John Searle Against the Deconstructionists

Welcome to the First Things daily newsletter, your guide to the ideas and events shaping our shared moral, cultural, and religious life. Each article we publish continues the conversations First Things has been leading for thirty-five years.

Stay with me as we explore John Searle’s legacy, selective hysteria over immigration, and how God is both relational and transcendent.

The Common Sense of John Searle

Edward Feser

From the December issue: The philosopher John Searle died on September 17. Edward Feser wrote about his legacy in the magazine, explaining how Searle stood against the march of the deconstructionists and materialists who held sway during the later half of the twentieth century. Feser writes, “Searle resisted the reductionist tendencies of contemporary philosophy, which are often fallaciously promoted in the name of science.”

For further reading: One of Searle’s main antagonists was the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. Contributing editor Mark Bauerlein wrote about his experience with the Derrida school of thought while he was a graduate student in the 1980s in “Vulgar Deconstruction” (December 2016).

Beyond the Immigration Headlines

John Wilson

Columnist John Wilson, back after a hiatus, examines the Trump administration’s immigration strategy. Both Christian and secular media often cherry-pick the stories they tell about illegal immigrants, which offers no real insight into the situation, Wilson writes.

For further reading: John Grondelski wrote about the Catholic Church’s refusal to fully engage with the immigration crisis in “Where the Church’s Immigration Rhetoric Fails,” arguing that illegal immigration is offensive to the human dignity of citizens.

The Grammar of Reverence

Adam Eilath

Is God relational or transcendental? The answer is both, but teaching this to the next generation requires imparting a delicate balance of intimacy and reverence. Adam Eilath writes about forming children in a faith that is unyielding to their own emotions and the changes of the world: “If we want faith to endure, we must recover the weight of the One before whom we stand, for children need more than affirmation.” As the West reawakens to religion, successfully inculcating reverence to God may save this revival from stalling out as merely a therapeutic spirituality.

For further reading: Hans Boersma tackled a similar question in “Modernity and God-Talk” (November 2025), in which he uses the essence-energies distinction to illustrate how God is transcendent but not remote.