John Crowder

John Crowder wants the church to be more loving, more follow a theology of the cross and certainly be more mystical.  We are called to strip away our false self which strives to live independently from God and develop a righteousness consciousness, not a sin consciousness.  Our faith does not create reality, it simply trusts in the reality of Christ.   Can the church develop a deeper and richer theology immersed in history towards a greater mystical union with God?

When it comes to the doctrine of hell, Crowder wants Christians to embrace both judgments biblical texts as well as universalistic ones.  Yes, hell is real but eh scope of Christ's redemptive work is both universal and cosmic.  In Eastern Orthodox theology, heaven and hell are two sides of what it like to be in the presence of God. 

God's love is pleasure for the lover of God and is torture to the hater of God.  God's love and wrath are simply the extension of an all-loving purifying being.  In the Exodus story when Moses was on Mount Sinai, the Israelites experienced a terrible fire but to Moses, he experienced the glory cloud of God.  Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachose in Life After Death says, "God himself is paradise for the saints and God himself is hell for the sinners" (Crowder, p.133).

Crowder has a hope for the salvation for all men, but not a dogma or doctrine of universalism.  For Crowder, the Bible is more mysterious, open-ended, fluid, and paradoxical than those who want thinks all worked out in a nice tidy system.  Rather than calling people "lost" or "unsaved," can we call them not fully Christian yet.  Rather working from boundaries of exclusion and inclusion, as if we know who is in and who is out, can we leave this to the mystery of God's will and love?  Crowder says he is not a universalist but he is a hopeful one. 

Certainly Christians would be viewed differently is they looked at hell as more about purification than punishment.  How would Christians be viewed if they looked at themselves as a work in progress rather than arrived or as people on the way rather than looking down on others who have not progressed as far in their own walk and faith in God. 

Can a deeper theology of the cross flatten all pretensions and prejudices to where the ground is level for all people no matter what dark place they may be in at the moment?  Can Gods ultimate justice then be viewed through the lens of redemptive justice rather than retributive justice that so often condones violence and even torture at times?  Could we just agree a theology of weakness joins humanity together and not simply being in the right religion or the right location? (born in America rather than some other country).