What principles apply to the student loan forgiveness debate?
Religious traditions across the world support debt relief — and Jewish, Christian, and Islamic teaching specifically endorse periodic structural debt cancellation. The constitutional question about student loan forgiveness is not whether the government may forgive debt (Congress clearly can) but who within the government has authority to do so. The Supreme Court's 2023 ruling held that broad executive forgiveness required clearer congressional authorization than the HEROES Act provided. The deeper question — why American higher education became so expensive in the first place — is not addressed by either the religious traditions or the constitutional doctrine and remains for legislatures and institutions to answer.
Religious perspectives
Religious traditions have unusually rich teaching on debt — including specific structural mechanisms for periodic debt relief that have no contemporary secular equivalent.
Judaism: The Sabbatical Year (Deuteronomy 15:1-2) required cancellation of debts every seven years: "At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release of debts." The Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25) — every 50 years — required restoration of land to original families and freeing of those bound by debt. These were not aspirations; they were laws. Jewish tradition treats periodic debt relief as a structural feature of a just society, not a one-time act of mercy.
Christianity: The Lord's Prayer asks "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matthew 6:12) — using debt as the central metaphor for moral relationship. Jesus's parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18:23-35) explicitly condemns a person who, having been forgiven a vast debt, refused to forgive a small one. Some scholars argue Jesus's ministry was inaugurated as a "year of the Lord's favor" — a Jubilee announcement (Luke 4:18-19).
Islam: "If the debtor is in difficulty, grant him time until it is easy for him to repay. But if you remit it by way of charity, that is better for you" (Quran 2:280). The Prophet Muhammad personally forgave debts and praised those who did so. Islamic finance developed specifically to avoid the interest-based debt structures the tradition saw as exploitative.
Buddhism: Generosity (dana) toward those in financial difficulty is treated as one of the highest virtues. The traditional Buddhist analysis: holding people in perpetual debt creates suffering that benefits no one.
The shared insight: Religious traditions distinguish between debt as a useful temporary arrangement and debt as a permanent extractive structure. They are generally supportive of the first and consistently critical of the second.
Constitutional & legal framework
The constitutional question is not whether debt relief is permissible — Congress clearly has the power — but who within the federal government has authority to grant it.
Article I, Section 8: Gives Congress the power "To borrow Money on the credit of the United States" and to spend for the general welfare. Congress's authority to forgive federal debts is well-established.
Biden v. Nebraska (2023): The Supreme Court (6-3) struck down the Biden administration's broad student loan forgiveness program. The Court held that the HEROES Act (2003), which authorized the Secretary of Education to "waive or modify" loan terms in response to national emergencies, did not authorize the categorical forgiveness of $400+ billion in student debt. The Court applied the "major questions doctrine" — that significant policy changes require clear congressional authorization.
The narrower programs that survived: Income-driven repayment plans, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and discharge for borrower defense to repayment have continued under existing statutory authority. The Biden administration subsequently used these and other narrower authorities to provide targeted relief.
The 2025-2026 changes: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted summer 2025, restructured federal student loan repayment for loans taken after July 2026 — consolidating income-driven plans into a new "Repayment Assistance Plan." The Department of Education's reduced workforce has produced significant administrative backlogs in existing forgiveness programs (~70,000 PSLF applications pending as of early 2026).
The structural question: American higher education costs grew roughly 1,200% from 1980 to 2020 — far outpacing inflation. Total student debt exceeds $1.7 trillion. Whatever one thinks of forgiveness, the underlying cost structure that produced the debt is a separate problem. Religious traditions and constitutional principles speak to debt relief; neither directly addresses why education became so expensive in the first place.
Sources cited:BibleQuranBuddhismConstitutionSupreme Court