Christian Economic Thought in The Netherlands

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to provide an insight into the ethics in the works of Christian economists in The Netherlands. The paper starts with a brief review of some key texts by Dutch Christian economists representing faith-based organizations. The next section presents a summary of (Dutch) Christian ethics, distinguishing four approaches: motivation, values, institutions, and instrumentalism. The following section will discuss some recent scholarly texts by Dutch Christian economists. It will be shown that three of the four ethical approaches are represented in these writings. In a comparison of the texts, the faith-based civil society economic thought seems to remain closer to the Christian ethics tradition. The last section will explain this gap by showing how, in faith-based civil society, morality is largely understood as being part and parcel of the economy, whereas in the academic economic literature, morality is largely regarded as belonging to the private sphere.

Keywords:

• Christian economic thought
• Christian ethics
• Netherlands
• Civil society organizations