Sacred Places, Sacred Space

Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses church architecture from both an artistic and a functional perspective. Joel Kotkin and Wolterstorff facilitate a discussion regarding sacred space in urban planning.

Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and currently the Noah Porter Emeritus Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. In Faith and Rationality, Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and William Alston developed and expanded upon a view of religious epistemology that has come to be known as reformed epistemology. He also helped to establish the journal Faith and Philosophy and the Society of Christian Philosophers. Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff regularly teaches lecture courses in philosophy of religion and aesthetics, and seminars in epistemology, hermeneutics, and philosophy of religion. Dr. Wolterstorff received his BA from Calvin College in 1953 and his PhD in philosophy from Harvard University in 1956. After concentrating on metaphysics at the beginning of his career (On Universals), he spent a good many years working primarily on aesthetics and philosophy of art (Works And Worlds Of Art and Art In Action). In more recent years, he has been concentrating on epistemology (John Locke and The Ethics Of Belief and the just published Thomas Reid And The Story Of Epistemology), on philosophy of religion (Divine Discourse and, with Alvin Plantinga, Faith And Rationality), and political philosophy (Until Justice And Peace Embrace and, with Robert Audi, Religion In The Public Square).

Joel Kotkin is an internationally recognized authority on global, economic, political, and social trends. Described by The New York Times as America’s “uber-geographer,” for over three decades Mr. Kotkin has been one of the nation’s most prolific and widely published journalists. His work appears regularly in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American. Kotkin is the author of The City: A Global History and most recently, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He currently writes the weekly “New Geographer” column for Forbes.com.