Amos Smith Quotes

#1. Faith cannot be about absolute certainty in the letters of the Bible and wrath against those who don't comply (Ephesians 2:15). It has to be about overwhelming trust in God's love,6 which as the apostle Paul confirms, is beyond the letter of law and narrow legalistic interpretations.

Amos Smith

#2. To this day the Oriental Orthodox Church asserts that after the incarnation Jesus was "one united dynamic nature": "at once God and human . . ." Ultimately, a Divine mystery - a paradox.

Amos Smith

#3. Theology at its best doesn't seek to solve, but to behold.

Amos Smith

#4. We need precise words for Jesus. Otherwise, Christian theology is built on a foundation of sand.

Amos Smith

#5. God says to us "Some things won't get done unless you do them.

Amos Smith

#6. The Alexandrian Mystics' emphasis on silent prayer gave their teachings interior depth missing from Western theology today.

Amos Smith

#7. Many came to Jesus expecting him to solve their problems. Instead he helped them to connect to their own faith and their own wisdom.

Amos Smith

#8. I worship a God who is as broad as the outer limits of the expanding universe and as tiny as a mustard seed.

Amos Smith

#9. Another way to think about Centering Prayer is training the mind to become free from distractions so it can "rest in God.

Amos Smith

#10. Jesus always existed. At the same time Jesus was begotten (made human). This is the perplexing and elusive mystic core of Christian faith.

Amos Smith

#11. When it comes to his Divinity, Jesus is equal with God. When it comes to his humanity, Jesus is subordinate to God.

Amos Smith

#12. Jesus was contemplative and activist, mystic and prophet, Spirit and form, God and human, absolute and relative, Creator and creature, existing for eternity and existing in time.

Amos Smith

#13. Throughout the parables the paradoxical teachings continue: Give to receive. Die to live. Lose to win.

Amos Smith

#14. The Alexandrian Mystics taught that Jesus' divinity with a capital D and his humanity with a lower case h are always in dynamic tension and can never be separated.

Amos Smith

#15. God transcends and encompasses conservatism and liberalism, certainty and doubt, simplicity and complexity, Divinity and humanity, crucifixion and resurrection.

Amos Smith

#16. The body of Christ has no arms and feet, but ours. In other words, God needs us as much as we need God.

Amos Smith

#17. Christianity's job, in the words of George Fox, is to live in the "power, life, light, seed and wisdom, by which we may take away the occasion of wars.

Amos Smith

#18. The spirit of the Gospels is the all inclusive love of Jesus, which jumps off the pages.

Amos Smith

#19. I adore a God who is beyond words yet contained in the word Jesus.

Amos Smith

#20. If Jesus is at once God and human, that means that as believers we cannot refer to Jesus as God without qualifying that:"God in human form.

Amos Smith

#21. God is mystery, surpassing the senses and all knowledge, and yet God is at the core of our being.

Amos Smith