‘Usury is not Usury.’ The Early Dutch Reformed Theological Debate on Interest (and What Can be Learned from It)

This article reconstructs early Dutch Reformed theological debates on usury from the late sixteenth century to the 1630s, culminating in Johannes Cloppenburgh's Christian Instruction on Usury (1637). Challenging the common assumption that Dutch reflection on interest began with Hugo Grotius, it demonstrates that theologians in the Dutch Republic had already produced a substantial body of work on usury decades earlier. Drawing on catechetical commentaries and academic writings, the article situates these Dutch discussions within the longer medieval and Reformation-era debate on usury and interest. While indebted to John Calvin's reinterpretation of biblical prohibitions through the principles of charity and equity, Dutch Calvinists did not follow him uniformly or uncritically. Instead, they developed a range of positions that increasingly endorsed usury-bearing loans in principle, provided they were not exacted from the poor, moderate, and regulated by the magistrate. By highlighting both the diversity and relative liberality of early Dutch Reformed thought, the article clarifies the theological foundations of the normalisation of usury and interest in the Dutch Republic.