Debt, finance and social justice: the enduring relevance of William Temple

Abstract

Debt plays a central role in shaping contemporary social and economic life, whether in austerity policies pursued by governments, in households financing their acquisition of homes as well as their daily spending, in students paying for their studies, or for those who struggle to meet their basic commitments who turn to payday lenders. Debt also plays a central role in financing private enterprise, and in the financial sector itself. Debt carries a curious ambivalence: on the one hand, it is an investment in a business, a home or a career, a source of prosperity; on the other, it carries the moral danger of ‘living beyond one’s means’. What does justice mean in a society shaped by debt? Does it mean the repayment of debt, increasing the wealth and power of creditors? Can repayment of debt return us toward a just society? Or is the overall increase of debt unlimited, with its control over life ever more pervasive? Does social justice require the forgiveness of unpayable debts? This article will explore such issues from a theological perspective, drawing on the thought of William Temple.

Keywords:

• William Temple
• theology
• debt
• finance
• social justice

Notes

1. Note the comparable insight of Temple’s French contemporary Simone Weil: ‘Power, by definition, is only a means; or to put it better, to possess a power is simply to possess means of action which exceed the very limited force that a single individual has at his disposal. But power-seeking, owing to its essential incapacity to seize hold of its object, rules out all consideration of an end, and finally comes, through an inevitable reversal, to take the place of all ends. It is this reversal of the relationship between means and end, it is this fundamental folly that accounts for all that is senseless and bloody right through history’ (1958, 69).

2. Turner describes these three dynamics as drivers of increasing debt intensity (2016, 8).