ABSTRACT

Protestant ethics is characteristically suspicious of matters of the heart, subjective experiences, natural order and moral intuition. With its emphasis on human sinfulness and God’s revelation as its starting point, Protestants tend to prefer a more deontological type of ethics. The phenomenological school of value personalism on the other hand, stresses the importance of feelings, value experience, and concrete, active, neighborly love. This chapter seeks to establish a dialogue about ethics of the heart and value experience between these two traditions: a Roman Catholic type of value personalism as exemplified by Max Scheler, and a Protestant, biblical approach such as is found in the work of Paul Ramsey.