Bob Goudzwaard (1934-2024)

This past weekend we learned that Bob Goudzwaard has departed this life at the age of 90. Goudzwaard was a political economist who was steeped in the Christian tradition, especially in that branch of the faith downstream from Augustine, John Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Dooyeweerd. Born and raised in Delft, the Netherlands, he lived through the difficult war years. When he came of age, he studied at the University of Rotterdam and came under the influence of Johan P. A. Mekkes (1898-1987), an adherent of the school founded by Herman Dooyeweerd known as the Philosophy of the Law Idea. Eventually he would teach at the Free University of Amsterdam and also served for a time in the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament with the Anti-Revolutionary Party.

I first heard of Goudzwaard in the spring of 1975 when I obtained a copy of his book, A Christian Political Option, published by the old Wedge Publishing Foundation. As a budding academic political scientist studying at a Christian university, I found him a breath of fresh air, willing to challenge the underlying assumptions that the typical economists bring to their discipline. I had never before come across a book that treated "The Unique Radicality of the Gospel" (chapter 5) and "The role of demonic power in a prosperous society" (a section in chapter 7). But Goudzwaard was no ordinary economist. Above all, he sought to emphasize the human side of economics, bringing the norm of stewardship to the fore. Rather than viewing economics from a reductively positivist standpoint, Goudzwaard taught that a normative economics requires an unfolding process whereby the economic aspect of life is enriched in what Dooyeweerd identified as the later modalities, such as the aesthetic, jural, ethical, and faith aspects. Economics must serve a full life in God's world and should never close life off within economic principles narrowly conceived. He brought this approach to his other writings, including Aid for the Overdeveloped West (1975), Capitalism and Progress: A Diagnosis of Western Society (1979), and Globalization and the Kingdom of God (2001).

My youthful interest in political economy did not survive my undergraduate and graduate studies, which focussed more on political philosophy and comparative political systems. Yet even here Goudzwaard turned out to be formative for my thinking. I found myself increasingly perplexed by the political divisions that see citizens of a polity talking past each other and becoming increasingly hardened within their own ideological perspectives. In 1981 Goudzwaard published a short book, Genoodzaakt goed te wezen, or "Forced to Be Good," published in English three years later as Idols of Our Time by InterVarsity Press. He wrote this in the context of the merger of the three Christian political parties in the Netherlands to create the Christian Democratic Appeal, but, as I read the book, it occurred to me that Goudzwaard's method of analysis could well be applied to the general phenomenon of ideology beyond the ones he treated in his book, namely, the ideologies of revolution, nation, material prosperity, and guaranteed security.

Might there be a connection between ideology and that ancient phenomenon that has plagued humanity since day one, namely, idolatry? Goudzwaard devotes chapter 2 to drawing a connection between the two phenomena. Two paragraphs are worth quoting in full:

Now we may return to answer the question of when the pursuit of a legitimate goal becomes an ideology. An ideology arises in the midst of that pursuit the moment that the end indiscriminately justifies every means. This blanket justification gives the means power, and they then turn into idols. An obsession with a goal—ideology—legitimates the means. The means then gradually become idols. The goal of material prosperity, for example, justifies the means of continuous economic and technological expansion. It justifies these means with a vast system of redefined norms and values. Ideology is therefore related to idolatry as the end is related to the means. We might say then that ideology is the conduit, track or channel along which idolatry comes to life and moves. . . .

The mature ideology is a false revelation of creation, fall and redemption. In a certain sense it recreates humanity and the world. Identifying its own source of sin, it erects its own antithesis between good and evil. And it promises the redemption of life. It speaks too of necessary suffering and sacrifice—sometimes bloody sacrifice—which the predetermined goal legitimates. In a certain way, therefore, an ideology imitates the suffering and death of the Messiah.

Goudzwaard's method is the one I used in analyzing the traditional ideologies of liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, democratism, and socialism in Political Visions and Illusions, as well as in my own teaching. Had it not been for Goudzwaard, that book would not have been written. Thus I owe him a debt of gratitude for providing me with the framework for my own analysis.

Some years ago Goudzwaard visited Redeemer University College, and I believe this may have been the last time I saw him in this life. His devotion to the cause of Christ and to the advancement of his kingdom in economic and political life was an inspiration to many of us who stand in his shadow. May he share in the resurrection of the righteous.