Cosmos Reborn

John Crowder is an advocate for supernatural Christianity but also is a well respected writer and student of both God's Word and history.  This is probably his best book describing the radical love of God that destroys our theories and popular theologies of atonement, hell and conversion.  Here is a powerful theology of the cross that interweaves mystery, beauty, and wonder.

In his work, "Cosmos Reborn," one of the major issues he tackles is the concept that Jesus is paying off a debt to an angry Father.  We are saved from sin, not God.  Restoration is not just for us but for the whole cosmos.  New creation is not about renovation but recreation. 

He provocatively says in understanding reconciliation properly, "The Bible never says that the death of Christ was to reconcile God to us.  The death of Christ was to turn us back to God" (p.58).  Jesus died on the cross not because God need it but we needed it.  "On the cross, Jesus was not purchasing the Father's love ad changing God, he was changing you" (p.61).

Crowder's theology is fully Trinitarian, Christocentric, and incarnational.  He has nor only rediscovered the early church fathers but especially the Eastern Orthodox church's history and influence which is so often neglected in western thinking.  Even God's wrath is for you and not against you because it is an extension of The father's love for all of his creation. Christ was bearing our sin and wrath on the cross, not God's wrath.  This more nuanced approach may seem small but its spiritual impact and implications are huge.

Where Crowder sounds like a mystic (because the Christian mystical tradition has always been part of the church's teaching and faith) is when he says, "Before we were lost in Adam, we were already found in Jesus Christ" (p.70).  The atonement was not about God's punishment but about redemptive love . . . God's wrath is against sinfulness, not sinners (p.74).  Christ is the true Adam and in him we become complete as God's creation.  We are all part of the great becoming process of being a new creation.