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How To Read Churches
Denis McNamara’s How To Read Churches is an extraordinary book. Subtitled “a crash course in ecclesiastical architecture,”…
Undemocratic Education
John Milbank cites what he calls “Socrates’s subversive realization” that “education can never be democratic” (Being Reconciled,…
Irrationality and Intellectual Flaws
Through a series of thought experiments, Richard Foley (Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others) develops a concept…
Lockean Individualism
Following Alvin Platinga, Richard Foley summarizes the principles of Locke’s epistemology in three principles (Intellectual Trust in…
Upcoming Events—2.23.17
New York “Faith in the Future: Christian Life in a Turbulent Time” — An Evening with Archbishop…
Typology, Toleration, and the Metaphysics of Hospitality
In an article on “Liturgy, Art and Politics,” Catherine Pickstock argues that the liturgy holds together universal…
Adamic Israel
1 Chronicles 27:25–31 lists the officials in charge of David’s stores and lands. Twelve men are named…
Saint Peter’s Chair
The feast of the Chair of Saint Peter is very ancient in origin, arising from the second…
In Memoriam Michael Novak
Michael Novak died last week. He was the consummate First Things intellectual: conservative in the way the…
The Body of Evidence
Attending a lecture last week on the politics of gender, I turned to a friend and said,…
Zwingli, Matter, Mind
In her meticulous and revealing study of The Eucharist in the Reformation, Lee Palmer Wandel argues that…
Index Verborum Prohibitorum
First Things readers who hire recent graduates are probably well aware of the error these young workers…
All Great Art Is Praise
“The art of man is the expression of his rational and disciplined delight in the forms and…
Structure in 1 Chronicles 26
1 Chronicles 26:1-19 lists the names and positions of gatekeepers at Solomon’s temple. The passage is framed…
Demonstrative Complications
In their 1662 treatise on Logic, or the Art of Thinking, Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole question…
