A gospel you can bank on

Christians believe that the Bible is a special source of revealed truth that contains much that we could never have acquired with just the exercise of our natural reason. The Gospels, in particular, teach us things about God, redemption, faith, and our moral obligations that we would not have come to regard as true from mere philosophical speculation, scientific study, or personal experience. And yet, these lessons are virtually always anchored in appeals to ordinary concrete realities. Sometimes they are in parables—such as the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37), the Prodigal Son, (Luke 15:11–32) the Unjust Steward (Matthew 18:23–35), the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3–7)—but occasionally they are in metaphors and analogies. We are told, for example, to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20), that Jesus will separate the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 3:12), that we should watch out for wolves in sheep clothing (Matthew 7:15), that we should not put new wine into old wineskins (Matthew 9:17), and so forth.

According to Michael Pakaluk, such literary devices in the Gospel of Matthew, combined with how the book is structured, reveal an underlying theme and purpose that Pakaluk attributes to the professional background of its tax collector author. In his new book, Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel (Regnery Gateway, 340 pp.), Pakaluk, a philosopher in the business school at the Catholic University of America, offers a construal of the first gospel that seems both ancient and novel at the same time. It is novel in the sense that it is fresh, insightful, and breaks new ground. It is ancient insofar as it has its roots deep in church history.

While in graduate school at Harvard in the 1980s, Pakaluk first came across the phrase “be good bankers” in Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life. Strangely, de Sales attributes the phrase to Jesus, even though it does not appear in any gospel. Although this mystery piqued Pakaluk’s curiosity, he was, for the time being, satisfied with the translator’s footnote, which stated that some early Church Fathers, including Origen and Jerome, reported the phrase as Jesus’ words.

Be Good Bankers is the tangible result of Pakaluk returning to this puzzle several decades later. After a preface and a lengthy introduction, Pakaluk takes us through Matthew’s gospel from beginning to end. Providing his own excellent English translation, he offers commentary following each collection of verses. The book also includes a postscript that argues for the Apostle Matthew’s authorship of the Gospel of Matthew and against the chronological priority of Mark, both contrary to the dominant views among contemporary Biblical scholars.

Pakaluk makes a persuasive case for why Matthew’s literary unfolding of the plan of salvation—our ultimate redemption through Christ—is best understood as a specially revealed truth about the nature of the divine economy, and how our knowledge of the human economy and its relation to the common good illuminates our understanding of that plan. (In this sense, like so much else in Scripture, Matthew relies on an ordinary human activity that flows from our created nature in order to help us grasp a great mystery). According to Pakaluk, Matthew 1:1 through 16:13 is about “the deposit,” the recognition, confirmation, credentialing, and attestation of the Son of God, and to what account the deposit will be credited (the Church). After a brief interlude in which Jesus announces his passion (16:13–28), 17:1 through 27:66 concerns the actual payment, suffering, and death of Christ for our redemption. The gospel’s final transaction, 28:1–19—which involves Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to his followers—is a record of “the recapitalization of the household of God.”

Be Good Bankers is an accessible work that will benefit pastors looking for innovative ways to communicate the Gospel in the modern world while not acquiescing to the spirit of the age. You can bank on it.