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TWU to award Honorary Doctorate to Nicholas Wolterstorff

Trinity Western University’s Board of Governors is pleased to announce that Nicholas Wolterstorff, the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University, will be the recipient of a Doctor of Humanities, honoris causa, at TWU’s commencement ceremony on Saturday, April 25.

“Dr. Wolterstorff has been a strong voice in promoting the cause of Christian higher education,” said TWU Provost W. Robert Wood, Ph.D. “His life’s work has exemplified the importance of interdisciplinary humanities, as well as the need to engage in dialogue with non-Christian scholars.”

An acclaimed theologian, philosopher, author, and professor, Wolterstorff graduated from Calvin College in 1953 and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1956. After teaching philosophy for two years at Yale, he returned to the philosophy department at his alma mater in 1959. He returned to Yale again in 1989, where he was on the faculty of the Divinity School and associate faculty of the Philosophy Department and the Religious Studies Department. He retired from Yale in 2001.

During leaves of absence, Wolterstorff taught at Haverford College, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas, The University of Notre Dame, Princeton University, and the Free University of Amsterdam.

In March 2013, Wolterstorff was a guest lecturer at TWU’s Re-envisioning Christian Humanism and Higher Education lecture series, which explored the roots of Western culture, as well as addressed questions around the importance of Christian universities, fundamental values of democracy, and the meaning of Justice.