10 Theology and Spirituality: Knowing God
10
Theology and Spirituality: Knowing God
During the 1950s, a series of individuals came to faith through the ministry of Westminster Chapel, London. One such convert was Elizabeth Braund, a journalist then working with the British Broadcasting Corporation. It seemed natural to Lloyd-Jones to encourage Braund to put her obvious talents to Christian service. The result was the Evangelical Magazine, which initially had Braund as its managing editor. Lloyd-Jones invited Packer and J. Elwyn Davies to serve as consulting editors.
Elwyn Davies was then Secretary of the Evangelical Movement of Wales, and had been involved in creating and producing the Welsh-language publication Y Cylchgrawn Efengylaidd (The Evangelical Magazine). His experience would be invaluable in getting the new publication off the ground. In June 1959, the three editors issued a circular letter announcing that the new publication would appear for the first time in September 1959, and emphasising that the new magazine would not be ‘identified with any particular groups or interests, denominational or otherwise’. It was expected that the magazine would have six editions each year. It soon reached a circulation of about three thousand.
Packer’s involvement with this journal is an excellent example of the ‘bilateral’ policy he had consistently followed, which allowed him to work together with evangelicals across denominational lines, while at the same time affirming his commitment to and involvement in the life and ministry of the Church of England. Braund invited Packer to write a series of articles on the general theme of ‘God’, aimed at a readership which was ‘fed up with religious verbiage’, who were prepared to do some honest and serious thinking, and ‘want reality’. Packer mulled this over and agreed to produce a regular series of about five articles a year on knowing God in the believer’s mind, heart and life.
Earlier, we noted the breakdown in relationships between Packer and Lloyd-Jones following the publication of Packer’s edited volume Growing into Union in May 1970 (see pp. 93−4). Packer now found himself frozen out of Lloyd-Jones’s circle. Braund and Elwyn Davies were close to Lloyd-Jones, perhaps making it inevitable that he would be thrown off the Editorial Board of the Evangelical Magazine. It was, of course, equally inevitable that, deprived of its star writer, the magazine would have little appeal. It folded shortly afterwards. The original Welsh-language magazine Y Cylchgrawn Efengylaidd, in contrast, continues to this day.
Packer now wondered what to do with his series of articles on God. One obvious possibility was suggested by C. S. Lewis’s well-known work The Screwtape Letters, which originally took the form of a series of pieces in a Christian magazine. At that time, Packer was preoccupied with preparing to move from Latimer House, Oxford, to take up the Principalship of Tyndale Hall, Bristol, and had little opportunity to develop the articles into a book. In any case, Inter-Varsity Fellowship did not seem interested in a book from Packer on this topic. Ronald Inchley, who had published Packer’s two earlier works ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God and Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God made it clear that he was very happy to work with Packer on another book – provided it dealt with the charismatic movement, which Inchley rightly saw as growing in importance within evangelical circles. In the end, Packer obliged: Keep in Step with the Spirit appeared in 1984.
Yet Packer realised there was another possibility. During the 1960s, the Church of England Evangelical Council, under its Chairman John Stott, recognised the need for a series of accessible books addressing contemporary topics of relevance. It was agreed that the series would have the running title Christian Foundations, and would consist of individual volumes that were to be 20,000 words in length, to be produced at two-monthly intervals and extending over a period of several years. The series would be published by Hodder & Stoughton, a mainline London publishing house with extensive interests in the fiction and reference markets, as well as a long tradition of publishing significant Christian works. Stott, Michael Green and Packer were among the first authors to be invited to contribute to the series. Packer’s concise and accessible ninety-six-page volume entitled God has Spoken (1965) dealt with the issue of biblical inspiration and the nature of revelation.
Packer could easily see the merits of offering Hodder & Stoughton the book he had in mind, and travelled to London to visit Edward England, who by then had established a reputation as a canny commissioning editor. Although some in Hodder & Stoughton wanted to end the company’s commitment to Christian publishing in the early 1960s, England’s publishing successes put an end to any such ideas. Shortly after his arrival at Hodder & Stoughton in 1965, England commissioned two works which became bestsellers: Richard Wurmbrand’s Tortured for Christ and J.B. Phillips’ Ring of Truth. Both these works sold well over 100,000 copies in the first year. Following the astonishing success of the Living Bible translation, England was made a member of the company’s Board of Directors. Always on the lookout for the next classic, England felt that a major work by Packer could be a very significant publishing proposition. He pointed out that the articles would have to be rewritten to make a coherent book. Packer, however, already knew this, and was willing to do what was necessary. The finishing touches to the typescript were made during a family holiday in North Wales in August 1971.
Although the book was very successful in England, it was in North America that Knowing God would have its greatest impact. Packer was a recognised writer in the region, having spoken at major seminaries and conferences there, but Knowing God would propel him to levels of fame within the evangelical community which exceeded anything he had hitherto known. James Sire was responsible for acquiring the North American rights to the book for InterVarsity Press in the United States. In May 1972, Sire travelled to Switzerland to work with Os Guinness on finalising the text of his major work The Dust of Death from his base at L’Abri, the community founded by Francis Schaeffer. Sire spent ten productive and enjoyable days with Guinness, completing the final edit of the text.
Sire broke his journey home in London to meet up with his editorial counterparts at InterVarsity Press and Hodder & Stoughton. Both publishers were at that time located in Bedford Square in the centre of London, making a brief visit to both possible in a single stopover. He was introduced to Edward England, who – in the course of a short meeting lasting about fifteen minutes – showed him the text of Knowing God. Sire immediately asked for an option on the work, which England granted. About a week later, Hodder’s page proofs arrived in the offices of InterVarsity Press in Downers Grove, Illinois. Sire showed them to Jim Nyquist, the Director of the Press and, after a few minutes spent perusing the proofs, Nyquist was convinced that they had a major work on their hands. ‘Your fifteen minutes with Edward England’, he told Sire, ‘will be worth more to us than your ten days with Os Guinness.’ The Dust of Death proved to be an important book, which sold very well; it was, however, eclipsed by Knowing God. By 1992, the work had sold more than a million copies worldwide.
So did this represent a change of direction for Packer, given his trademark emphasis on the foundational role of theology? After all, few books on theology ever make it to the bestseller lists. Yet Knowing God is rigorously grounded in a set of theological principles which – like the title of the book itself – can be argued to derive ultimately from the Reformer John Calvin (1509−64), for whom Packer had considerable admiration. What was new, and what gave the work its enormous appeal, was a clear and engaging demonstration of how these basic principles could be brought to life and applied to life. Given the importance of this point, it needs further consideration.
Packer on the Relation of Theology and Spirituality
The relation between theology and spirituality has become one of the most hotly debated topics in theological education since about 1980, not least because of the experience of many seminary students who found academic theology inimical to their personal faith. This whole issue was one to which Packer had given considerable thought throughout his career as a theological educator. Although he was prepared to use the term ‘spirituality’, he did not consider it to be quite the right one for what he understood to be at stake.
What term, then, did he prefer? In his lectures at Trinity College, Bristol, during the 1970s, Packer used the phrase ‘spiritual theology’ to refer to the general Christian discipline of ‘conceiving and living the life of communion with God’. Although he glossed this specific activity with the term ‘spirituality’, Packer saw it as improper and unhelpful to treat ‘spirituality’ as if it were something distinct from theology. Spiritual theology concerned the proper application of systematic theology, and was not an independent discipline in its own right.
Perhaps Packer’s finest and most incisive statement of his views on spiritual theology is to be found in his inaugural lecture as the first Sangwoo Yountong Chee Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver. This lecture, delivered in the College chapel on 11 December 1989, and published the following year, was entitled ‘An Introduction to Systematic Spirituality’. The title itself is of significance, in that it immediately suggests a close connection between ‘systematic theology’ and ‘spirituality’ – a connection which the lecture proceeded to explore and explain.
Packer offered his Vancouver audience a definition of spirituality as ‘enquiry into the whole Christian enterprise of pursuing, achieving, and cultivating communion with God, which includes both public worship and private devotion, and the results of these in actual Christian life’. The definition included an emphasis on the application of truth to life, which Packer had long regarded as of vital importance: ‘I have always conceived theology, ethics and apologetics as truth for people, and have never felt free to leave unapplied any truth that I taught . . . To speak of the application of truth to life is to look at life as itself a relationship to God; and when one does that, one is talking about spirituality.’
For Packer, spirituality was an integral part of theological education, especially for those who were called to pastor, since ‘We cannot function well as counsellors, spiritual directors and guides to birth, growth and maturity in Christ, unless we are clear as to what constitutes spiritual well-being as opposed to spiritual lassitude and exhaustion, and to stunted and deformed spiritual development.’ But where do these norms come from? For Packer, the answer was clear: from systematic theology. But immediately, Packer qualified what he understood by that term, and specifically distanced himself from two inadequate yet influential understandings of the nature of that discipline. One is the liberal view that the proper subject matter of systematic theology is ‘Christian feelings and ideas about God’. The other is the traditional view that systematic theology ought to be ‘revealed truth about the works, ways and will of God’ as disclosed in Scripture.
Packer clearly regards the first view, which he considers to be representative of F. D. E. Schleiermacher and Rudolf Bultmann, as seriously defective. Yet he also has concerns about the second view, which he associates with Protestant scholastic writers of the seventeenth century, and most of the theological writers of the evangelical theological renaissance since the Second World War – concerns which primarily relate to the way in which this approach is applied. We must allow Packer to express this fully in his own words:
I question the adequacy of conceptualizing the subject-matter of systematic theology as simply revealed truths about God, and I challenge the assumption that has usually accompanied this form of statement, that the material, like other scientific data, is best studied in cool and clinical detachment. Detachment from what, you ask? Why, from the relational activity of trusting, loving, worshipping, obeying, serving and glorifying God: the activity that results from realizing that one is actually in God’s presence, actually being addressed by him, every time one opens the Bible or reflects on any divine truth whatsoever. This . . . proceeds as if doctrinal study would only be muddled by introducing devotional concerns; it drives a wedge between . . . knowing true notions about God and knowing the true God himself.
For Packer, ‘the proper subject-matter of systematic theology is God actively relating in and through all created things to human beings’. Theology must therefore be recognised to be ‘a devotional discipline, a verifying in experience of Aquinas’ beautiful remark that theology is taught by God, teaches God, and takes us to God’. There is therefore a need to bring together, and to hold together, systematic theology and spirituality. ‘I want to see spirituality studied within an evaluative theological frame . . . I want to arrange a marriage, with explicit exchange of vows and mutual commitments, between spirituality and theology.’ That marriage can be seen at its best in Packer’s Knowing God – to which we may now turn more fully.
Knowing God: Some Reflections
In this landmark work, Packer explicitly draws on some themes set out by John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559). First, a proper ‘knowledge of God’, in the Christian sense of the term, does not refer to some natural human awareness of God, but to a knowledge which arises within a relationship with God. Second, this knowledge of God is ‘more than knowing about God, although knowing about God is its foundation’. Packer here draws a distinction between ‘knowledge by description’ and ‘knowledge by acquaintance’. While it is necessary to have a correct understanding of God as the righteous, wise and merciful Creator and judge, Packer argues that a true knowledge of God must also be ‘relational knowledge’, by which he means a knowledge that comes to us in a ‘relation of commitment and trust, faith and reliance’.
Finally, to know God is also to know God’s relationship to us. Packer notes Calvin’s insistence that all human wisdom consists of ‘knowledge of God and of ourselves’, and that these two are inseparable. To know God is to know ourselves; to know ourselves truly, we must know God. ‘Knowing God’ is therefore not knowing God in isolation; it is rather about ‘knowing God in his relationship to us, that relationship in which he gives himself and his gifts to us for our enrichment’. To know God, we need to know both his gracious gifts to us, and our need for such gifts in the first place.
On the basis of this analysis, Packer concludes by declaring that ‘knowing God’ consists of three components, which must be taken together, and seen as inseparable aspects of a greater whole: grasping who God is; applying to ourselves what God is and what God gives; and adoring God as the one who gives these gifts. Packer’s Knowing God can be seen as a careful exposition of these three interconnected components. His strategy is to begin by allowing his readers to apprehend the reality of God; then to move on to enable them to apply these insights to their lives; and finally, to respond to God in adoration.
It is impossible to overstress the enormous importance of this single volume in appreciating the popular appeal and influence of Packer. What, then, is so special about Knowing God’s particular approach? Everyone seems to find something different within its pages, a certain theme or a specific way of thinking which speaks to them with a direct relevance or power. Many have remarked to me about its pellucid prose – Packer’s ability to craft forms of words that are transparent to the great truths he is exploring. Whereas some use technocratic and clunky language that irritates their readers, and others highly elaborate prose that distracts readers from their core message, Packer’s total immersion in his topic and his obvious command of language allow his words to become windows into the divine, functioning as a channel of grace rather than being a distraction or obstacle. My own favourite example of the effectiveness of this ‘plain’ style of writing is this section from Packer’s discussion of ‘being known’ by God:
What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him, because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters.
The rhythms and cadences of these sentences are those of a preacher – a theologian who knows that words matter, and that those words must therefore be chosen with great care and thought, aiming to divert attention from the preacher towards the great themes of the gospel. Packer here echoes not simply the theological convictions of his Puritan forebears, but also their passion to communicate them to the hearts and minds of their audiences.
Packer often stresses his commitment to plain English – to simple, concise and clear statements. His familiarity with the great controversies over preaching in seventeenth-century England led him to prefer the Puritan ‘plain’ style over the ‘metaphysical’ or ‘ornamented’ styles of leading Anglican preachers, such as William Laud or Lancelot Andrewes. The great Methodist preacher John Wesley frequently criticised writers and preachers who used a ‘highly ornamented style’, relying on oratorical techniques and lofty phrases to communicate their ideas; for Wesley, a plain style of writing and speaking enabled the preacher to focus on the message being proclaimed rather than the rhetorical techniques employed. John Henry Newman made a similar point a century later, declaring that a preacher was someone who ‘has something to say and knows how to say it’. Packer’s Knowing God is not simply an outstanding work of spiritual theology; it is an affirmation of the capacity of the Puritan ‘plain’ style of writing to communicate profound spiritual truths without the need for verbal embellishment and adornment.
Let me pick up on some themes from Knowing God, and consider how Packer uses and develops them within his overall project of putting together a ‘string of beads’ on the great topic of knowing, and being known by, God. The first of these is found in the preface. Packer here refers to an image, devised by John Mackay, of those who theologise from a balcony, and those who theologise on the road. Packer’s framing device – his way of setting up a significant theological discussion – is often passed over in haste by his readers. Yet it is worth pausing here, and lingering over Packer’s imagery, and the contrast he hopes to make.
John Mackay was a Reformed theologian who was serving as President of Princeton Theological Seminary when he penned his brief work A Preface to Christian Theology (1941), aiming to recapture the significance of Christian theology in terms of ‘bringing back meaning into life’ and ‘restoring the foundations on which all true life and thought are built’. For Mackay, Christians use two main perspectives in trying to make sense of life and live meaningfully within the world. Mackay designates one ‘the Balcony’ and the other ‘the Road’.
So what does he mean by these terms? Mackay asks us to imagine some people sitting on the high front balcony of a Spanish townhouse on a warm evening, watching the crowds walking by on the street below them. These people on the balcony – ‘balconeers’, as Mackay terms them – are onlookers, high above the flux of everyday life, observing things below them from a curious yet disinterested perspective. This is one way of doing theology – standing above the life of faith and failing to participate in it. For Mackay, the real business of theology is done on the road below. The Church and individual believers live out a pilgrim life on the road. The Christian is not a lone traveller, but part of a ‘fellowship of the road’ which seeks and hopes to find truth and meaning on the journey.
William Leathem, Packer’s former colleague at St John’s, Harborne, echoed Mackay’s point in his contribution on the role of the local church to the National Evangelical Anglican Congress of 1967:
To stand aloof and apart from the real world means death to the church. It will not do either to scream from the housetops or purr in the pulpit. Balcony religion is no longer acceptable, if it ever was. The Church and Christians must step down into the arena of everyday life.
Packer develops this point further, stressing that those on the road ‘face problems which, although they have their theoretical angle, are essentially practical – problems of the “which-way-to-go” and “how-to-make-it” type, problems which call not merely for comprehension but for decision and action too’. As Packer makes it clear, Knowing God is a ‘book for travellers, and it is with travellers’ questions that it deals’.
This distinction between ‘balconeer’ and ‘traveller’ is essential to grasping Packer’s approach in Knowing God. He illustrates the importance of this difference by considering the classical issue of theodicy – the question of how Christians respond to the existence of suffering and evil. Is this about intellectual speculation on the origins of evil, or about coping with the realities of life, and growing in the face of suffering and evil? ‘In relation to evil, the balconeer’s problem is to find a theoretical explanation of how evil can consist with God’s sovereignty and goodness, but the traveller’s problem is how to master evil and bring good out of it.’ Packer presents Knowing God as a work aimed at his fellow travellers, which draws on the wisdom of those who have journeyed this road before them. Knowing God deals with experiential matters – not abstract theoretical speculation but a direct engagement with the experience of knowing and been known by God.
It is not difficult to see how Packer’s discussion is constantly informed by his theology; the manner of its expression and application, however, is not didactic, but rather takes the form of engaging with experience and sharing wisdom. Yet it is important to note that many Reformed theologians of the 1970s and beyond were reluctant to consider experience, seeing this as a lapse into subjectivism. Packer did much to break this taboo, partly through reclaiming the richness of the Puritan heritage of experiential piety, and partly through his careful demonstration of the experiential connections, implications and consequences of Calvin’s theology of the knowledge of God.
Thus Packer’s account of what it means to know God is cognitive, experiential and relational. We saw earlier that the decisive issue is not ‘notional correctness’, which privileges academic theologians and biblical scholars. According to Packer, ‘you can have all the right notions in your head, without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer’. Knowing God does indeed begin with knowing about God; but it does not stop there. To know God truly is transformative, bringing about a multilayered change within us, analogous to coming to know and love another person.
Revelation is not simply about God opening his mind to us; it is about God disclosing the secrets of his heart – a mark of privilege and intimacy: ‘We must not lose sight of the fact that knowing God is an emotional relationship, as well as an intellectual and volitional one, and could not indeed be a close relationship between persons were it not so.’ In this way, Packer weaves together the threads of the rich biblical witness to God, bringing out the distinct identity – yet ultimate inseparability of – theology, worship, prayer, spirituality and evangelism as we travel along the road to the New Jerusalem.
Knowing God established Packer’s international reputation as a constructive writer, able to bring theology and spirituality into a productive conversation, and build bridges between the Reformed and Puritan heritage and today’s spiritual concerns. With such a wide constituency, stretching far beyond the Church of England or the British Isles, it was perhaps inevitable that Packer would be drawn to a new sphere of ministry beyond any specific denomination or nation, where he could speak across both denominational and national boundaries.
In the next chapter, we shall explore the developments that took Packer in a new direction and how he came to be part of the faculty of Regent College, Vancouver.