The Lure of Divine Love: Human Experience and Christian Faith in a Process Perspective
by Norman Pittenger

Preface

The material in this book had its origin in lectures delivered in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. Part One, here called "Human Experience and Process Thought," was given on the Alexander Brown Foundation as a series of lectures at Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia, U.S.A. in 1976; the material in Part Two, here called "God in Process: Christian Faith and Process Thought," was a series of lectures given at St. Augustine’s College, Canterbury, England in 1966.

Part One appears in print for the first time. Some of it I used in lectures at places other than Randolph-Macon, and I used it in its entirety at a clergy conference in Utah in the States and before students at the College of Emmanuel and St. Chad in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Part Two was published in 1967 under the title God in Process by the Student Christian Movement Press, London, as one of their SCM Paperbacks. Within about three years, the entire stock was sold and the book went out of print. Since then I have received hundreds of requests that it once again be made available; but a new edition did not seem feasible.

Last year, I was approached by T. and T. Clark of Edinburgh with the suggestion that SCM Press might return to me the rights on that book and a new, and updated, edition might be published. I agreed to this and SCM Press consented. But in my discussions with Dr. Geoffrey Green of Clark’s, I told him that The Pilgrim Press in New York was to publish the Alexander Brown lectures and I asked about the possibility of combining the two in a single volume. To my delight, Clark’s accepted this idea, and Pilgrim Press gave their hearty approval. Thus the book now in the reader’s hands is a revised version of the two originals. They are arranged so that they complement each other in their discussion of what is now called The Lure of Divine Love: Human Experience and Christian Faith in a Process Perspective.

Were I to dedicate this book to anyone, it would be to the students and faculty of Randolph-Macon College and the College of Emmanuel and St. Chad. In particular, I should wish it to be "for" several students at the latter institution, who during my three months as a visiting professor there showed me such loving friendship: David Asher, Susan Bansgrove, Rick Morden, and Deborah van der Goes. It is young men and women such as these that encourage me in my conviction that the world is much safer in the hands of the newer generation than it ever was with those of my own older generation or of the generation between me and those former students.

Norman Pittenger

King’s College, University of Cambridge, England