Nicholas Wolterstorff. Lament for a Son. Grand Rapids, MI: William B.

Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987 Pp. 111

Lament for a Son is Wolterstorffs record of the period after his eldest son
Erics death. This book is filled with the outpour of a broken man, a man that
has known sorrow and grief. Wolterstorffs son Eric died from a climbing
accident in the mountains of Austria, only aged twenty-five. He raises
questions about the meaning of life and where God is in his time of despair.
His book has a similar feel to the book of Job, as he wonders why God would
allow such a terrible tragedy to impact his life. I believe that Wolterstorff
published his private thoughts on life, death and God because he wanted his
readers to acknowledge the pain in our suffering and not to pretend it
doesn't exist.
Nicholas Wolterstorff was born in 1932 to a Dutch family. He grew up in
a small farming town in southwest Minnesota. He received his bachelor's
degree at Calvin College, where he became fascinated with philosophy and
the teachings of Abraham Kuyper who impacted his thinking about God and
theology. In 1953 after graduating from Calvin College, he began work on his
Ph.D. at Harvard University. After earning his Ph.D. he taught at Yale
University for two years. He then returned to Calvin where he taught

philosophy for thirty years. While teaching at Calvin, he and his colleagues
started the Society of Christian Philosophers, which has become the largest
affiliate of the American Philosophical Association ("Nicholas Wolterstorff").
Wolterstorff has written 16 books and has published over 150 articles for
professional journals.
His book Lament for a Son begins with a detailed description of the
tragic phone call Wolterstorff received the summer of 1983 telling him that
his son, Eric, had a terrible climbing accident and had died (9). Eric, who was
25 at the time of his death, loved mountain climbing and the feeling of being
in touch with nature. His life was cut short doing what he loved. Wolterstorff
recalled the cold burning pain that struck him when he received that phone
call and the emptiness that followed. He tells his readers of Eric's short life,
and of his goals and ambitions. Eric was a national merit scholar and was
passionate about science and math but felt he could touch humanity more
by pursuing art history. The potential of Eric's pursuits went unfulfilled with
his untimely death.
After his narrative about Eric, he spends the majority of his book in
lamentation, describing his emotions, questions and responses to himself,
God and others. Many times throughout his book he questions why God
would shake the mountain and take his son in the prime of his life. He uses
many quotes from the bible and from other authors to express how grief is
universally shared. Although he never shows anger toward God, he has a
hard time understanding why God would allow something so tragic to

happen to his family. His death left Wolterstorff deeply depressed. He

recounts the happy times he spent with Eric, but those memories continue to
haunt him because they were just memories, and he would never again have
experiences with Eric.
During his time of mourning, people would often try to console him.
From these people Wolterstorff learned what grieving people need from
others is not someone to tell him everything will be ok, but someone to
simply be by his side and to share in his pain (72-73). One of the sayings
that upset Wolterstorff is "I know how you feel". Although people would say
this with good intentions, trying to relate one of their losses with his would
always make Woltersorff feel bad because no one really knows how he is
feeling, and everyone handles death differently. He compared his grief to
that of God looking down at Jesus at Gethsemane, and how he knows how
hard it must have been for God to see his son suffer and die. He never said
that God caused this disaster, rather he suggested that God was hurting just
as much, if not more than him for his loss (81). He sees God as a very
relational being, and as an example of how we should comfort those who are
in pain.
Wolterstorff ends his book with the requiem that he had composed for
his sons funeral (106-111). Eric's requiem has six parts, the words taken
mostly from scripture. They describe the awfulness of death, lamentation,
how God suffers with us, what Eric might say, the endurance of faith, and
Christian hope. The order of these themes are important to understand

Wolterstorff's grief. The first three parts are about the awfulness of death and
how although we suffer, we don't suffer alone. The last three parts explain
that in the midst of tragedy, God still triumphs and there is hope in the
future. This is roughly the order in how he structured his book. He started by
explaining the incredible hole that his son's death left in his life, and of his
depression as he wrestled with the idea of never seeing his son again.
Toward the end of his book, he describes the hope that remains, how one day
in heaven he may actually hear is son say "Hey dad I'm back". I think the
reason that he ended his book with a statement of his faith in God (100-102),
and his hopefulness of the future was to remind his audience that there is
more to death than grieving, because eternal life with God will greatly
outweighs any pain or suffering that we experience on earth.
Although the name of this book is Lament for a Son, I do not believe
Wolterstorff meant for this book to be about his son, or about him. I think
that he intended his book to be an example to readers of how to mourn, and
to show that grieving after tragedy is necessary for our mental and spiritual
health. Our culture today strongly tells us that we should not grieve
publically, and to be considered a strong individual we must suppress our
emotions. His book connects with everyone, because everyone knows death
and suffering. By writing this book, Wolterstorff shows us that it is natural to
grieve, question God, and to be angry at the injustices in our world.

Works Cited
"Nicholas Wolterstorff." Gifford Lecture Series. Templeton Press, n.d. Web. 08
Nov. 2014.