William Norman Pittenger (1905-1997): A Memorial

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 1997 by Belshaw, G P Mellick

G.P MELLICK BELSHAW*

William Norman Pittenger died in England at the age of ninetytwo on June 19, 1997. Although he had lived most of his life in the United States, since 1966 Cambridge was his home, where he was an Honorary Senior Member of King's College. A year earlier, while reflecting on his life in his last book, he make the startling announcement that it was his ninetieth published book!

No wonder that his obituary in the Independent cited the fact that he was a prolific writer. It is astonishing how many books, articles, and pamphlets he wrote. In 1966, upon his leaving The General Theological Seminary, where he taught for 30 years, his bibliography, in a book of essays in his honor titled Lux in Lumine, lists thirty-six books, and one hundred and forty-six articles, many printed in the ATR, by that date alone.

Norman Pittenger grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was remembered by a former high school teacher as the brightest student she had ever taught. He entered Princeton University but did not graduate, because he was lured to New York to try a career as a newspaper reporter, covering among other things the Lindbergh kidnapping.

However, newspaper reporting did not satisfy him, and soon he entered The General Theological Seminary, started writing articles for Holy Cross Press, and "never leaving General"-as he used to put it-spent years there as a student, tutor, instructor, and finally professor of Christian Apologetics. But he did leave, and his years in Cambridge turned out to bit a bit longer than in New York.

Obituaries in English newspapers stressed the fact that Norman Pittenger promoted process theology, and remembered him as "the first respectable campaigner for the open acceptance of homosexual relations among Christians"-in the words of the Independent. In his Time for Consent (1969), which sold 10,000 copies in paperback in England, he made his reputation as one of the first Christian thinkers to be widely read and seriously listened to on the subject.

All who knew him remember his enthusiasm for the ideas of the philosopher A. N. Whitehead, as they were developed by Charles Hartshorne, which emphasized the evolutionary nature of creation. That is obvious to any reader of his major theological work, The Word Incarnate (1959), which revealed his indebtedness to process theology, as he focused on Christology from his liberal Catholic viewpointor, as he would sometimes prefer to say, from his critical Catholic viewpoint.

Of the many things that can be said about Norman Pittenger, for those of us who were his students, what stands out is that he was a great teacher. Possessing a storehouse of information and wisdom about Christian theology, and specifically Anglicanism, he was a demanding but caring teacher. (I remember the first time I opened Lux Mundi in his presence and inquired about the book and its essayists. He proceeded, from memory, to list the contributors in order, pausing in each case to tell me something of their careers!)

As a Christian apologist, Norman Pittenger never failed to engage the culture in his lectures and writings. Theology was not taught in isolation from the contemporary world or from the history of the times. And to his belief in the sources of authority for Anglicans-scripture, tradition, and reason-he added an emphasis on the witness and proof he found in authentic Christian experience.

In his lectures, seminars, books, articles, and discussions, he had an extraordinary ability to combine vast knowledge with a personal, oftenn humouous, manner of presenting the subject under consideration. He could stimulate students to think for themselves in ways they never thought possible, as he recognized their potential and celebrated the fact they were created in the image of God. brated the fact they were created in the image of God.

At his funeral, a few lines from John Donne were read, appropriately:

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling but one equal light, no noise nor silence but one equal music, no fears nor hopes but one equal possession, no ends nor beginnings but one equal eternity, in the habitations of thy majesty and thy glory, world without end-Amen.

For his life and work all who know him and loved him as a teacher and friend can give thanks.

* G. P. M. Belshaw was Bishop of New Jersey until his retirement. He was a student of W. N. Pittenger at The General Theological Seminary.