Towards an evaluation of Tom Smail’s doctrine of God the Father

Tom Smail sought to address what he saw as deficiencies in the 1970s charismatic movement in the UK by calling for a renewed focus on the person of God the Father. This thesis contributes to an evaluation of the doctrine of the Father he offered in The Forgotten Father (1980) and in subsequent books on Trinitarian topics. Smail’s contribution is set in its ecclesial and theological context, and his account of the Father described. Objections are raised against his commitment to the notion that the Son is eternally functionally subordinate to the Father. This concept – derived from Smail’s understanding of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV.I – leads him to blur necessary distinctions between the immanent and the economic Trinity and between the divine processions and the missions. These weaknesses lead to a characterisation of the Father principally in terms of authority which, it is argued, detracts from, rather than advances, his pastoral aims.