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Uncertain Dissonance

Elliot Milco

On Thursday, First Things will be hosting a musical performance and art talk, “Microtonality and the Fragmented…

Thomas, Dionysus, Scripture

Peter J. Leithart

In a paper on Academia.edu, Alan Darley of the University of Nottingham examines Thomas’s revision of the…

Shakespeare’s Distributed Personality

Peter J. Leithart

Stephen Greenblatt uses the anthropological theory of Alfred Gell to explain Shakespeare’s universal appeal, particularly Gell’s notion…

Paul’s Chiastic Mission

Peter J. Leithart

In an essay in the 1978 collection, Perspectives on Luke-Acts, Donald Miesner explains the chiastic structure of…

Liturgical Discipleship

Peter J. Leithart

The liturgy provides a rich and holistic model of evangelism and discipleship, holding together dimensions of Christian…

Aristotle on Trump

Peter J. Leithart

Trump and Aristotle may not seem to have a lot in common, Carson Holloway argues that Aristotle’s…

In Praise of the Repairman

Peter J. Leithart

Matthew Crawford is an advocate for the moral and intellectual value of manual labor. He argues in…

The Unraveling of Law

Douglas Farrow

I see in today’s National Post a column by Robert Fulford, flogging a book by Gregory Woods…

The Triumph of One-Armed Bandits

Peter J. Leithart

“Until the mid-1980s, green-felt table games such as blackjack and craps dominated casino floors while slot machines…

Breaking With the Imperium

Peter J. Leithart

Listening to Rod Dreher read the final paragraph of After Virtue, I was struck by MacIntyre’s description…

First Links — 4.8.16

The Editors

Liturgical Time TravelBr. Humbert Kilanowski, O. P., Dominicana Batman V. Superman: Battle Without Honor or HumanityAlexi Sargeant,…

Jigging and Expertise

Peter J. Leithart

In an essay on “The Intelligent Use of Space,” David Kirsh observed that since we have bodies,…

Romanticism and the Rhetoric of Music

Peter J. Leithart

Prior to the 18th century, writes Mark Evan Bonds, instrumental music was considered inferior to music that…

Areopagus in Acts

Peter J. Leithart

Paul’s speech on the Areopagus is the second of three programmatic speeches in Acts. Robert Tannehill notes…

Freedom and Intellectual Life

Zena Hitz

What is the point of studying the humanities? The question reflects the current climate among humanist educators:…