the changes that occurred during the period of Greco-Judaism, such as with afterlife/שְׁאוֹל, and why those changes occurred.
The “pro-creditor” ideology that debts must always be paid is Roman in nature, and it is also what led to the collapse of the Roman empire.
This another historical argument that does not address holes in the Biblical argument. It also strikes me as another example of reading into something.
The Hellenization and Romanization of the Levant did indeed introduce certain philosophical traditions that were non-native, including some ideas about money. But asserting this specific thing led to Rome’s collapse requires eisegesis. When we gaze into the well of history we tend to see ourselves reflected back. Our intuitive cognition kicks in before we can articulate anything, and unless we’re on guard it will have the first and only say. Thus various people have, for centuries, declared exactly what led to the collapse of the Roman empire. It was a specific religious sect, or lead pipes, or abusing ecology to death, or inbreeding among the elite, or not enough innovation of military equipment, or aliens coming back to exact payment for their preternatural favour, or same-sex orgies. I’ve seen it all. But none are convincing enough to be the thing. When our present day empire falls there’ll be proximate causes and the uncountable things that led up to those proximate causes. I’m sure private debt and rentier capitalism will be part of the equation. (Same-sex orgies will not, so go for it, I guess).
Religious injunctions and laws were just that - they are not just about enforcing social obligations or imposing morality around behaviour or thought, they are also about guiding decisions around the economy and debt.
This is a chronocentric view that denies the voices, experiences, and worldviews of the people who lived during those times. It also neglects things like the cognitive science of religion and even what the Bible is. The Bible is, from a critical perspective, a collection of religious injunctions and civic law and criminal law and etiologies and wishful thinking and lament and letters and poetry and subversive visions and myriad other types of writing. The reasons why each author wrote what they wrote differ as much as the authors themselves. Then there are scribes and editors who altered the original works in various ways by accident and intention. There’s no question some authors and editors intended to guide decisions around economy and debt. But some did not. The Bible is not univocal.
Which is why, in the article above, I kept using phrases like “Mr. Lamont must reckon with why this is and what it implies”. Anyone can choose whatever reading they want, but it’s incumbent on everyone who leverages any text for any reason to grapple with the works on their own terms. Otherwise there is no good faith argument in sight, only a dogmatic position and consequent apologetics.
Response #2, replying to the note I created upon publication of this article.
I would further thank you for taking the time to respond. Yes, there are other all sorts of lessons from the Bible that are at odds with today’s society. I have a couple of points. The reason I express myself with certainty is that it is not just one statement or message of Jesus’ teachings, it is a series of them, all on a single theme, in the last weeks of his life, which led directly to his execution. The prophet Isaiah, proclaiming the year of the Lord, meeting rich mean and telling them to give their money to the poor, confronting moneylenders at the temple,.
This assumes, among other things, Biblical univocality, which is a false assumption that has no evidentiary support. Further, it ignores almost all my points and the enormous amount of scholarly study, not to mention inherited tradition, that cover these topics. It’s possible to wave those away, of course, but what does that do to the strength of the original argument and the existence of good faith?
When you look the the original text of Isaiah, and look at the meaning of the word “vengeance”- “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God,to comfort all who mourn” the original word can be understood, not as “getting back at someone” but “getting even”.
This depends on what you mean by the original word. If we look at the Massoretic text the word in question, נָקָם, cannot have any sense other than retributive vengeance. The Septuagint does not use the original language, but if we put that important detail aside the word is ἀνταπόδοσις. A literal translation of the phrase may be something like “the day of payback”. It can, indeed, mean repayment. It can also mean retribution or reward. The question is not about what it could mean; the question is about what the author intended. Given that the original language is unambiguous and the Greek translator used the best word available to them centuries after the fact it’s difficult to conclude the author of this particular poem in Isaiah definitely meant anything related to debt cancellation or monetary settlement.
That passage is a description of what happens in a Jubilee Year - that the debts to the Royal Treasury would be forgiven, and that people would be able to return to prosperity, because they would get land back to work on. These are not oracles - they are talking about the actual things that would happen in the event of a jubilee.
The scholarly consensus is that trito-Isaiah, of which the 61st chapter is a part, is a collection of oracles, poems, and sayings from a bunch of different prophets in the post-exilic period where there were an enormous array of challenges at play. This is not controversial from a critical standpoint. Again, it’s possible to brush this off rather than engage it, but what does that do to the original argument?
They were also difficult - new leaders and rulers who tried to bring them in were often called “tyrants” and more than one was assassinated by ancient oligarchs, including Julius Caesar. The challenge for many people - including people who have been taught that the scripture is the word of God, that we are told that these particular passages cannot be read as literally true.We insist that they must be saying else, that they must be talking about something figurative or immaterial, when there is historical evidence as well as Biblical sources that what Christ is asking for is something real, that will usher in a new era, not the end of the world.
It feels like the “we” here might be a straw man, but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt.
I’ll use Isaiah 61 as the running example to start. The original language literally says vengeance — as in all the times God declared an intervention to avenge the Israelites — so I can make a literal reading of that without issue whether I like or dislike the sentiment. Reading Genesis in a literal way, however, means reckoning with two creation stories and a guy called Noah who built a boat to save anything that couldn’t swim from a global flood. Everyone I’ve encountered who mentions taking the Bible literally has caveats. They take some things literally because they want to, and come up with reasons not to take other things literally at all. That’s allowed, but it means they’ve assumed a stance of dogmatism and apologetics rather than critical, evidentiary argument.
It’s true that too many folk address passages like “I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home” and insist we have to “contextualize it” until it means nothing. But this is not true across every person and every piece of scripture, and it’s not what I’m suggesting. I didn’t put forth specific readings because my goal was pointing out things the original article missed. There are real, reasonable problems with the original argument that I engaged in good faith. The overarching one being that Mr. Lamont wants something to be true and is appealing to the Bible as a proof text. That, in itself, cannot stand up to critical scrutiny. It sucks. A lot. I want the Bible – and other documents – to say certain things, but they don’t. I don’t like it, but that’s how it is. I have to deal with it in some good faith way. Which is why I lean on things like the black prophetic tradition, as I mentioned, to provide more workable answers and avenues.
The other is that there are real-life examples of this happening, and it worked, including in the 20th century. There are multiple examples of debt relief programs during the Depression, Second World War, and the post-war period. In 1948, virtually all personal debt in Germany was cancelled, provinces have cancelled the debts of cities. People keep thinking that the world is radically different - and in some ways it is, mostly because of technology. However, the social and financial and legal arrangements we have sometimes date back to Roman times, and incredibly enough, reflect Roman Imperial values, and not those of any religion.
I’ll state again that I agree private debt is a serious problem that enriches few other than rentiers. It’s not a radical position because the data bears it out reasonably well. But we have to make the strongest, most humane, and grounded arguments possible. Appealing to the Bible as a proof text ain’t it.
The Song in My Head: Jesus Loves Me by Flesh War
Because deathcore is always the most appropriate response to everything.
One of my professors, The Rev. Dr. Pat Dutcher-Walls, used the term “interpretive principles”. She also liked to say of exegesis, “you could provide your own gut interpretation. It just won’t be that interesting.”
There’s an unfortunate tendency in this part of the world to think of the Protestant canon as the Bible. But there’s also not such thing as the Bible; there are different forms that include different writings.
A specific section or extract of a book. Look in pretty well any Bible and you’ll see headings like “The Lord’s Prayer” or “The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth”. Those delineate each pericope.
This isn’t a case of people preferring “trespasses” when the author of Matthew used the word for “debt”. The author does not use such a word in the first place for verses 14 and 15.
Not a donkey; his backside.