Owning Grief Redemptively: The Wound of Loss, the Failure of Theodicy, and the Cry of Suffering Love / Nicholas Wolterstorff

More than forty years after his twenty-five-year-old son Eric died in a climbing accident, philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff joins Miroslav Volf to revisit the grief behind his classic Lament for a Son and his recent Living with Grief.

“If he was worth loving when alive, he was worth grieving when dead.”

In this episode they reflect together on mourning loss, refusing both the consolations of theodicy and the pressure to move on. Together they discuss owning grief rather than disowning it, lament as a cry that transcends analysis, and the limits of explaining suffering through theodicy. They explore Augustine and Calvin on grief, Karl Barth's “nothingness,” universality hidden in particular sorrow, and the prison classroom where incarcerated men claimed their own grief redemptively.

Episode Highlights

"I could not, and would not, allow it simply to heal."

"If he was worth loving when alive, he was worth grieving when dead."

"In my story I always say: I am one who lost a son. That's part of who I am."

"Children should not die at twenty-five years of age. Nobody should die at twenty-five years of age."

"It was good that I loved Eric. It was worth it. So my grief is worthwhile. And, in this world, love and suffering come together."

About Nicholas Wolterstorff

Nicholas Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Born in 1932, he earned his PhD at Harvard and taught philosophy for thirty years at Calvin College before joining Yale in 1989. A leading Christian philosopher, he helped develop Reformed epistemology and co-founded the Society of Christian Philosophers. His books span aesthetics, epistemology, justice, and liturgy, including Lament for a Son (1987) and the memoir In This World of Wonders (2019). His son Eric died in a climbing accident in 1983.

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