Paul Mills on a Debt Jubilee

The latest Cambridge Paper from the Jubilee Centre is available online here (from where a pdf can be downloaded here), this one by Paul Mills:

Paul Mills, ‘After the Virus: Is it Time for a Debt ‘Jubilee’?’, Cambridge Papers 30, 1 (March 2021).

Here is the summary:

‘The concept of a societal cancellation of debt has an ancient heritage that includes the seven-year cycle of debt elimination found in biblical law. Given the virus-induced economic slump of 2020-21, the idea of substantive debt relief is being revived as a way to alleviate financial burdens on stressed households, companies and governments. The benefits of these proposals need to be weighed against the costs and injustices of changing the “rules of the financial game” retrospectively. But without a principled stance against the bondage of debt finance itself, such relief would only act as a temporary fix. The true lesson from Deuteronomy is that debt should remain short-term, with a “clean slate” within everyone’s grasp, thereby embodying gospel hope within the financial system.’

Southwestern Journal of Theology 59, 2 (2017) on Faith, Work, and Economics

The latest volume of the Southwestern Journal of Theology contains the below essays on the theme of ‘Faith, Work, and Economics’. Here’s an excerpt from the opening editorial:

‘[M]any Christians find themselves thinking of faith as a weekend endeavor and not something applicable to the whole of life. This is understandable if one thinks of the Christian life as existing only when one is gathered for religious events. The remaining time of the week must be for something else – something other than religion. However, if one considers Christianity as a whole-life faith endeavor, more than Sunday is in mind. Christianity then becomes something that is an everyday occurrence. If this is the case then work – what most people spend their time doing – must be a part of that lived-out faith. This raises the question, does the Bible actually speak to this concept of whole-life Christianity? The answer to that question is a resounding yes and the articles that follow are engaged with the broader question of what does the Bible say about faith, work, and economics.’

David W. Baker

Are Business People the Bad Guys? Person and Property in the Pentateuch

John S. Bergsma

The Year of Jubilee and the Ancient Israelite Economy

Eric Mitchell

Limited Government and Taxation in the Old Testament

Edd S. Noell

Land Grabs, Unjust Exchange, and Bribes: Economic Opportunism and the Rights of the Poor in Ancient Israel

John Taylor

Labor of Love: The Theology of Work in First and Second Thessalonians

Thomas W. Davis

The Business Secrets of Paul of Tarsus

The entire issue is available as a pdf here.