I first heard about Nicholas Wolterstorff from reading Platinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (reviewed here), and I bought Lament for a Son
Wolterstorff is best known for his work with Plantinga, William Alston, and others, in constructing reformed epistemology and the Faith and Philosophy journal. Wolterstorff lost his 25 year old soon, Eric, in a mountain climbing accident, and Lament is a novella-sized compilation of writings that chronicles his emotional and spiritual distress in the aftermath.
Most people would rightly parallel this with C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed, a book which Wolterstorff mentions in Lament. There are no chapters and most of Wolterstorff’s standalone observations are no longer than a page long — it read more like a diary than a book. Wolterstorff obviously loved his son but he was careful not to beatify him too much, as grieving parents tend to do: he extols Eric’s positive qualities but refers to him as “self-centered” more than once.
I can’t say how this compares to his philosophical writings but some of his outlook in that area seems to peek in a bit here. Without knowing the author, one can tell there is a deep thinker trying to rationalize the loss of a loved one with respect to his religious belief system that doesn’t seem to have the best answers:
So suffering is down at the center of things, deep down where the meaning is. Suffering is the meaning of our world. For Love is the meaning. And Love suffers. The tears of God are the meaning of history.
But mystery remains. Why isn’t Love-without-suffering the meaning of things? Why is suffering-Love the meaning? Why does God endure his suffering? Why does he not at once relieve his agony by relieving ours?