Various

Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 101 (March 2000): 15, 26, 38, 63, 68. Annas (to Caiaphas) This man’s Judean? So he must be taught himself and thereby feel God in his heart (we well know how that can sting) and the things Antipas won’t forgive, a slander or a misplaced name. This . . . . Continue Reading »

The First and the Last. By Isaiah Berlin. New York Review Books. 141 pp. $19.95 In 1996, two years before he died at the age of eighty-nine, Isaiah Berlin received a request from a professor of philosophy at Wuhan University in China, asking him to offer a précis of his core ideas for a . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 100 (February 2000): 2-5. Natural Law and Metaphysics I was puzzled by many aspects of Phillip E. Johnson’s exposition of the Grisez“Finnis natural law theory in his review of my book In Defense of Natural Law (November 1999). One mistake, however, is so . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 100 (February 2000): 5,22,51. The Sum of the Insignificant Another molecule, this one deliberate and in the act of forming water. Why does it bother? I consult the wind but learn little. Usually I can count on its salient asides”1989 would be just one example. . . . . Continue Reading »

Crisis of Conscience. Edited by John M. Haas. Crossroad. 173 pp. $15.95 paper. This collection of essays represents the fruit of an international conference, sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute in 1994, that brought together leading Catholic moral philosophers and theologians to discuss the . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 2000 First Things 99 (January 2000): 2-10. Man and Machine William A. Dembski’s “Are We Spiritual Machines?” (October 1999) challenges the spiritualistic materialism of strong Artificial Intelligence enthusiasts such as Marvin Minsky with arguments that are among the . . . . Continue Reading »

It is of course the case that only God knows what will happen in the next century and the next millennium. But we human beings are created with an irrepressible disposition toward the future, as well as a capacity to recall the past. In the last year we published a “millennium series” of . . . . Continue Reading »

Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium. By Donald E. Miller. University of California Press. 253 pp. $27.50 Writing in the Christian Century in 1955, Henry P. Van Dusen, President of Union Seminary in New York, claimed that a “new reformation” was . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 98 (December 1999): 2-6. Progress”Moral and Other In an otherwise illuminating essay on “The Idea of Moral Progress” (August/September) , Richard John Neuhaus errs when he says that “thirty million Americans who are today officially counted as . . . . Continue Reading »

Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 98 (December 1999): 6, 8, 16, 24, 30, 36, 44. Lines Written on My Daughter Faith’s Second Birthday Why should the aspens shrink from death? In the clearing after fire they sift the sunlight through their leaves: a ripple shield, a spray of shade for tender . . . . Continue Reading »