In 1187, Pope Urban III received news so startling that he died from hearing it. Across the Mediterranean, in the Crusader-controlled Kingdom of Jerusalem, a great battle had been fought between Christian knights and the forces of the Muslim leader, Saladin. On a rocky plain formed by an extinct . . . . Continue Reading »
Modernity does not just refer to the time in which we happen to live, the era that follows the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Those who first recognized themselves as modern defined themselves self-consciously over against the ages that preceded them, though few probably grasped in its fullness . . . . Continue Reading »
A review of N. T. Wright’s History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology. Continue Reading »
This is our 300th number, marking thirty years of publication. In early 1989, Richard John Neuhaus had no inkling that he was about to found First Things. A Lutheran pastor noted for his incisive religious and political commentaries, he was busy running the Center on Religion and Society. The Center . . . . Continue Reading »
Speaking to his friend Frederick Lindemann in the 1920s, Winston Churchill remarked, “Far too much has been and is being written about me.” Among Churchill’s many chroniclers, even at that early date, was Churchill himself: a true history-writing history-maker, who wrote not only to make money . . . . Continue Reading »
If autumn is the poets’ favorite season, it is because autumn catches us in between, regretting and hoping, seeing the seed fall and imagining its growth. Continue Reading »
In The Irony of Modern Catholic History, George Weigel offers a comprehensive interpretation of the history of the Catholic Church’s encounter with modernity. For Weigel, the fixed point in this story is the goodness of the aspirations of “political modernity,” by which he generally means . . . . Continue Reading »
Abortion and gay marriage have entered Northern Ireland by the back door. Continue Reading »
In one of his most irreverent moments, in the wild little book The Anti-Christ, composed not long before he completely lost his mind, Nietzsche states that there is only one admirable figure in the entire New Testament, one character alone who deserves our respect: Pontius Pilate. It’s an . . . . Continue Reading »
Bret Stephens recently championed the “classically liberal concept of a neutral public square.” In this issue, Matthew Schmitz examines similar assertions by George Will. These accounts characterize any substantive basis for civic life as “illiberal,” even “theocratic.” They entail a . . . . Continue Reading »
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