Huston Smith Quote
Building upon this early conception of the Church, Christians came to think of it as having a double aspect. Insofar as it consists of Christ and the Holy Spirit dwelling in people and suffusing them with grace and love, it is perfect. Insofar as it consists of fallible human members, it always falls short of perfection.9 The worldly face of the Church is always open to criticism. But its mistakes, Christians hold, have been due to the human material through which it works.
Huston Smith
Building upon this early conception of the Church, Christians came to think of it as having a double aspect. Insofar as it consists of Christ and the Holy Spirit dwelling in people and suffusing them with grace and love, it is perfect. Insofar as it consists of fallible human members, it always falls short of perfection.9 The worldly face of the Church is always open to criticism. But its mistakes, Christians hold, have been due to the human material through which it works.
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About Huston Smith
Born and raised in Suzhou, China, in an American Methodist missionary family, Smith moved back to the United States at the age of 17 and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1945 with a PhD in philosophy. He spent the majority of his academic career as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis (1947–1958), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1958–1973) and Syracuse University (1973–1983). In 1983, he retired from Syracuse and moved to Berkeley, California, where he was a visiting professor of religious studies at the University of California, Berkeley, until his death.