Episode 25: An Interview with Nicholas Wolterstorff

In this episode, Ed along with his Westmont Religious Studies colleague, Sameer Yadav, are very happy to present an in person interview with Nicholas Wolterstorff. (Coyle, unfortunately, was stuck in class.) Nick Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He is one of the most important Christian philosophers in the United States over the last 50 years, and the intellectual or spiritual godfather to several generations of Christian philosophers and theologians. Along with Alvin Plantinga and others, Wolterstorff helped to defend the rationality of religious belief in the 70's and 80's in a way that provided both intellectual and personal support for Christians in the discipline. He has written in virtually every area of philosophical inquiry over his career, including focused attention to issues of political philosophy and theology over the last 20 years. He has given the Wilde Lectures at Oxford, the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews, the Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary, and is the author of over 20 books and scores of articles. Ed and Sameer talk to Nick about his early career, his shift to political philosophy, John Rawls's account of the place of religion in the public square, the grounds of human rights and dignity, his theological account of state authority, and his recent work on liturgy.