Introduction
Introduction
This short book is both a reflection on the life and an appreciation of the wisdom of James Innel Packer – ‘Jim’ to those who knew him well. It is not a standard biography, written for those who want to know the intricate details of Packer’s career and the institutional politics which lay behind some of its turns. While the book draws on the wealth of material that I accumulated back in the early 1990s as I prepared to write the first major biography of Packer, it is primarily an exploration and appreciation of his legacy, investigating how the story of his life is interwoven with his vision of the Christian faith. As I discovered from extended conversations with Packer, he saw his life and faith as being intimately interconnected. I have learned much from knowing Packer and reading his works, and know others can benefit from his legacy as well.
I first came to appreciate the importance of Packer’s story in November 1991, when I travelled from Oxford to Cambridge by coach to give a lecture. On boarding the bus, I discovered Packer was also a passenger. We had met in London two days earlier and sat down beside each other to continue our conversation as the coach wended its way through the English countryside on its long and slow journey to Cambridge. We had more than three hours together. Packer told me the story of his conversion at Oxford, and his gradual discernment of what he should be doing with his life. The story was so moving it led me to plan and write his biography over a period of five years, just as it has now led me to write this reflection on his life and thought. This book focuses on Packer’s origins, education and ministry in the United Kingdom, which were an essential part of his formation as a Christian and as a theologian. Most of Packer’s readers think of him as a North American theologian, having little appreciation of either his impact on evangelicalism in the United Kingdom, or the importance of the British context in shaping his outlook. Here I try to capture something of his British heritage, while nevertheless recognising that his greatest impact has been in North America. Although Packer was involved in numerous controversies throughout his career, he is valued today mainly for his positive contributions to the cultivation of a Christian mindset, and his constructive development of Christian spirituality.
C. S. Lewis regularly emphasised that great writers sought to share something with their readers – something which they themselves had grasped or seen and wanted to pass on to others, so that they might benefit. The best writers are not self-promoting narcissists who demand that we look at them, but those who invite us to look through them at what they have seen, enabling us to share in their experience. They are thus windows to something greater. Lewis himself saw authors not as spectacles to be admired, but as a ‘set of spectacles’ through which we can look at the world and see it in sharper focus and greater depth.
If Lewis is right, it follows that a good theologian should be transparent to the gospel. In other words, they avoid the cumbersomely technocratic language and obscurity of expression that prevents their readers from grasping what they have seen. In part, Packer’s appeal lies both in his accessible and engaging writing style, alongside his seamless integration of a loving and attentive reading of the Bible, the weaving together of its themes in theology, and the working out of this vision of the Christian faith in holy living and prayerful adoration. In June 2016, Packer was asked what he hoped to achieve through his teaching for that year’s Regent College summer school. His answer to that question deserves close attention.
What I shall be saying to my class, in substance, is: Look! This is the biggest thing that ever was! And we Christians, most of us, still haven’t appreciated its size. We’ve been Christians for years and years, and yet we haven’t fully grasped it.
For Packer, theology is about unpacking this ‘biggest thing that ever was’ – faithfully and reliably. That is the evangelical core of preaching, prayer, proclamation and adoration. And it also stands at the heart of the joyful and prayerful discipleship of the mind that Packer calls ‘theologising’.
Like the Puritans before him, Packer saw the natural place of the theologian as lying within the community of faith – not standing above the community of faith, still less standing outside it, but rather speaking to the Christian community as one who shared in their journey of faith and hoped to encourage them to reflect on it more rigorously and profoundly. This small volume aims to help its readers explore and reflect on what Packer so vividly describes as ‘the biggest thing that ever was’. In retelling Packer’s story, this book explores the interconnection of faith and life, opening up the ways in which the core ideas of Christianity change people as they become part of their lives.
For there is another point that needs to be made here. Theologians are not empty vessels containing abstract theological ideas, but are living souls who exhibit and embody those ideas and values in their lives. Packer embodies his theology by living out the central truths he discovered and sought to preserve and communicate. Our concern in this book is not primarily with documenting the details of Packer’s life, but with the greater question of what he has seen, and what he wanted to pass on to others. Rather than summarise his career, and then reflect on the nature and importance of his ideas, I shall instead set the story of his life alongside reflection on the themes that were so important to him and remain significant to his many readers, allowing the vital interconnection of theology and life to be discerned.
Although I was an atheist as a teenager, I discovered the intellectual richness and deep spiritual wisdom of the Christian faith in 1971, during my first year as a student at Oxford University. I found myself struggling to grasp what Christianity was all about, and how I could live out this new way of seeing myself and the world in which I lived. I needed assistance from older and wiser Christians, who could help me sort out my ideas and what I was meant to be doing with my life. One of the writers I discovered in my first years of faith was C. S. Lewis. After reading a few of his books, I realised that he was a winsome writer with a grasp of the deep logic of Christianity, who could help me grow in my own understanding. I still read Lewis with pleasure and profit to this day. He has become part of my personal story of faith.
In 1977, I discovered another writer who helped me consolidate my grasp of the Christian faith. As an undergraduate, I had heard Packer speak at some Christian meetings in Oxford in the early 1970s and, although I had found his ideas stimulating, I never managed to find the time to delve into his writing. Finally, I got round to reading one of Packer’s books which was recommended by several of my friends – Knowing God. After half an hour, I knew I was in the presence of someone capable of writing eloquently and wisely about the Christian life, constantly making connections between the Bible, theology and personal spirituality. That book has become part of my personal story and remains one of the books to which I return, again and again. As I know from many conversations, countless others have also found Packer to be a source of wisdom and inspiration.
This short book cannot hope to be an adequate guide to either Packer’s life or thought; it can, however, be a gateway for those who have yet to discover him, as well as for those who know something of him, and rightly sense that there is more to be uncovered, celebrated and remembered.
Alister McGrath
Oxford, July 2020.