Wolterstorff was born on January 21, 1932,[4] to Dutch emigrants in a small farming community in southwest
Minnesota.[5][6] After earning his
BA in philosophy at
Calvin College,
Grand Rapids,
Michigan, in 1953, he entered
Harvard University, where he earned his
MA and
PhD in philosophy, completing his studies in 1956. He then spent a year at the
University of Cambridge, where he met
C. D. Broad. From 1957 to 1959, he was an instructor in philosophy at
Yale University. Then he took the post of Professor of Philosophy at
Calvin College and taught for 30 years.[5] He is now teaching at Yale as Noah Porter Professor Emeritus Philosophical Theology.
In 1987 Wolterstorff published Lament for a Son after the untimely death of his 25-year-old son Eric in a mountain climbing accident. In a series of short essays, Wolterstorff recounts how he drew on his Christian faith to cope with his grief. Wolterstorff explained that he published the book "in the hope that it will be of help to some of those who find themselves with us in the company of mourners."[7]
Wolterstorff published his
memoir with
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. in 2019, illustrating the close relationship between his personal life and his distinguished academic career.[9]
Professional distinctions
Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1953
Harvard Foundation Fellowship, 1954
Josiah Royce Memorial Fellowship, Harvard University, 1954
Fulbright Scholarship, 1957
President of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division)
President of the Society of Christian Philosophers[2]
Nicholas Wolterstorff lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his wife Claire. He has four grown children. His oldest son died in a mountain climbing accident at age 25. He has seven grandchildren.
Thought
While an undergraduate at Calvin College, Wolterstorff was greatly influenced by professors
William Harry Jellema, Henry Stob, and Henry Zylstra, who introduced him to schools of thought that have dominated his mature thinking: Reformed theology and
common sense philosophy. (These have also influenced the thinking of his friend and colleague
Alvin Plantinga, another alumnus of Calvin College).
Wolterstorff builds upon the ideas of the Scottish common-sense philosopher
Thomas Reid, who approached knowledge "from the bottom-up". Instead of reasoning about
transcendental conditions of knowledge, Wolterstorff suggests that knowledge and our knowing faculties are not the subject of our research but have to be seen as its starting point. He rejects classical
foundationalism and instead sees knowledge as based upon insights in reality which are direct and indubitable.[5] In Justice in Love, he rejects fundamentist notions of Christianity that hold to the necessity of the penal substitutionary atonement and justification by faith alone.
Bibliography
Selected writings
On Universals: An Essay in Ontology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1970.
United in Love: Essays on Justice, Art, and Liturgy. (ed. Joshua Cockayne and Jonathan Rutledge). Eugene, OR:
Cascade, Wipf & Stock. 2021
ISBN9781666715590
Secondary
Sloane, Andrew, On Being A Christian in the Academy: Nicholas Wolterstorff and the Practice of Christian Scholarship, Paternoster, Carlisle UK, 2003.
^Wolterstorff, Nicholas (November 2007). "A Life in Philosophy". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 81 (2): 93–106.
JSTOR27653995.