About this episode

Nicholas Wolterstorff reflects on grief and loss, discussing the importance of mourning and the limitations of theodicy.

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…

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