Commentary on Psalm 15 (1551)

Journal of Markets & Morality Volume 11, Number 2 (Fall 2008): 349–460 Copyright © 2008 Wolfgang Musculus Commentary on Introduction by Jordan J. Ballor Psalm 15 (1551) Translation by Todd M. Rester 349 Commentary on Psalm 15 (1551) Contents Introduction by Jordan J. Ballor iii Commentary on Psalm 15 (1551) Psalm 15 1 Appendix to Psalm 15: Concerning the Oath 31 Appendix to Psalm 15: Concerning Usury 59 i 351 Commentary on Psalm 15 (1551) Introduction Wolfgang Musculus on Christian Righteousness, Oaths, and Usury Over the last few decades, a picture of the Reformation has been formed that stands in marked contrast to the received wisdom of the early twentieth century. A history of Christian doctrine that largely emphasizes the importance of the Reformation’s leading men, especially Martin Luther and John Calvin (and to a lesser extent Philip Melanchthon and Huldrych Zwingli), has been measured and found wanting. In its place an approach that emphasizes texts and contexts rather than archetypal paradigms has provided a more sensitive and nuanced perspective on the transition from the late-medieval to the early-modern period. The work of lesser-known figures has begun to emerge from the shadows cast on the historical landscape by theologians such as Luther and Calvin. This is as true for our understanding of controversial doctrines such as the Lord’s Supper and justification as it is for the influence of the Reformation on political, economic, and ethical thought. These minor characters of the Reformation have been found to have made major and, heretofore largely unappreciated, contributions to the developments of the Protestant Reformation and post-Reformation eras. Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563), the sometime reformer of Augsburg and Bern, is one such overlooked figure. In the Anglo-American world in particular, the work of this second-generation reformer has suffered indefensible neglect. A handful of unpublished dissertations, along with only two published monographs, iii 353 Scholia iv Introduction comprise the English-language literature focused on Musculus in the last century.1 The bibliographic situation on the Continent is rather better, however, and the publication of an anthology commemorating the five-hundredth anniversary of Musculus’ birth stands as a major recent contribution to Musculus research.2 Of special interest here is Wolfgang Musculus’ exegesis of Psalm 15, a text that has been foundational for the development of theological reflection on Christian righteousness and, in particular, on questions related to usury. Musculus wrote a sizeable appendix on the issue of usury for his Psalms treatise and linked it, along with another appendix on oaths, to his exegesis of Psalm 15. Musculus’ appendices on oaths and usury were first translated separately from the rest of the Psalms commentary and appended to the English translation of his Common Places in 1563. In this way, it functioned as practical moral treatises corresponding to the larger doctrinal focus of the Loci communes.3 Each of these appendices is important in its own way for the historical development of political economy and social ethics in the Reformed tradition. They stand as predecessors to the more developed moral casuistry of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Where the first and second generations of reformers tended to address such social, political, and ethical questions in an ad hoc and occasional manner, treatments became increasingly organized and structured in the larger casuistical systems of writers such as William Perkins, William Ames, and Richard Baxter.4 1 Among the former are James T. Ford, “Wolfgang Musculus and the Struggle for Confessional Hegemony in Reformation Augsburg, 1531–1548” (Ph.D. diss.: University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2000); and Robert B. Ives, “The Theology of Wolfgang Musculus, 1497–1563” (Ph.D. diss.: University of Manchester, 1965). The latter are Craig S. Farmer, The Gospel of John in the Sixteenth Century: The Johannine Exegesis of Wolfgang Musculus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Paul Josiah Schwab, The Attitude of Wolfgang Musculus toward Religious Tolerance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933). 2 Rudolf Dellsperger, Rudolf Freudenberger, and Wolfgang Weber, eds. Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563) und die oberdeutsche Reformation (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997). 3 Wolfgang Musculus, Common Places of the Christian Religion, trans. John Man (London: Reginalde Wolfe, 1563). 4 William Perkins, The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience (London: John Legat, 1606); William Ames, De conscientia et eius iure, vel casibus (Amsterdam: 354 Commentary on Psalm 15 (1551) Jordan J. Ballor v Musculus’ appendix on oaths takes up a question of relatively novel importance, given the contemporary challenge of more radical strands of the Reformation to such social conventions. To question the legitimacy of the oath was to challenge the entire social and political structure of the day. Musculus takes his point of departure on this question with the biblical text of Psalm 15:4, which reads in part that the righteous person is one “who swears to his neighbor and does not change.” Psalm 15:5 informs the reader that another characteristic of a righteous person is to be someone who “does not give his money for usury.” In his magisterial study on the theory of usury, John T. Noonan observes, “At the same time, economics, law, theology, and ethics are all, in measure, illuminated by the history of a theory that involves them all.”5 The complex issue of usury becomes, then, a very useful device for coming to an understanding of how various interrelated themes in intellectual history have been synthesized and applied. Even more, when usury can be examined historically within an exegetical context the pos- sibilities for fruitful analysis multiply. As David C. Steinmetz has noted, “The history of biblical interpretation is not incidental to European cultural history but central to it.”6 I. Ianssonium, 1631). ET: idem, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (London: W. Christiaens, E. Griffin, J. Dawson, 1639); Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory, or, A Summ of Practical Theology and Cases of Conscience (London: Robert White, 1673). See also Johann Alsted, Theologia casuum (Hannover: Conrad Eifridum, 1621). For a massive corresponding effort among Lutherans, see Georg Dedekenn, ed., Thesauri Consiliorum Et Decisionum Volumen I Ecclesiastica con- tinens (Hamburg: Paul Lange, 1623); and Friedrich Balduin, Tractatus Luculentus, Posthumus, Toti Reipublicæ Christianæ Utilissimus. De Materia rarissime antehac enveleata, Casibus nimirum conscientiæ (Wittenberg: Paul Helwigius, 1628). This transition in theological reflection on moral matters corresponds to the larger move- ment from the early generations of the Reformation to the Reformed orthodox of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See Richard A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 9–10. 5 John T. Noonan Jr., The Scholastic Analysis of Usury (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 2. 6 David C. Steinmetz, Luther in Context, 2d. ed (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 46. 355 Scholia vi Introduction Musculus’ reflections on usury in Psalm 15 are significant because they represent a stream of Protestant thought that largely has been ignored by economic historians.7 The preeminent significance of Calvin’s thought on usury for the development of modern economics has been the subject of debate for the last century, but efforts to correct, modify, or replace the Weber thesis have tended to focus on antecedents to Calvin, whether they be Reformed (as in the case of Heinrich Bullinger) or Roman Catholic (as in the case of the school of Salamanca).8 In contrast to Reformed thinkers such as Calvin, Bullinger, and Bucer who modified to a greater or lesser extent the received theological perspectives on usury, Musculus represents the continuing vitality of a more restrictive, less permissive approach to these questions. While not often found worthy of independent study, there are two areas in particular in which the work of Wolfgang Musculus has often been noticed by the secondary scholarship. The first is in the complicated history of what has become known as “covenant” or “federal” theology. In his Loci communes, initially published in 1560, Wolfgang Musculus was perhaps the first reformer to grant the topic of covenant a separate treatment within the context of a major systematic contribution to sixteenth-century Reformed theology.9 When nineteenth-century 7 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Routledge, 2006); R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (London: John Murray, 1960); and more recently Rosa-Maria Gelpi and François Julien-Labruyère, The History of Consumer Credit: Doctrines and Practices, trans. M. L. Gavin (London: Macmillan, 2000). For a study focusing on Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, see Ernest Ramp, Das Zinsproblem. Eine historische Untersuchung (Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1949). For a study that surveys the opinion of a variety of reformers and concludes that the disagreements are merely terminological and superficial, see Eric Kerridge, Usury, Interest and the Reformation (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002). 8 On Bullinger, see J. Wayne Baker, “Heinrich Bullinger and the Idea of Usury,” Sixteenth Century Journal 5, no. 1 (April 1974): 49–70. On the Salamancans

Load more