ABSTRACT
Early monotheist religions forbade the pursuit of interest because it was considered to be a means of exploitation. The Christian clerics adopted a strong position against the practice of interest on moral grounds and social/economic reasons. The interest-bearing debt transactions were criticized as they were viewed as a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. The church did not allow the generation of profit out of the loan transactions and sustained the ban up to the end of the scholastic era. The grounds of the interest ban were laid down by the decisions taken at the Elvira and Nicaean Councils. The changing circumstances through the end of the Medieval Age forced the church to adopt a new position on the ban. The interest ban was bent in line with the views of leading thinkers, including St. Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. The Christian theology’s discussion of interest revolves around the concepts of interest and usury. The etymological roots of these two notions are associated with early Judaic literature, where there was no distinction in terms of literal meaning between the two.
