John Calvin and the Influence of Calvinism Upon the Rise of Usury Banking and Capitalism
On a Christian forum a member wrote that "One thing I have always thought was ironic about the KJV only movement, is that the ENTIRE reason we have a KJV, is because a PAPIST king, was mad about some of the comments in the liner notes of the Geneva Bible.
The Reformers said a couple of things about the right of Kings taking a back seat to the Word of God, and King James, in his arrogance, got mad about it, and decided to have his own Bible translated. So, fast forward to modern day America, and we have protestants who most likely know nothing about church history, siding with a CATHOLIC KING'S translation, while not even knowing about the Geneva Bible, the one the Pilgrims, and the Puritans and Shakespeare all used!"
The writer of this is a Calvinist on a forum where the majority are followers of dispensationalism to some extent.
The King James Version (KJV) is not under a copyright. But the new translations, almost all from the corrupt Westcott-Hort Greek text, can be copyrighted. Anybody can print a KJV and give it away free if he wants to. You cannot do that with the NIV, unless you pay whoever owns the copyright. Hence, more money can be made from the copyrighted versions. Copyrighting a Bible is not exactly what the Gospel is about. But copyrighting helps a large publisher sell more of his Bibles and to make more money.
In addition, it was Calvinism which helped to set the stage for modern capitalism which exalts making money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
"One school of thought attributes Calvinism with setting the stage for the later development of capitalism in northern Europe. In this view, elements of Calvinism represented a revolt against the medieval condemnation of usury and, implicitly, of profit in general. Such a connection was advanced in influential works by R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) and by Max Weber (1864–1920).
Calvin expressed himself on usury in a 1545 letter to a friend, Claude de Sachin, in which he criticized the use of certain passages of scripture invoked by people opposed to the charging of interest. He reinterpreted some of these passages, and suggested that others of them had been rendered irrelevant by changed conditions. He also dismissed the argument (based upon the writings of Aristotle) that it is wrong to charge interest for money because money itself is barren."
From our view in 2011, with the long recession due in large part to the power, lack of morality and greed of big usury bankers and their deceptive practices, including loan amortization, God's moral law opposing usury is a very good thing. Ol Calvin was wrong. We may be seeing the start of a popular opposition to big bankers and their usury in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The early German sociologist Max Weber in his "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" said that capitalism got going in the northern European nations under Calvinism which encouraged large numbers of people to work hard many hours a day to make money.
The Calvinist "calling" which is a calling to devote one's life to hard work in an occupation contributed to the Protestant work ethic which was necessary to build a capitalist industrial economy.
I have not read Weber's book on the rise of capitalism due to Protestant or Calvinist theology in Northern Europe (and in England). But it is true that the Catholic nations continued to oppose usury. Usury was necessary for the development of capitalism, and guess who liberalized the older Christian prohibition on usury?
Over the centuries since capitalism began in the protestant nations of Europe, usury has become the major instrument for the ruling elite, which is largely the financial elite of big usury bankers, to control the masses of people and to rule over them. Without usury the elites could not have the power they have.
Though usury is not mentioned in Revelation 18, Revelation 18: 10-11 says "Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:"
Merchants, from emporos, are like our world traders, or international corporations.
Then Revelation 18: 23-24 says "...for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth."
The Babylon of prophecy has its economic and financial side, and it runs on usury. The "circulation" system of the first beast of Revelation 13: 1-10 is money. And the metaphor of Babylon points to the same international system run by money, which empowers the "King of the North" in the modern timeline of Daniel 11.
The northern command of nations, the industrialzed nations of the North, are now in conflict with the mostly Islamic nations of the South, who have not gone in for usury as much as the nations of the North. There are no "good" and "bad" players in the North versus South seen in the present day reality of world affairs and in Daniel's eleventh chapter. The nation of Israel is likely to be a trigger for World War III which will be between the international North and the South. And - you are not a "good" guy by supporting the North and the country of Israel against the Islamics. But the Islamics are one manifestation of the spirit of anti-Christ, and are not the "good" guys either.
And - John Calvin and his theology liberalizing usury helped make all this possible. It did increase the standard of living for many in the West. But now usury is a key to totalitarian domination by the financial ruling elite - and its going to get worse.
On http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/kjcathol.htm
it says "It is often asserted that King James I was a "closet Catholic". Was he? What does the extant historical record say?...In Papal Opposition, Mr. Coston handily proves his thesis--not only was King James not a Roman Catholic, but he actually opposed the errors of Rome. Mr. Coston's selection and arrangement of the King's prolific writings gives us a picture of a bold Christian King who fought to keep a bloody papacy off his back while its recusants lived in his kingdom. Mr. Coston does not stop at King James' writings. He includes those of high-ranking papists who considered King James "a heretick" king. Complementing the rich, relevant primary source documentation found in Papal Opposition is Mr. Coston's insightful historical commentary. He does not second-guess King James but rather helps the reader to put King James' actions and words in context of the political/religious climate of the time.
Mr. Coston's appeal to primary source documentation is refreshing in a time when revisionist historians seek to re-write history based on rumor, speculation, and wishful thinking. Our historians oftentimes plagerize one anothers work, not taking time to go back and do real research."
