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...
// read full article →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...
// read full article →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:
- guilt,
- impunity,
- selfishness,
- the world, and
- 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...
// read full article →Just re-listened to: Resurrection Letters, Volume II (2008) by Andrew Peterson as part of a slow-motion Peterson marathon meant to confirm or repudiate my September claim that he’s the most skilled evangelical songwriter of the century. This album, unlike the three that come between it and his 2000 debut, is evidence in favor of that claim. Polished folk pop expressing orthodox Christian thoughts. The Mullins mimicking continues, and that’s not a bad thing.
What’s more, this album will forever be linked in my life to one particularly long drive home from Florida back in October 2015. I drove a thousand miles through hot tears of doubt about God’s existence. Along those long highways, I had seven companions consoling and counseling me: over the phone, five good friends and one mom, and over the truck stereo, Peterson, who sang “I believe You are the Christ, the son of the living God” with enough conviction that I eventually joined in.
Scott [handling small bottle near Sully’s backpack]: What’s this?
Sully: Oh, that’s my backup soy sauce. It comes in handy more than you think.
Scott: I’m kind proud of you, actually.
Sometimes it’s hard to wake up
Sometimes it’s hard to sleep ✏️ 🎤 🎵
His Cross is not a coat of arms. It’s a teacher, a master, a goad.
Can anything good come out of universalism? /s
Other people’s kids always seem to grow up faster than your own.
If I gaze at a planet—and there are at least three visible to the naked eye these days in Pennsylvania—I feel mildly dizzy.