The Forgotten Best Friend of Celebrity Pastors
October 1, 2011
In between (at times heated) discussions with my wife as to how we can come up with the 250 quid for the new Trotter conference (on top of the airfare) and prepping for our podcast ("Woman, be quiet about the quid. I don't have time for this! I have important people to meet and important things to discuss!"), I've been reading the famed phenomenologist Edmund Husserl for a seminar at Temple University. Husserl was the founder of the aforementioned philosophical school, in the Continental tradition. From the fecund soil of the venerable Dr. Husserl sprang the likes of everyone from Heidegger to Paul Ricouer.
How is Husserl the forgotten best friend of celebrity pastors? Because they have all (unwittingly) imbibed the spirit of this passage from Husserl's masterwork Cartesian Meditations:
The Objective world, the world that exists for me, that always has and always will exist for me, the only world that ever can exist for me - this world, with all its Objects, I said, derives its whole sense and its existential status, which it has for me, from me myself, from me as the transcendental Ego, the Ego who comes to the fore only with transcendental-phenomenological epoché (p. 26).
So whether it's the intentioned objects of phenomenology or your name strewn all over your three different webpages like wreckage from a bad turn at Lowe's Speedway, the self, the ego (not now in the technical Husserlian sense) is at the center. The only difference is that Husserl was adamant in his unbelief and was trying to make sense of the world apart from Christ. On the other hand, those who make themselves the centerpieces of a ministry and bully those who disagree with them can't claim Husserl's "excuse" when called to account. Theirs is a willful ignorance with Bible in hand.
