The first step towards any future abolition of this system is to recognize what usury really is. In the Biblical tradition, usury means any form of interest charged on a loan, not just excessively high rates as we consider it today. There are multiple prohibitions against usury recorded in the Old Testament. Exodus 22:25 forbade oppressing one’s neighbor with usury. Deuteronomy 23:20-21 said you could not charge your brother usury. Ezekiel 18:7-8; 13 makes it clear that the righteous do not lend at usury; and that usurers “shall not live.” Leviticus 25:35-36 says if your brother is poor do not charge him usury. The final Old Testament word on the issue came from the Psalmist, who charged the godly to aid their neighbors, not lending to them at interest. The strongest rejection of loans at interest came from Christ in Luke 6:35, where He says “Lend, hoping for nothing in return.”

God’s hostility to usury in the Old Testament inspired Christian theologians from the fourth century on to define lending for gain as a sin. St. Jerome declared usury to be the same as murder because it consumed the life of the borrower. Canon law and secular law held usury to be malum in se, an evil in itself that must be outlawed because God condemned it. St. Basil in his volume On Social Justice provides his own Patristic condemnation of usury https://orthodoxreflections.com/make-usury-a-sin-again/