Archive
More than thirty years of First Things articles at your fingertips.
Please note that some of our content may not be available on this web archive at this time. If you cannot find a specific article, please contact us.
Articles
Life at the Center: A Pro-life Statement
Those who seek to advance the Catholic Church’s teaching regarding the sanctity of life confront both new challenges and opportunities in the wake of the June 2022 Supreme Court...
Reopening the Sacramental Economy
How can the Church seek to provide sacramental care to the most people, especially those most in need, in the best possible way in our current conditions? In what...
Epidemic Danger and Catholic Sacraments
As the Church enters a Triduum where a great majority of the faithful lack public access to the sacraments, I’d like to offer some reflections that stand in sharp...
Letter to an Aspiring Priest
I’m grateful to you for getting in touch. Many people today would no doubt think you are strange for considering the priesthood, given the cloud that hangs over the...
The Metaphysics of Democracy
Dear Readers, This version of “The Metaphysics of Democracy” differs from the version that was published in the February 2018 print edition. The editors regret that they mistakenly printed...
Catholicism in an Age of Discontent
We are at a turning point. For the past fifty years the Catholic Church has taken an apologetic approach to secular culture that depicts Catholicism as the fulfillment of...
Trust Witness
Revelation as Testimony by mats wahlberg eerdmans, 256 pages, $20 T wentieth-century theologians across a great spectrum—Catholic and Protestant, conservative and progressive—were critical of theories of divine revelation based...
Divine Perfection
The God of the Gospel: Robert Jenson’s TrinitarianTheology? by scott r. swain?ivp academic, 258 pages, $24 How can we know if God exists? Is the existence of Godphilosophically demonstrable,...
The Light of the Torah
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has composed a message to the Christian community replete with intellectual light and heartfelt warmth, and it is a great honor to be asked to...
Sociology as Theology
Just when you thought liberal Protestantism was dead, Robert Bellah writes what is arguably the greatest work of liberal Protestant theology ever. Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic...
The Tridentine Genius of Vatican II
Fifty years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council, two schools of thought dominate the interpretation of that event. One derives from the theology surrounding the post-conciliar journal...
Love’s Greater Freedom
The following is a response to David S. Yeago’s “ Modern but Not Liberal .” The other response, by Shalom Carmy, can be found here . n n How...
Whether Faith Needs Philosophy
Abelard, claimed St. Bernard, was a logic-chopping rationalist whose writings were symptomatic of the anti-contemplative theology of the universities. The true theologian is a monastic contemplative. Luther had harsh...
Inevitable Scholasticism
Introduction to Scholastic Theology by ulrich g. leinsle trans. michael j. miller catholic university of america, 392 pages, $29.95 The standard narratives of twentieth-century Catholic theology written in the...