The Bible and the banks

Of the many recent articles about the credit crunch, few have brought a biblical perspective. But if ‘everything under heaven belongs to’ God, would he have remained entirely silent on so major a human activity?

The poverty of wealth

The obvious biblical theme to consult is that of money. Scripture portrays wealth as a blessing when it is the fruit of covenant obedience, but the lust for money readily overwhelms justice and oppresses the poor, with a particular ability to inspire idolatry.

For Paul, the lust for money is the root of all kinds of evil#. Jesus singles out the service of wealth as incompatible with the service of God#. Wealth has an affinity with idolatry in a way that work, for example, does not. The value of labour is widely acknowledged in Scripture, and is at the root of what theologians call the ‘cultural mandate’ — to have dominion and care for the earth. But whereas labour can produce value, Scripture is very suspicious of money’s ability to produce extra value by earning ‘interest’. Indeed, ‘lending at interest’ was explicitly banned within Israel#. Thus Calvin insisted that the charging of interest must serve the common good, and forbade it where it oppressed the poor. Modern banking has moved very far from these principles. Most of us have little idea what our investments are used for, although recently ethical banking has emerged.

Another biblical theme is ‘greed’, which many blame for the credit crunch. The large bonuses and pensions enjoyed by bankers make them an easy target. Indeed, greed forms a major part of the world-view we are celebrating this year in the Darwin bicentennial, for ‘greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit’#. But it needs more than greed to make clever people stupid. And the people running the banking sector seem to have been staggeringly stupid.

Solid assets

The fact is that it needs more than money to make a bank. The old fashioned bank of yesteryear was an emblem of reliability, an icon of continuity in a changing world. Its very architecture favoured solid granite and classical pilaster; the manager was a pillar of the community. Faith in the bank rested on the evidence of his prudence and good judgment. Both the bank and its customers knew that a loan required evidence that the borrower could repay it. Faith in the bank and evidence of its reliability went hand in hand.

Now this is curious because most people would say that the world of finance is the last place on earth where we would find faith. Where finance is concerned, we all have our feet solidly planted on the bedrock of the bottom line.

But our very language betrays the fallacy. Don’t shares float, rising and falling in mid-air, as it were, depending upon the market’s faith in the stock? We are full of faith in the future during a bull market, full of doubt in a bear. Banknotes acquire value from the legend, ‘I promise to pay the bearer…’, and our faith in the chief cashier to keep that promise. As Niall Ferguson puts it, ‘money is trust inscribed’ and ‘credo is the root of credit’. The fact is that the world of finance is shot through with faith.

Banking on faith

So, when thinking about banking, we should pay particular attention to what Scripture says about faith. Authentic faith is reliable, not blown around by every fresh rumour, securely grounded in the faithful Creator, and authenticated in both individual and communal experience. Indeed, authentic faith is repeatedly connected with authenticating evidence in the Bible. Signs point to it, prophecy enables it, testimony witnesses to it, and sight observes it#. Traditional banking practice assumed precisely this scriptural understanding, not surprisingly as it grew in a culture thickened with Scripture. The faith which we had in the traditional bank was intimately linked to the evidence authenticating its reliability.

It was faith which enabled bankers to be agents between those seeking a loan, and those wishing to make an investment. By aggregating many small, short-term investments, a bank could offer individuals and businesses larger sums over longer periods. But this was far more than acting as a piggy bank. The bank was not simply a literal go-between for specific sums of money, held temporarily in its vaults. Because we had faith in the bank, it was not actually necessary to have funds immediately available to repay all its investors. Where, then, were our savings, if not in the vault? They were vested in the good standing of the bank; they lived by faith. Provided that the evidence and our faith in the bank continued hand in hand, all was well. But once our faith was separated from the evidence, trouble followed.

Dawkinsian faith

So banks traditionally rested on the biblical understanding of faith authenticated by evidence. But recent decades have seen a change in the public understanding of faith. If you believe Richard Dawkins, faith is the mortal enemy of evidence. It is science which is evidence based. Faith is, by definition, irrational, blind trust divorced from evidence or, worse, believed in the teeth of the evidence. In fact, evidence is so corrosive to faith that religions avoid facts altogether, preferring myths and old wives’ tales.

This perverse understanding of belief seals faith in one box and evidence in another. I shall call it ‘Dawkinsian faith’ after its populariser, although its roots lie deep in mysticism. As a result of this shift in the public understanding of faith we have lost the habit of relating faith to evidence, and have come to share in a common consensus that faith and facts are in conflict.

This is common in media discussions. For example, John Humphrys recently interviewed the scientist-theologian, John Polkinghorne, and insisted that science involves facts, while faith is mere opinion. Such an understanding is foreign both to the Bible and the underpinnings of traditional banking practice. We have faith in a bank because there is evidence of reliability. If we relied upon mere ‘opinion’, we could not complain if we lost our money.

Of course, the supposed conflict between ‘faith’ and ‘facts’ does not stand inspection. As Polkinghorne remarked on the same programme, if we trust our friend, it is not because we have devised experiments to try to trip him up — that would destroy the very friendship we enjoy. Moreover, the closer the relationship, the less likely we are to conduct experiments or use the language of science to describe it. I imagine that not even Dawkins’s whispered endearments speak of ‘survival machines’ or ‘robot vehicles’ for selfish genes. Anyone so consistent would not long maintain a relationship.

Yet neither are friendships divorced from the evidence of our experience: we have faith in someone because we know them to be trustworthy, and our experience of them has proved this. In fact we have a word for faith without evidence: gullibility; and for love in the face of facts: infatuation. We regard both as marks of immaturity. The complex connections between authentic faith and authenticating evidence are well known and part of our everyday life. Yet Dawkinsian faith has gained such a foothold that we rapidly lose sight of these obvious facts. Faith and evidence are immediately sealed back into their respective boxes, and the tops firmly shut.

Faith in human history

Even some Christians have come to think of faith as a purely private experience. Our forebears knew better. Many of the founders of modern science relied upon their belief in the biblical God of faithfulness in their study of creation#. If faith is fundamental to human experience, and not just a religious sensibility, a change in the public understanding of faith will have public consequences. Just as our forebears’ recognition of the God of faithfulness encouraged science to flourish, so a perverse doctrine of faith which splits it from authenticating evidence will have a deleterious impact on human history.

Now our understanding of the nature of faith certainly matters if we are discussing the Christian gospel. It would be difficult to give a reason for the hope that is in us if there were no evidence authenticating our faith#. It also matters in public life. Indeed, as Hebrews 11 shows, it is faith that shapes human history#. Dawkins teaches the opposite. According to him, secular life relies on facts, and there is no need to open the ‘faith box’ at all. But, if the probity of traditional banking relied on an authentic understanding of faith, then to keep the box closed will have serious consequences. If banking emerged within a culture thickened by Scripture, can it survive in a culture which marginalises authentic faith? Recent changes in banking practice make this an urgent question, which I will address in the second part of this article (to follow in the May EN).

Dr. Philip J. Sampson

A longer version of this article appeared in Third Way in February 2009.

Dr. Philip Sampson looks at the current financial disaster, part 1