Scott Stilson

“Law is laid down not for an upright person, but for…slave-dealers…“ (1 Timothy 1:9a,10b). How have I never seen this before? At least some followers of Christ have been opposed to slave trade since at least near the beginning?

Line from “Citizens” currently striking me: “Everyone born is illegal when love is the law of the land.”

A quatrain ahead of Mother’s Day:

Thoughtfulness requires thought.
It’s not a thing that can be brought.
So quit your feeling all distraught
And take a sec to think.

Just finished reading: The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (2024) by Christine Rosen. Its main idea is that it’s inadvisable to allow the ascendance of smartphones and similarly attention-sucking entertainment and communication technologies to extinguish the non-mediated experiences they often replace, all of which have benefits. The threatened experiences she covers are:

• face-to-face communication,
• working with your hands,
• waiting, idleness, and boredom,
• interpreting our emotions with our own senses,
• expressing our emotions with our own bodies,
• direct intake of pleasures (travel, art, sex, cooking, eating) instead of their simulacra or attendant digitalia (constant communication with one’s existing social network while traveling, repros, pornography, and cooking shows),
• serendipity, and
• a sense of place.

This is one of those reads that’s preaching to the choir. But I’m in that choir, and I like it. It prepares me to make my case with evidence. Here are...

Just listened to: a recording of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 (1807) by Klaus Tennstedt conducting the NDR Sinfonieorchester live on Profil on an album whose centerpiece is Symphony No. 3 in E flat major “Eroica” (1979/2017). Beethoven would’ve made an all-time great film composer.

“I need either talked into or out of purchasing a drill press.“

— Sully, in a text to his mom

There’s nothing I can write about Beethoven’s great works that’ll be any great addition to the conversation. I think I’ll just stop trying, sit, and continue listening slack-jawed.

But I will (of course) keep a list: Here’s everything I’ve enjoyed so far.

Just listened to: a recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 (1806) by Stephen Hough on piano and Hannu Lintu conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra on Hyperion (2020). No middle-movement mediocrity here. Good, clean, sparkling Beethoven all the way through. Delightfully wide tonal and dynamic range. Hough deserves his reputation as one of the greatest living pianists. The concerto deserves its reputation as one of the all-time great piano concertos. That Beethoven debuted it in a single 1808 concert alongside the debuts of Choral Fantasy and the Fifth and Sixth symphonies is incredible.

Just watched: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reiniger. It’s the oldest surviving feature-length animated film. Come for the historical interest and the opportunity to behold an impressive, highly original silhouette animation technique. Stay for the surprising way, despite the poverty of the plot, that the shapes of these silhouettes and the herky-jerky yet magical way they move resonate with and reflect at some semi-conscious level the way you you live, move, and have your being.

Carolina wren outside my office window definitely just got “The Dreidel Song” stuck in my head.

Just listened to: a recording of Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C major, Op. 56 “Triple Concerto” (1804) by David Zinman conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich on Arte Nova (2005). Just as bands with three regular lead vocalists have a leg up on bands with just one, concertos with three lead instruments have a leg up on concertos with just one. Simple, energetic, classical-mode Beethoven.

I have a soft spot for bands featuring three or more regular lead vocalists:

• The Band
• The Beach Boys
• The Beatles
• The B-52s
• Crosby, Stills, Nash (& Young)
• DC Talk
• Fleetwood Mac
• The Monkees
• Nickel Creek
• Tribe Called Quest

Just listened to: a recording of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 in C Major, Op. 53 “Waldstein” (1804) on fortepiano by Ronald Brautigam on BIS (2008). Beethoven continues his habit of undernourishing his middle movements. But no matter: This is one of the man’s monumentally heroic sonatas, and it’s played here with dizzying snelheid on an instrument that, for its wider variations in timbre, I think I might prefer to modern piano.

The threefold and fivefold) synopses are the only places where I articulate the entire breadth of my answer to the why and how of Jesus’ self-subjection to crucifixion. Someday, I’d like to expand that synopsis into a complete essay. For now, I’ve posted the threefold synopsis on Github, where I’ve added a shade of conditionality to the first liberation and where I continue to tinker.

“I mean, you can’t just be a wimp and call yourself a pacifist.”

— Carla

“What is the causal joint?” I asked God.
“You* are the causal joint,” He replied.

*plural

Carla, a middle schooler, and I collaboratively created the above design for our local municipality. KB Offset printed it, and it now stands as an 8' × 4' banner posted along PA-26 outside the township administration building.

Here’s the municipal webpage on the subject of College Township’s sesquicentennial.

Just re-read: The Epistle of James, and I am more convinced than ever of this: Donald Trump is an antichrist. (Please note the indefinite article.)

My God, please have mercy on all of us, including him, by relieving him of his power to do ill.

“Mere faith alone is not sufficient for salvation…Yea, I confess…that mere faith does not deserve to be called faith, for a true faith can never exist without deeds of love” (Balthasar Hubmaier).

Just finished reading: “The Nonviolent Atonement: Human violence, discipleship, and God” (2006) by J. Denny Weaver, which I summarize as follows: All previous accounts of the role of the Cross in how God brings us back to Himself, except for most Girardian explanations and the cosmic battle version of Christus Victor, implicate God as in some way needing violence to get the job done. Yet such a need stands in unacceptable tension with the consistently nonviolent life lived by Jesus, God’s perfect and authoritative image. Thus, we should to what I call “narrative Christus Victor,” by which I posit that neither the Father nor the Son in any way willed the Son to die, and that God brings us to Himself instead by vindicating Jesus’ way via the Resurrection. If we need forgiveness, we need only repent.

I disagree with Weaver about the Cross and don’t think his argument about it succeeds on his own terms: The Father is still “implicated” in the Son’s death if He knew that Jesus’ death was...

A friend asked me how I thought The Parable of the Prodigal Son related to my insistence that forgiveness, rightly practiced, requires amends be made. I initially responded: “This is an excellent question. The Parable of Prodigal Son comes up a lot in discussions of God’s forgiveness, mostly among folks who insist God forgives without requiring anything. So I have some answers percolating.” Later, I replied by subjecting him to a 10-minute think-aloud voice message, which I then revised and summarized in writing as follows: “The Parable of the Prodigal Son demonstrates, among other things, that God is so keenly interested reconnecting with and embracing His people that mere but provably genuine repentance can count as amends. (God’s relative position of power, which the parable keeps in view but which should be noted is not a feature of every relationship, facilitates this mercy.) However, the story is not absent an amends more concrete: Besides your beautiful, literary observation...

Just re-listened to: Resurrection Letters, Volume I (2018) by Andrew Peterson. A stirring, orthodox anchor in my “progressive” Christian seas. CCM through and through, but with much stronger- and clearer-than-average theological ties to The Story and The Book.

Here’s a very concise summary of my take on the Cross of Christ: Jesus’ death can be a manumission of our minds from five things that would keep us in servitude:

1. guilt,
2. impunity,
3. selfishness,
4. the world, and
5. the fear of death,

all of which facilitate separation from God.

John 20:23 and Matthew 18:18 say the same thing: God respects human decisions about what to forgive and what not to. That’s because God can’t forgive on someone else’s behalf; that’s a logical impossibility.

Just listened to: Light for the Lost Boy (2012) by Andrew Peterson. Probably a keeper, but I’m not completely sure about that because I know I give a positive bump to Christian albums whose theology and ethics I find agreeable. Two things regarding this album are obvious, however: First, he found a new producer. It’s striking how different this album sounds from all the albums he put out before it. Every review of this album you’ll read rightly talks positively of its use of “atmosphere” and “space.” It makes me wonder: Is receptivity to child-of-Lanois audio production a fruit of the Spirit?

For my part, as much I share this affinity, I nevertheless usually regard such atmospherics as a pleasing way to mask poor songsmanship, a deed of the flesh that sometimes seems endemic to Christian music. In Peterson’s case, though, not to worry: The lyrics here are among his strongest, and that’s saying something. He continues examine and deploy his favorite motifs (youth, memory, geography, the...