Page 285 - Contribution To Phenomenology

278 JAMES G, HART

ontological-metaphysical concept, namely the divine as Idea, as well as to
his key ethical concept, the absolute ought. These, we have claimed, are
evident in the intentionality of the follower; the founder does not face
infinite Ideas but rather somehow is coincident with or embodies the
Idea.
Husserl notes that what moves him in reading the Gospels is not the
miracles. Indeed, he himself reads the Gospels less as an historical
account than as a legend. Christ confronts Husserl as a Gestalt of
exceeding goodness. Legendary as it is, in contrast to the clear individual
personaUty of the figure of Paul, the Christ of the Gospels awakens in
him, through the various sayings and parables, a realm of perfect
goodness. He says of the Gospel presentation of Christ calling us:

I have evidence that such an action (as it is here demanded) is purely
good, that to be able to be in this way would be blessed, that such [a
goodness] would awaken in me love and the purest love. And Christ
himself stands before me there not as someone who merely demands but
himself as one who is perfectly good, as pure goodness, all-understand-
ing, all-forgiving, as looking with pure love upon all humans as seedbeds
of a possible pure goodness. And I can think of him only as an
embodiment of pure human goodness: as an ideal human . . . and I
empathize and become filled with infinite love for this trans-empirical
Gestalt, this embodiment of a pure idea. And I am filled with
blessedness knowing this infinite person lives in relation to me. And
because this power streams forth from this ideal form it has already for
me a reality.^* I believe in this legendary individualised idea and it
becomes a power in my life.

And now I understand the believer who in the contemplation of this
ideal figure which at the same time is given through a continuous
tradition about which he may have no doubts, who believes in the
historical individual Jesus and in all his miracles and all that the first
tradition of the Gospels tells of his resurrection and of what he himself
bore witness to regarding his relationship to God, etc . . . The saving
.

^* This passage, and many others in HusserFs theological writings, recalls
Peirce's views on the power of ideals: whatever generates devotion and has the
power to attract us irresistably cannot be non-actual and merely the outcome of
development. For a discussion, see Donna M. Orange, Peirce's Conception of God,
Peirce Studies, N. 2 (Lubboc, Texas: Institute for Studies in Pragmatism, 1984), pp.
70 ff.