The Debtor's Prayer

David Bentley Hart on A Prayer for the Poor

May 26, 2023

until debt tear us apart brick wall vandal — Photo by Ehud Neuhaus on Unsplash

One cannot accuse David Bentley Hart of being a wild-eyed leftist. He is an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion, author of densely argued (and often acerbic) essays and books on a wide range of topics in philosophical theology, history and culture. He is staunchly conservative on many moral issues and is quite skeptical of visions of political utopia (whether of the right or left). The man has published regularly in First Things, for goodness’ sake.

Even so, he has a marvelous capacity to elude easy binary categorizations: a kind of Pope Francis with snark. Hart is a universalist in the tradition of St. Paul, Origin and St. Gregory of Nysaa (see his That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation); and, after having published a somewhat idiosyncratic and literal translation of the New Testament in 2017, he has argued persuasively for the central concern for the poor that runs through much of the Bible – and which is so often overlooked or muted by translators and commentators. While Hart isn’t altogether clear about how Christians should respond to this biblical preoccupation with the poor, he will not allow us to evade it.

In this, Hart has given us a great gift: a capacity to read scripture with new eyes and to see those things from which we tend to avert our gaze. And there are few things we would rather avoid seeing than the degradation, suffering, and powerlessness of the poor; except perhaps, our complicity in their condition.

This gift is offered most accessibly in an essay by Hart entitled, “A Prayer for the Poor.”[1] Hart begins the essay by noting that economists across the ideological spectrum agree on the observation

“that in many ways the difference between the poor and the rich is simply the difference between debtors and creditors, and that systems of credit are for the most part designed to preserve and exploit this difference.”[2]

The culprit, here, is the principle of interest and the deployment of compound interest at exorbitant rates through predatory lending schemes. This practice is an ancient, though not venerable, tradition. The indigent are often in desperate need of liquid capital, and rarely have hard assets of sufficient worth to convert into cash or use as collateral for a loan. They are at the mercy of creditors. And the creditors are often merciless, as witnessed by the proliferation of pay-day lenders, escalating credit card rates, and shady mortgage lending practices in our own day.

Little of this is regulated, allowing credit markets to exploit human desperation in the service of wealth creation. Reviewing this system, which is often most lucrative when families face financially crushing medical emergencies, Hart concludes,

“In capitalist societies, the poor too – like everything else – can become a commodity; they are a natural resource that can be tirelessly exploited by the rapacious without ever being exhausted. The poor are always with you.”[3]

Hart goes on to note that the moral repugnance of using debt to enslave people in need was recognized at least as early as the Torah, the Law of Moses. The practice of usury is expressly prohibited within the community of Israel, and charging interest in general is condemned. In addition, the Law sought to ensure that neither Israelites, nor their neighbors, would be reduced to a permanent state of destitution.[4]

Moreover, the Law provided that every seventh year should be a shmita, a Sabbatical year, during which debts were to be forgiven. The Law went even further, imposing the Year of Jubilee, a Sabbath of-Sabbath-Years that would fall every fiftieth year. During the Jubilee year, all debts were forgiven, all slaves were emancipated, and all ancestral lands were returned to their original owners. It offered a clean slate, as it were, and enforced a rough equality within the community.

It was, of course, Israel’s failure to honor this moral imperative that incited the prophetic denunciation of those who exploit the poor.[5] This is a theme that runs through the prophetic literature of Israel, and is taken up directly by Jesus in his own critique. Hart calls our attention to how many of Jesus’ teachings are concerned with debts and creditors, the use of the legal system to exploit the poor, and their need for relief. We tend to spiritualize these teachings, ignoring their very real-world social and economic context.

“But,” as Hart notes, “one does not need to be a scholar of Judaea and Galilee in late antiquity to notice how often Jesus speaks of trials, of officers dragging the insolvent to jail, of men bound by or imprisoned for undischarged debts, or unmerciful creditors, of suits brought before judges to secure a coat or cloak, of the unfortunate legally despoiled by the fortunate.”[6]

Hart points out that the main function of courts in the time of Jesus was to enforce the payment of debt to creditors – often through selling families into slavery. It was a world of exorbitant debt crushing the lives of the vast majority of people living at a subsistence level. The legal convention of prosboul was developed to evade the Law’s prohibitions, allowing creditors to place outstanding promissory notes in escrow with the courts and authorizing the courts to collect payments. It is no wonder that Jesus’ proclaimed the restoration of the Jubilee Year.[7]

Christian scriptures share the Hebrew Bible’s moral repugnance toward the exploitation of the poor in this way. The Letter of James is unrelenting in this regard, “Do not the rich oppress you, and haul you into law courts as well? Do they not blaspheme the good name that has been invoked upon you?”[8] This moral indignation echoes the clear teaching of Jesus. Hart quotes the parable of the unmerciful servant, Jesus’ condemnation of creditors who devour widow’s houses, and the parable of the unrighteous steward to indicate Jesus’ strong denunciation of the exploitation of the poor by creditors.[9] Jesus is quite radical, not only in declaring the Jubilee Year, but in counseling this followers to give freely to those in need, expecting nothing in return.[10]

Jesus’ concern for the poor is perhaps most evident in the prayer that he taught his disciples to pray; which is, Hart argues, a prayer for the poor. We miss this emphasis in standard translations of the Greek text, according to Hart, because the second half of the prayer is translated in an abstract, universal way that misinterprets the concrete, practical concern of the petitions.

“Daily bread” is really “the bread we need for the day’s need.” It is a prayer for enough to subsist. Our translations fail to capture the uncertainty, the plaintive concern for survival implicit in this desperate plea. The prayer does not ask for the forgiveness of “transgressions” or “sins,” but of “debts” – the vehicle by which the destitute are exploited, impoverished, and enslaved. What is at stake here is the liberation of those who suffer and die to benefit the wealthy. The word translated as “temptation” actually means “trial,” deliverance from being brought to court by a creditor. Finally, the closing petition refers to an “evil man,” not abstract evil or even the “evil one” – the devil. It is almost certainly a reference to a merciless creditor.

Hart provides a translation along these lines:

“Give us our bread today, in a quantity sufficient for the whole day. And grant us relief from our debts, to the very degree we grant relief to those who are indebted to us. And do not bring us to trial in court, but rather rescue us form the wicked man [who would sue us].”[11]

What we have here is a prayer of and for the poor, the vast majority of humankind.

Hart offers a pseudo rationale for the eventual spiritualization of the Lord’s Prayer over the centuries – the effort to make it more universal and accessible; dare I say, more palatable. It would hardly serve for all the baptized in its original form. Hart commiserates with the rich who say this prayer, his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, writing,

“After, all the tender feelings of the rich require protection too; their consciences should not be exposed to the pitiless light of moral absolutes. How else could the banker who has just foreclosed on a family home recite the Lord’s Prayer in church without being made to feel uncomfortable?”[12]

But isn’t that precisely the point?

As Hart concludes, “But, to tell the truth, [the prayer] was never meant for [the wealthy]. Quite – one has to be honest here – the opposite.”[13]

If we are entirely comfortable praying the Lord’s Prayer, we have indeed missed the point.

Awakened Heart

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