Archive

Cardinal Dulles, a frequent contributor to First Things, presented this address to the Cardinal Newman Society on November 11, 2001, in Washington, D.C., upon receiving the John Henry Newman...

Saint Agnes Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was, The coach for all his sweaters was acold; The team limped weakly through the frozen grass, And bundled were the fans, a...

Benedict XVI, before becoming supreme pastor of the Catholic Church, served for two decades as a theology professor and then, for more than two decades, as prefect of the...

Nothing is more striking in the New Testament than the confidence with which it proclaims the saving power of belief in Christ. Almost every page confronts us with a...

The Oberlin conference on The Nature of the Unity We Seek, which met fifty years ago, in September 1957, marked an important stage in the ecumenical movement. For the...

During the second half of the nineteenth century, it became common to speak of a war between science and religion. But over the course of the twentieth century, that...

Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, has two clearly distinct parts. In the first it deals with the nature of love and of charity, the highest form...

The word orthodox derives from the Greek word orthodoxía, which standard dictionaries translate as “right opinion.” Aristotle used the verb orthodoxein with the meaning “to have a right opinion.”...

Like his predecessor John Paul II, Benedict XVI was present at all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Whereas Karol Wojtyla took part as...

The question of the present status of God’s covenant with Israel has been extensively discussed in Jewish-Christian dialogues since the Shoah. Catholics look for an approach that fits in...

A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching by john t. noonan, jr. university of notre dame press, 280 pp., $30 Doctrinal development follows...

CS. Lewis was a man of many parts. His novels, allegories, and children’s books achieved enormous popularity. He excelled as a spiritual writer and had some standing as a...

As Christianity spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, it became apparent that the biblical doctrines concerning God, morality, and future retribution had similarities with the philosophical speculations of the Platonists,...

Over the centuries, Christian theology has exerted itself to keep the proper balance. Faith, besides being a gracious gift of God, is also a free and responsible decision on...

The Church in a Postliberal Age by George A. Lindbeck edited by James J. Buckley Eerdmans, 300 Pages, $27 George Lindbeck was almost predestined to eminence in the fields...