Thomas Smail

Thomas 'Tom' Allan Smail (b. 1928) was a Church of Scotland minister, later an Anglican priest, and a leading theologian in the charismatic movement in the United Kingdom.

He studied under Karl Barth, and was ordained in 1953. In 1965 he met U.S. Episcopalian priest Dennis Bennett, and received what Pentecostals and charismatics term the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, a religious experience accompanied by speaking in tongues. As a prominent leader in the charismatic renewal in the UK, he became secretary of the Fountain Trust and took over as director in 1975.

He taught theology at St John's College Nottingham and then became Rector of All Saints, Saunderstead. He is now in residence at St Barnabus College near Lingfield, Surrey where he continues to write.

His theological works include "The Giving Gift", a treatise on the Holy Spirit which proposed a revision to the so-called "filioque clause" in the Nicene Creed. Where the Creed states that the Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son", implying the subordination of the Spirit to the Son (Jesus Christ), Smail suggested a two-way relationship between Son and Spirit.

Major WorksReflected Glory (1975)The Forgotten Father (1980)The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person (1994)Charismatic Renewal: The Search for a Theology, with Andrew Walker and Nigel Wright (SPCK, 1994)Once and for All: A Confession of the Cross (DLT, 1998)Like Father, like Son: The Trinity Imagined in our Humanity (2006)

ources

*P.D. Hocken, "Thomas A. Smail" in Stanley M. Burgess & Eduard van der Maas, "New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements", revised edition, (Zondervan, 2003)
*Smail, Thomas A., "The Giving Gift", (Hodder & Stoughton, 1988)
*Smail, Thomas A., "A Renewal Recalled" in Tom Smail, Andrew Walker & Nigel Wright, "Charismatic Renewal", revised edition, (SPCK, 1995)