Page 5 - Valentino Cattelan - Credere is credit and creed: trust, money, and religion in western and islamic finance

IANUS n. 29-2024 ISSN 1974-9805

1. Credere (‘to trust’): the ‘money kite’ of finance, economics, morality, and religion

As a topic of research, the interconnection (and interdependence) between
finance, economics, morality, and religion may not appeal to some contemporary
readers when dealing with the study of the nature and function of money in
relation to risk, uncertainty and profit . Indeed, if the topic may intrigue open-
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minded social scientists who are conscious of the need for an all-encompassing
approach to the study of human nature, history, and culture, the substantial
outcomes of this approach would appear to many others more philosophical
rather than of any practical impact. Furthermore, although very few people would
disagree today with the fruitfulness of an interdisciplinary overlap between each
pair of disciplines in the order mentioned above , I suspect that more critical eyes
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would look – if not disappointed eyebrows rise – at a deeper investigation of the
relationship between religion and finance in the way money is conceived and
managed, so to link the two more distant poles of the list.
However, this apparent distance becomes illusory (if not misleading) when we
move from a different perspective and we recognise that money and religion do
share a common background: that of mutual trust between economic actors for
the former, and that of devout belief, in relation to a creed, for the latter. In this
sense, credere (which means both ‘to believe’ and ‘to trust’ in the Latin language)
belongs both to the essence of money, as well as of religion. If believing in
someone means giving them personal/economic credit, to believe in God
involves faith in afterlife salvation. Both reflect the trust that what has been lent,
will be returned; what has been righteously invested, will multiply in value.
Moreover, just as any story of credit is a story of risk and uncertainty (debtors
may not be able to return money, and credit institutions are always, after all, risk
managers), any story of faith is a story of hope in redemption and grace, which
goes beyond human control – hence, uncertainty here reappears again .
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Embracing this conceptual background, where the nature of money can be
understood (also) in relation to religious belief, the image of a ‘kite’ can help us
keeping connected the four corners of finance, economics, morality, and religion
in the navigation of the sky of social sciences . Accordingly, the resulting ‘money
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3 A classic contribution in the field of the nature and function of money remains KNIGHT, Risk,
uncertainty and profit, Boston - New York, 1921. Frank Knight concentrates on the role of choice in
the theory of profit and exchange, as well as the impact of risk and uncertainty in economic theory.
Differently, the present article, as the reader will immediately understand, tries to offer an
alternative perspective on the matter, linking the nature of money to religion through the concept
of trust.
4 Finance + economics; economics + morality; morality + religion: hence, respectively, the well-
established academic literature around financial economy; business ethics; Christian ethics or moral
theology; Islamic ethics and religion, just to give some examples.
5 For the use of ‘belief’, ‘religion’, ‘creed’, and ‘faith’ as synonymous in this article, please see,
here, note 2.
6 I am in debt with Prof. Werner Menski for the kite metaphor, that he has applied with success

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