Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a  donation. Thanks!

A Counted People

From the February 2019 Print Edition

The Times of Israel recently reported that archaeologists had uncovered a “miniscule biblical stone weight” from excavations of the foundations of the Western Wall of the Second Jewish Temple. It is round, about the size of a marble, and marked with the Hebrew word beka. . . . . Continue Reading »

Make Hell Hot Again

From the Aug/Sept 2017 Print Edition

I have a problem with hell that goes beyond squeamishness. The problem is one of inserting the damned into God’s endgame, his final fix—creation brought to its triumphant completion. Doesn’t the presence of everlasting torment put a damper on the success story? I went to Aquinas for . . . . Continue Reading »

Click Fix

From the May 2016 Print Edition

The camera-phone has inaugurated an era of therapeutic photography. It is a photography less concerned with producing photographs and more concerned with the act of taking a picture, the “click.” In Snapchat, the actual photo disappears after being taken and sent. It is the mode of most of our . . . . Continue Reading »

The Screen and the Book

From the May 2015 Print Edition

Books are solid. This is at once a physical description and a metaphysical one, and it is on this metaphysical solidity that we ought to ground our loyalty to the book over and against the allure of the ever-changing screen. A book is solid in the warm way a friend is solid: direct, dependable, . . . . Continue Reading »