Epilogue
Epilogue
The world seemed to slow down in March 2020, as the COVID pandemic swept across the continents. Many national and regional governments restricted the movements and activities of people in a bid to limit the impact of the virus on their fragile healthcare systems. British Columbia, like all other Canadian provinces, called on residents to practise physical distancing and to refrain from travelling. Schools and colleges were shut down. Regent College switched to online delivery of its teaching, including its highly regarded summer school.
By this time, Packer was already virtually housebound. He had been unable to attend the 7.30 a.m. Sunday service at St John’s, Vancouver since November, due to his increasing frailty. Friends from Regent College and St John’s visited him and Kit regularly, often bringing them meals. Packer had begun to experience falls at home, sometimes resulting in head injuries which at times impaired his ability to speak. Following a particularly serious fall in June, Packer was admitted to Vancouver General Hospital for surgery on his hip, and afterwards was transferred to UBC Hospital to recuperate.
Yet it became clear that Packer was gradually losing strength. On Sunday, 12 July, Packer’s doctor told Kit that he probably had only a few more days to live. The next day, he shared in a Communion service with Dan Gifford, vicar of St John’s, Vancouver, in a room overlooking Wesbrook Mall, with a clear view of Regent College on the other side of the street. On the morning of Friday, 17 July, Kit arrived to visit Packer, accompanied by Dan Gifford, to mark their sixty-sixth wedding anniversary. They found Packer unconscious. He died peacefully at 11.40 a.m. After leaving the hospital, Kit and Dan walked over the street to Regent. They found Bill Reimer – Regent’s legendary bookstore manager – at work in his office, and told him what had happened. Jeff Greenman, President of Regent College, broke the news to the college community an hour later.
Tributes began to pour in. Christianity Today posted a series of affectionate assessments of Packer’s significance from evangelical thought leaders, along with wider reflections on his legacy. One of the most moving tributes was from James Houston, the founding Principal of Regent College, who originally appointed Packer to the Regent faculty back in the late 1970s. Houston gave the eulogy at the funeral service at St John’s, Vancouver on 23 July, speaking of Packer as his ‘oldest friend’, recalling their days together at Oxford in the late 1940s, and praising his ‘extraordinary clarity of mind’.
The COVID emergency measures were still in force, and only fifty invited guests were admitted to the funeral, wearing face masks and maintaining physical distance. No congregational singing was allowed. Yet the gospel message of hope was still affirmed, perhaps most powerfully through the famous words of Paul, which were read by Packer’s Regent colleague Craig Gay in the English Standard Version translation, which Packer had helped to shape:
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38–9).
So what is Packer’s legacy? Time alone will tell, although this short book has mapped out some possibilities. Many found in Packer’s writings an intelligent and deep vision of the Christian faith, firmly rooted in the Bible on the one hand, and in the long tradition of biblical reflection, especially within Puritanism, on the other. Others found him to be a gateway to the riches of the believing past, like one who opened up a treasure chest of wisdom and helped us explore what lay within. Yet perhaps his legacy might lie most enduringly in his insistence that we need to go deeper into our faith, not resting content with superficial engagement. We can learn from those who have done this before us, and who urge us to follow them in discovering and exploring what Packer so eloquently called the ‘biggest thing that ever was’.