Abstract

This article summarizes the legal philosophical thinking of Paul Scholten’s, a protestant-christian scholar . The three main characteristics are: 1 the idea of ‘biblical Personalism’, the origin of which has puzzled several authors; the author argues that Scholten derived it from Philip Abraham Kohnstamm, physicist and philosopher, theologian and pedagogue, a contemporary, colleague and personal friend of Scholten’s; 2 the assumption that one’s views on law are influenced by one’s world view; and 3 the moral nature of law, which according to Scholten follows from the structure of the concept of law . The author claims that Scholten’s thinking can be of value in contemporary discussions, which is demonstrated by the current debate on values and norms, by the ongoing debate on law enforcement and the nature and functions of criminal law, and by the ECHR decisions in the case of the Turkish Refah Partisi