In the Autumn of 1988 I found myself as an Anglican priest in the enjoyable post of chaplain to Kings College Choir School in Cambridge. I taught religion in the school and helped to monitor the choristers who sang in the most superb choir in the world. One of my tasks was to walk with the boys from the school across the “backs” and over the river Cam to their daily choir rehearsal in the famous chapel at Kings before Evensong.
One afternoon I was sitting in my room reading an essay by C.S. Lewis called “A Rejoinder to Dr Pittenger”. Norman Pittenger was an Anglican theologian famous for being a proponent of “process theology”. Process theology is an outgrowth of the “process philosophy” of Alfred North Whitehead. It’s central concept is that God is more “becoming than being”—that God is relational and evolves as the world and history changes. A couple of Whitehead’s aphorisms sum it up: “It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.” or “It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.”
Pittenger had picked a fight with Lewis in 1958 in the pages of The Christian Century and Lewis responded with his usual wit and erudition. As I was reading the essay in one of the collections of Lewis’ essays edited by Walter Hooper the time came for me to take the boys to their rehearsal, and after dropping them at the choir room door I wandered around the famous chapel killing time and soaking up the atmosphere.
By and by a bulky old man leaning on a cane came up and engaged me in conversation. He heard my American accent and said he was American too. His friendliness made me feel strangely uncomfortable. I was in my late twenties and I sensed that the old man’s interest in me had a sexual undercurrent. He asked me what brought me to England. I smiled and said, “Oh you know, the work of T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis.”
He nodded, “I knew them both.” Then his face clouded and he said, “Eliot was a genius, but that Lewis should never have strayed from his own discipline of literature.” He asked my name and then shook my hand and said, “I’m Norman Pittenger.” I smiled with a polite response and made my escape.
After Evensong I walked the boys back to school, had dinner and picked up the book to continue reading Lewis’ essay. Only then did I make the connection. “A Rejoinder to Dr Pittenger.” I read. “Dr. Norman Pittenger. That’s the same guy!’ I gasped. C.S. Lewis had been dead for twenty five years by that time, and I had forgotten that people who knew him were still living. I had no idea that Pittenger had retired to Kings College, Cambridge in 1966 and was still there as an old man in 1988.
As I continued to read Lewis’ essay the poignancy of providence hit home. Old Norman Pittenger was a pitiful figure in old age. I learned later that my un ease at his friendliness was well justified. Along with process theology Pittenger was openly homosexual and one of the first defenders of homosexuality in the Anglican church.
Lewis, on the other hand, had died in 1963 and Walter Hooper recounts that in his final months Lewis was sad because he was poor and had little to leave for the care of his stepsons and his brother Warnie. Lewis was convinced his books would go out of print and Warnie and the boys would have nothing to live on. When Lewis died Pittenger was at the height of his fame. Lewis’ rejoinder to Pittenger was not only to skewer his opponent intellectually, but his posthumous popularity increased almost in direct proportion to the decline of Pittenger’s fortunes. Thus Pittinger lived long enough to see Lewis’ reputation continue to soar, the sales of his books reaching a younger and younger worldwide audience. He saw plays and feature films made of Lewis’ romance with Joy Davidman, and stage plays and television adaptations of Lewis’ Narnia books.
I never got to know Norman Pittenger more than that chance co-incidental meeting. What interested me more was that while Pittenger had lived long enough to see the ascendancy of Lewis he also survived to see the process theology which made him famous decline in appeal until it was not much more than a theological footnote. Pittenger finally died in 1997 at the age of 92. He kept writing books well into his old age, but his friends would tease, “What is the book called this time Norman?” I hope his final days were not as sad and lonely as they seemed to be. His personal life and reputation are not, in the end, for me to judge.
What has struck me since that meeting was another strange co-inherence. Lewis used to like quoting Dean Inge, “He who marries the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widower.” Process theology was an ephemeral, faddish theology not only drafted in an age of relativism, but taking relativism and subjectivity as it’s core assumption. It’s disappearance and irrelevance was built into its own philosophy. “God changes as the world changes?” Then that must mean that theological concepts are equally mutable. Norman Pittenger’s theology was built on the idea that truth was here today and gone tomorrow so it is no wonder that the theology constructed from that principle was here today and gone tomorrow.
Lewis’ ultimate rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger was to build not only a theology, but a corpus of work and indeed a saintly life on the eternal truths of historic Christianity rather than the ephemeral ideas of a relativistic philosophy. A true conservative, C.S. Lewis mined the past to construct a stable present from which an abundant future could flourish. He searched for the “solid joys and lasting treasures” and eschewed all that was provisional. As such Lewis’ name and work continues to prosper. He and his writings will stand forever while that which was momentary has no monument.
Books on the topic of this essay may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore.
As a sidenote…Whitehead’s theology may well be forgettable. But his Science and the Modern World is amazing (Lewis incidentally quotes it, or at least references it in Abolition of Man). Moreover, Whitehead’s journey away from the atheism of Russell to something else is worthy of consideration. In his Science and the Modern World, his canonization of the medieval world and especially its theologians as supplying the general climate which allowed science to flourish is as strong as Lewis’. Whitehead is right: we have let the prestige of the individualized facts supersede the general truths and we will have to recover that, if we are going to move to the next stage…whatever that may be.
This is a side note too. This is the first time I’m hearing of process theology but I recently had a conversation with a devout orthodox Jew who said that one of the biggest differences between Christians and Jews is how we translate the “I am that I am”. In Judaism it is translated as “I will be who I will be,” and that creates a dramatic difference in our understanding of God. In Christianity we conceptualize God as fixed, but apparently not so much in Judaism. Or at least that was one Jew’s take on it. That seems to coincide in what you describe as process theology. By the way, Wikipedia provides and explains both translations.
Mr Cole, does Lewis “reference it” or did he refer to it? Your content is always so good that it deserves matching style.
Norman Pittenger needs no pity!. His booklet ‘Time for Consent’ was an enormous help and comfort to thousands of gay men who grew up in an age when they were rejected by the greater part of the Christian Church. As a young Australian doctor studying in London, I met Norman in 1969. I wrote to him after reading ‘Time for Consent’ and asked if I could come and see him. He responded at once and invited me to Kings. We talked for an afternoon, then he took me to Choral Evensong. I felt no ‘sexual undercurrent’ in the friendliness he showed me that day. But then, why would I? I needed help and advice, and he had a big enough heart to realise that. We remained in contact, in face-to-face meetings, and later in regular letter exchange when I returned to Australia, right up until his death. I truly grieved his passing. He was a good and kind man, and he was there when I needed a churchman, who understood. As a previous Evangelical Christian, I had read all CS Lewis’s writings. I believe CS Lewis was a good and gifted man. But his writings never touched my soul or helped me like Norman did. I am not qualified to comment on process theology. But this I do know. Norman Pittenger saved my life. And I say, God bless him.
I don’t know where some get the idea that process is dead. It sure isn’t on my end of it. I am a process theologian and if anything, interest seems to be growing.
One does not expect a lengthy explication of theological concepts in such a brief post, but Fr. Longenecker’s characterization of process theology is a caricature. When process theologians speak of change in God they never mean that God changes in essential character. Every person undergoes changes, but not all changes diminish that individual, especially if he or she is a good person. Process theologians why it should be different with God. Charles Hartshorne spoke of “the divine relativity,” but this is in no way the same as relativism in the sense of saying that truth and morality have no objective grounding. If process thought were merely “ephemeral” or “faddish” it could be dismissed as such, but its arguments cannot be dismissed merely because it has been misrepresented by one of its opponents.