7 The Return to Oxford: Latimer House
7
The Return to Oxford: Latimer House
Packer had no intention of staying at Tyndale Hall for the remainder of his career. It was a demanding role which he had enjoyed. Perhaps more importantly, it had allowed him to hone his skills as a theological educator, and reflect on how establishing a solid theological foundation for ministry could sustain and direct churches in times of change and uncertainty. But he needed a larger platform to develop his distinctive ministry.
A number of options were open to Packer. He might follow the paths of many former members of staff at Tyndale Hall, who had returned to ministry in parishes. Or he might seek a more senior position at another evangelical theological college of the Church of England.
A further option was suggested by his predecessor at Tyndale Hall, Geoffrey Bromiley, who had returned to parish ministry, becoming Rector of St Thomas’ Church, Corstorphine, Edinburgh. However, in 1958, Bromiley had announced that he was leaving parish ministry to take up a new appointment as Professor of Church History and Historical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in California. As we saw earlier, Bromiley was something of a role model for Packer’s vision of a theological educator. So might he also find a position at an American seminary? Packer’s two books had attracted attention in Reformed seminaries in North America, making this a genuine possibility at the time.
Packer, however, felt that there was work that he still needed to do in his native England. As the 1960s got under way, many felt that Britain was going through a period of significant cultural change, with important implications for the Christian churches. Could they rise to the new challenges that were emerging? Perhaps more than any evangelical thinker other than John Stott, Packer had given considerable thought to how evangelicalism might respond to these new opportunities. In his bestselling book Basic Christianity, John Stott set out the case for Christianity in measured, rational terms, aiming to reassure his readers, many of whom were university students, that Christian belief was ‘intellectually respectable’. However, he needed a platform from which to explore further fundamental questions of ministry, preaching and outreach. Stott had made All Souls, Langham Place, London, his podium for engaging both Church and nation. Was there such a platform for Packer? Initially, there was not. But that, as things worked out, was about to change.
In December 1958, John Wenham – a close colleague of Packer, and then Vice Principal of Tyndale Hall, Bristol – wrote a memorandum setting out a vision for an ‘Evangelical Research Centre’ in Oxford. I got to know Wenham well at Oxford in the 1980s, and he often reflected with me on the importance of evangelical research institutions, telling me how he and Packer played a key role in bringing one into being in Oxford. Wenham noted that Cambridge already had such an institution in Tyndale House, which had been founded as an interdenominational evangelical centre for the study of the New Testament. Wenham suggested that there was a need for a comparable evangelical institution in Oxford, although differing from Tyndale House in two important respects. First, it would be a specifically Anglican centre; and second, it would focus on issues such as doctrine, worship and church polity. Packer regarded Wenham’s idea of an Anglican evangelical research centre as inspired, and argued that its creation was ‘a strategic requirement of the very highest priority’.
Plans were made to raise funds for what came to be known as the Oxford Evangelical Research Trust. Wenham and Packer were part of the organising committee, which was chaired by John Stott. By January 1960, funds were in place to allow the purchase of 131 Banbury Road, a large house just north of Oxford city centre, and appoint two resident members of staff: a Warden and a Librarian. The initiative would have three core aims: to provide opportunities for study and writing for its two staff members; to organise a select fellowship of Anglican scholars to work together on important projects; and to strengthen the evangelical witness in Oxford.
It was decided that the first Warden would be Richard J. Coates, a colleague of Packer’s at Tyndale Hall. With the benefit of hindsight, this was a surprising choice, which did not entirely match up with the core objectives of the proposed research centre. Coates combined his part-time teaching of liturgy at Tyndale with the incumbency of Christ Church, a parish in the nearby seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare. He was not well known, and had no track record of research or publishing. The centre’s first Librarian would be Philip E. Hughes. It was also agreed that, given his obvious talents, Packer would be invited to work for the centre for two days a week. Hopes were high for the centre, which would be known as ‘Latimer House’ after the Protestant scholar-bishop Hugh Latimer. Latimer – along with Thomas Cranmer and Nicolas Ridley – was an ‘Oxford Martyr’ who was burned at the stake in the middle of Oxford in 1555.
Unfortunately, things quickly began to go wrong for Latimer House. Coates and Hughes fell out with each other and decided they could not both live in the same building. In June 1960, Hughes resigned as Librarian. The Council made a good decision and invited Packer to take Hughes’ place. For contractual reasons, Packer would be unable to take up the position until April 1961. On his arrival in Oxford, Coates told Packer that he was on the brink of resigning as Warden, and intended to leave as soon as he could find suitable alternative employment. After some discussion, the Council decided to appoint Packer as Warden, and, at Packer’s suggestion, Roger Beckwith as Librarian. By the middle of 1962, the new team was in place, and Latimer House was finally ready to do business.
Although Latimer House provided Packer with a platform for theological engagement with the life of the churches, it did not itself have any institutional connection with the local churches. Packer remedied this deficiency by becoming involved in the ministry of St Andrews, Linton Road, a large evangelical parish church in north Oxford close to Latimer House. For Packer, this was an important expression of his deep commitment to the ministerial aspects of theology.
Honest to God: Latimer House and the Shaping of Evangelical Opinion
Packer’s vision for Latimer House comes close to what would now be described as a ‘think tank’, concerned with research and knowledge dissemination at the interface between theology and the life of the Church. In commending the creation of an evangelical research centre in Oxford, Packer stressed that it should not seek to promote ‘ivory tower scholarship’ but should rather engage the ‘actual present-day needs of Anglican evangelicalism’. Although many evangelicals feared the cultural and theological liberalising agendas of certain bishops of the Church of England, there was no expectation of any immediate crises arising into which evangelicalism would need to make a considered and powerful intervention.
Without warning, however, a crisis came in March 1963. John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich, contributed an article to a leading British Sunday newspaper with the provocative title – almost certainly chosen by one of the newspaper’s editors – ‘Our Image of God must go’. Robinson’s demands for radical theological revisionism were set out in his book Honest to God, published four days later. Probably on account of the sensationalist newspaper publicity, it became a bestseller in England and earned the nickname ‘Honest John’ for its author. The initial print run ordered by the publishers was a mere 8,000 copies, of which 2,000 were intended for export to the United States. The print run sold out on the first day of publication. The demand for the book took everyone by surprise. It is estimated that the book sold 350,000 copies during its first seven months.
Honest to God caused outrage and hand-wringing in the Church of England at the time of its publication, not least because the media depicted Robinson as writing off traditional Christian beliefs as outdated, irrelevant and meaningless relics of a bygone era. Robinson, who lacked significant experience in dealing with the press, failed to establish – or even to attempt to establish – a credible alternative media narrative. The Archbishop of Canterbury stepped in to denounce the book as a caricature of Christian views of God. Evangelicals were particularly outraged that a bishop should write a book ridiculing and rejecting Christian orthodoxy and still be allowed to remain in office. Yet these responses were framed at the institutional level and failed to engage with Robinson’s basic presuppositions and methods. It was clear that a theological critique of Honest to God was called for.
Packer immediately grasped that both he as a theologian, and Latimer House as a theological research centre focusing on issues affecting the Church of England, were strategically placed to intervene in this debate. What was needed was a short and accessible response to Honest to God which concentrated on Robinson’s ideas, rather than debating whether he had misused his position as a bishop. Packer knew he could do this. His compact rebuttal of Honest to God, a mere twenty pages in length, was published later that same year. While Packer welcomed Robinson’s pastoral and apologetic concerns in addressing some of the cultural anxieties of his age, he considered that Robinson’s intervention had failed to answer such concerns properly. What Robinson proposed was not merely an inadequate response to some genuine apologetic questions, but also a dilution, if not a distortion, of Christianity.
Packer’s theological critique is entirely justified. Robinson shows little awareness of the patristic discussions of the identity and significance of Jesus Christ, which led to the formulation of the ‘Chalcedonian Definition’ of Christ as truly divine and truly human. Robinson insists that the Chalcedonian approach leads to the notion of Christ as ‘a divine visitant from “out there”, who chooses to live in every respect like the natives’. But this was at best a very muddled misunderstanding of Chalcedonian orthodoxy, which both tainted Robinson’s faulty assessment of contemporary difficulties with classic Christology and led him to formulate some thoroughly inadequate alternatives.
Packer’s focus was fundamentally theological, identifying Robinson’s hasty scholarly misjudgements and their deeply problematic outcomes. Robinson had created a mish-mash of three very different German theological voices – Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich. Bultmann argued for the ‘demythologisation’ of the New Testament text, so that its core themes could be understood in existential terms; Bonhoeffer brought home the rise of secular understandings of human existence, encapsulated in the phrase ‘religionless Christianity’; and, clearly most importantly for Robinson, Tillich invited us to revise our idea of God in terms of a ‘Ground of Being’ or ‘Being-itself’. Yet Robinson never managed to integrate these dissonant voices, nor to coordinate them in an apologetically focused way, capable of retaining or re-expressing the central insights of Christian orthodoxy. Packer’s caustic assessment of Honest to God has stood the test of time well: ‘it is just a plateful of mashed-up Tillich fried in Bultmann and garnished with Bonhoeffer’. Every page of the work bore the unmistakable ‘marks of unfinished thinking’.
It is not difficult to endorse Packer’s concerns. Robinson called for a wholesale revision of the Christian faith, declaring that ‘the most fundamental categories of our theology – of God, of the supernatural, and of religion itself – must go into the melting’. Yet although Robinson presented himself as a radical, demanding that we return to the New Testament to recover a more authentic vision of Christianity, his reading of the New Testament is driven by a modernist worldview and a somewhat superficial understanding of Tillich’s existential thesis: ‘The transcendent is nothing external or “out there” but is encountered in, with and under the Thou of all finite relationships as their ultimate depth and ground and meaning.’ Packer concluded that we are forced to choose between two incompatible visions of God – ‘a God who is personal and a Father, and a God who is neither, but simply an aspect of ourselves’.
Packer was concerned not simply with the inadequate foundations of Robinson’s theology however; he relentlessly pointed out its unacceptable consequences. Robinson’s theology had no place for the concepts of God as Creator or Redeemer. Robinson’s Jesus could not in any meaningful sense be termed ‘Saviour’ or ‘Lord’. He had created a complete disjunction between theology and worship. Robinson’s God ‘has done nothing to be praised for’. It was no surprise that Robinson redefined worship in terms of a preparation for service of other people, rather than primarily as a response to God’s being and deeds, which in turn motivates and inspires us to serve others.
Dr. Robinson’s programme seems to be that Christians should (i) agree with modern man that historic Christianity is irrelevant to him, but (ii) tell him that he is not, and cannot be, an atheist, since his ‘ultimate concern’ (whatever that may be) is ‘God’. A non-Tillichite may be forgiven for feeling that this is more of a policy for calling worldlings Christians than for making them such.
Packer’s response to Robinson was not a bestseller and was never intended to be. Its object was to challenge Robinson’s faulty apologetics at a theological level, and thus serve the Church – especially the growing evangelical constituency within the Church of England. By January 1964, the work had sold 20,000 copies. Latimer House had proved itself capable of rising to a new and, it may be added, unexpected challenge. Its contribution to the Honest to God controversy resonated with the concerns raised by other leading Christians, and opened up possibilities for alliances and conversations based on classic orthodox Christianity. The Anglo-Catholic writer E. L. Mascall, for example, confirmed Packer’s estimation of the book, noting that if ‘Robinson is right in saying that “God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get on very well without Him”, then the Church has no need to say anything whatever to secularized man, for that is precisely what secularized man already believes’.
But Packer realised that, despite the obvious success of Latimer House’s intervention in this specific debate, it had exposed some weaknesses in its ability to undertake long-term planning for the future. In a report to the Latimer House Council, Packer noted that the Honest to God controversy had shown that Latimer House was ‘vulnerable to unforeseen developments’. Even writing such a short book was demanding, requiring time and attention that inevitably meant that other tasks and responsibilities had to be neglected. It was difficult to undertake long-term planning for Latimer House’s ministry, given this need to react to urgent needs for intervention. Scholarship was, Packer suggested, a slow process, making the rapid production of considered and substantial responses to controversial works or issues somewhat difficult. It was therefore necessary to identify priorities – such as the theological resourcing of the growing evangelical movement within the Church of England.
Latimer House and the Theological Consolidation of Anglican Evangelicalism
One of Packer’s longer term aims for Latimer House was to provide theological support and resources for more conservative forms of evangelicalism as these became increasingly significant in the life of the Church of England during the 1960s. Post-war English evangelicalism was a complex and shifting amalgam, with several elements. One important element was located outside the Church of England – the free and independent churches associated with the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. By far the most important thinker within this tradition was Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, minister of Westminster Chapel, London.
Within the Church of England, two main forms of evangelicalism jostled alongside each other during the 1950s: a dwindling band of liberal evangelicals associated with the Anglican Evangelical Group Movement, and an expanding group of conservative evangelicals, represented by John R. W. Stott and Packer himself. During the 1960s, liberal evangelicalism struggled to articulate its vision and offer strong leadership. Partly as a result of numerical expansion arising from the Billy Graham crusades, and partly on account of its more strategic approach to theological and institutional leadership, conservative evangelicalism became increasingly prominent in the life of the Church of England. Packer saw Latimer House as a resource which would ensure that numerical growth would not result in theological shallowness.
An issue of particular importance was the theological education of evangelical clergy within the Church of England. A growing number of people who were converted through Graham’s evangelistic ministry felt they were being called to serve in full-time ministry in the Church of England. For Packer, it was vital that these clergy were not merely evangelistically enthusiastic; they needed to be theologically informed if they were to meet the new challenges that awaited them.
Packer’s own experience of theological education as a student at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and as a theological educationalist at Oak Hill College and Tyndale Hall, Bristol, had helped him identify challenges which he believed needed to be met. It was not enough to address the practical side of training for ministry – for example, through immersion in the culture of the Church of England or gaining experience of preaching and pastoral care. While these were clearly important, future clergy should be required to supplement them by developing a theological vision for their ministry, grounding their work in a deep understanding and appreciation of the gospel.
Much attention at this time focused on the contemporary relevance of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (1563). These were drawn up during the reign of Elizabeth I, whose ‘Settlement of Religion’ is widely seen as establishing the distinct identity of the Church of England. The Articles were always regarded as subordinate to the creeds, in effect identifying what was distinctive about the Church of England, not what was definitive for Christianity as a whole.
Although some Anglicans suggest that the Thirty-Nine Articles develop a ‘middle way (via media)’ between Catholicism and Protestantism, a more accurate historical judgement is that they actually construct an Anglican middle way positioned somewhere between the beliefs and practices of two forms of Protestantism that were influential in the 1560s, namely, the Lutheran and the Reformed churches. While the Articles themselves are somewhat brief, there was a clear expectation that any ambiguities or omissions would be sorted out through the theologically normative Book of Homilies, a collection of ‘approved’ sermons issued by Thomas Cranmer during the reign of Edward VI in 1547. Article Thirty-Five explicitly references and endorses these sermons, as well as a later collection assembled by Bishop John Jewel and others in 1571.
At this stage in his career, Packer saw the Thirty-Nine Articles as serving two important functions: first, as a guide to the fundamental themes of classic Anglicanism; and second, as a crucial bulwark against the rising tide of liberalism within the English national Church during the 1960s. For Packer, the Thirty-Nine Articles are to be seen as:
Time-honoured judgements, on specific issues relating to the faith of Christ, as set forth in the Scriptures. They come to us as corporate decisions first made by the Church centuries ago, and now confirmed and commended to us by the corroborative testimony of all later generations that have accepted them, down to our time.
Packer’s overall argument consisted of two basic assertions. First, that the Thirty-Nine Articles embody the historic theological heritage of the Church of England, and thus must be taken very seriously in any discussion of contemporary Anglican identity and theology; and second, that evangelical Anglicans, in taking these Articles to heart, were demonstrating their true Anglican credentials – unlike those who wanted to replace this historic formulation of faith with something more appropriate to the ‘spirit of the age’ of the 1960s.
Packer thus set out to highlight the value of the Thirty-Nine Articles in providing a theological foundation and direction for a resurgent evangelicalism within the Church of England. At that time, the most widely read evangelical Anglican publication was the Church of England Newspaper. Packer therefore arranged to set out his views on the ongoing importance of the Thirty-Nine Articles in a series of six substantial pieces published in this newspaper during October and November 1960. Encouraged by their positive reception, Packer brought them together as a booklet the following year. The Articles, Packer declared, ‘sought to confess, preserve and mark off the deepened understanding of the biblical faith which the Reformation had brought about’, setting out a positive vision of ‘the biblical gospel and biblical Christianity’. As evangelicalism began its long and slow consolidation within the Church of England during this period, Packer insisted that it should remain faithful to the foundational vision of that Church, as it emerged from the Reformation.
Packer was not on his own here. Many evangelicals within the Church of England around this time perceived the Thirty-Nine Articles as rooting the national Church in Scripture, and thus demonstrating that the ‘church’s authority never floats free of Scripture, and can never be posited independently of Scripture, as though it could dispense with its text and establish its own commentary irrespective of what the text contained’. Yet during the 1960s, many clergy in the Church of England regarded statements of faith originating from the Tudor period as outdated liabilities, incapable of relating to the thought-world of the modern age, centred on the present experience of individuals. Evangelicals realised that their first line of defence against the threat of liberal theological encroachment was to reaffirm the importance of the Articles in defining the essence of Anglicanism.
It was, however, a tactic, rather than a strategy. What was really needed was not a critique of the historical credentials of Anglican liberalism, but a compelling demonstration of the intellectual, moral and imaginative appeal of orthodox Christianity to those caught up in the rapid cultural transitions of the 1960s. Billy Graham might have spoken persuasively and effectively in 1954; British culture, though, had moved on, and new strategies were required to deal with the changed cultural context. During the 1950s and early 1960s, several leading evangelical churches generated local experiments in developing such apologetic and evangelistic strategies adapted to the cultural shifts of the age – for instance, those put in place by John Stott at All Souls, Langham Place, London.
Latimer House played a significant role in this process of reflection, supplementing such local initiatives with a flurry of publications relating to the challenges and opportunities of the day. At the Council meeting of 25 June 1966, Packer announced plans for four further monographs. He intended to write two himself: British Theology in the Twentieth Century and Theology of the Thirty-Nine Articles; two would be written by Roger Beckwith, the House’s Librarian: Principles of Prayer Book Revision and Christian Initiation. Packer found himself increasingly in demand as a member of various official church bodies, including the Archbishop’s Doctrine Commission (chaired at this stage by Bishop Ian Ramsey), the Faith and Order Advisory Group, and the dialogue groups between Anglicanism and other churches (most notably, the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church).
The relentless activity of Latimer House made significant demands on its two staff, particularly Packer, who was constantly invited to speak at conferences on theological issues, to address Diocesan Evangelical Unions on matters of theology and church politics, and to preach at supportive churches. Latimer House depended on the generosity of its supporters, and part of Packer’s task was to show that they were getting results for their donations.
Packer’s strenuous workload at this time also caused some small degree of disagreement between him and the Council of Latimer House over what their priorities should be. Should he accept overseas speaking engagements, such as a major invitation to Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, in 1965? Packer felt that such engagements would enhance the profile of Latimer House internationally, and broaden his own experience; the Council was unsure whether this kind of international work was entirely in line with Latimer House’s specific national and denominational objective of influencing the course of debates within the Church of England. In the end, Packer was allowed to go to Pasadena. Indeed, this invitation made it clear that Packer was becoming an international voice in evangelical discussions, whereas Latimer House had a more local and focused agenda, based on the English context.
There was, however, plenty for Packer to do in England. The mounting strength and sophistication of evangelicalism within the Church of England was particularly evident in the debate over a proposed scheme for union between the Church of England and the Methodist Church. Packer and Latimer House played a major role in pointing out that this 1960s’ debate was conducted almost entirely without reference to theological issues. At the time, the ecumenical movement had somewhat uncritically adopted the World Council of Churches’ slogan ‘doctrine divides; ministry unites’. Evangelicals pointed out that this deliberate evasion of doctrinal matters was thoroughly unsatisfactory, and argued that there was a need to face up to these doctrinal differences in a frank and honest manner. For Packer and others, Methodism had become deeply influenced by a theological liberalism which they had no desire to see gain the ascendency within a reconfigured Church of England. For Packer, the proposed merger scheme would simply create a liberal catholic denomination, in which the evangelical cause would be marginalised or suppressed.
Packer coordinated opposition to this scheme by assembling two collections of essays, each of which was formative in consolidating evangelical opposition to the proposed merger: The Church of England and the Methodist Church (1963) and All in Each Place: Towards Reunion in England (1965). In May 1968, Packer was joined by Colin O. Buchanan and Gervase E. Duffield in editing Fellowship in the Gospel, a substantial and critical evangelical analysis of two major Church of England reports, Anglican-Methodist Unity and Intercommunion Today.
In the end, these proposals for union foundered. They were exposed as institutionally premature and theologically shallow, failing to engage the deeper questions that had to be resolved. As a recent study of these debates makes clear, Packer emerged as the ‘de facto theologian-in-chief’ of conservative evangelicalism, who raised legitimate theological concerns that the liberal establishment hoped to sideline. The proposals were rejected by the Church Assembly (a predecessor of the Church of England’s General Synod) in July 1969. Given the major divisions that have arisen since the 1990s over – to mention only one example – the ministry of women within the churches, few would now agree with the World Council of Churches’ simplistic slogan ‘doctrine divides; ministry unites’. This may have been plausible in the social context of the 1960s, but that cultural world has long since vanished.
Yet a new controversy soon flared up within Anglican evangelicalism, in which Packer and Latimer House would play a leading, even defining, role in the reevaluation of Anglican evangelicalism during the late 1960s, particularly through the National Evangelical Anglican Congress which took place at the University of Keele in 1967. In what follows, we shall explore how that convention came to be convened, the central role which Packer played, and its implications for the future of evangelicalism.
The Crisis of 1966: The Redefining of English Evangelicalism
Earlier, we noted the strategic alliance that developed in the 1950s between Packer and Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel, London. This resulted in the development of the Puritan Studies Conference, which became of strategic importance for many evangelicals within the Church of England and the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. The Conferences enabled networking and strategic reflection on a number of issues during the post-war years, as well as quarrying the riches of Puritan theological and pastoral wisdom.
But there were tensions between these two groups over a number of issues, especially questions relating to ecclesiology. Traditionally, evangelicals managed to collaborate with each other across denominational lines through what was, in effect, a form of theological diplomacy. Issues of church policy or fundamental beliefs about the nature of the true Church were discussed through Puritan intermediaries. Yet in the early 1960s, it became clear that one specific question could not be dealt with in this way: should evangelicals concerned with doctrinal orthodoxy withdraw from denominations which publicly fail to maintain such orthodoxy, or should they try to reform them from within? This had been a major issue within American evangelicalism during the fundamentalist controversies of the 1920s. Although this debate had little impact in the United Kingdom at that time, it resurfaced in a form which could not be ignored in 1966.
Lloyd-Jones – one of the most senior and influential figures in British evangelicalism – had become increasingly anxious over the theological liberalism of the World Council of Churches. By 1965, he was convinced that it was impossible for an evangelical to belong to a denomination which was affiliated to the World Council of Churches. Evangelicals who were members of such churches would inevitably be ‘contaminated’ by others within these denominations who openly denied or challenged key elements of the Christian faith. Evangelicals who remained within doctrinally mixed churches – such as the Church of England – were therefore ‘guilty by association’ in that maintaining institutional links with liberals amounted to compromising their evangelical convictions.
In June 1965, Lloyd-Jones addressed the Westminster Fellowship, an interdenominational ministers’ fraternal that met regularly in Westminster Chapel. Lloyd-Jones declared that theologically orthodox Anglicans and others should consider coming out of their ‘contaminated’ denominations. Instead of believing that they could ‘infiltrate the various bodies to which they belong and win them over’ evangelicals should stand together outside the main denominations. Lloyd-Jones returned to this theme in December 1965 at the Puritan Studies Conference, declaring that attempts to reform a church from within had failed to take the New Testament doctrine of the Church seriously, putting expediency ahead of principles. There was only one solution: to join a doctrinally ‘pure’ denomination.
It was clear that a serious division was in the process of emerging, with Lloyd-Jones and Packer potentially on opposite sides of the divide. Anticipating this, Lloyd-Jones invited Packer to put the case for the continuing presence and involvement of evangelicals within the Church of England at a meeting of the Westminster Fellowship in March 1966. In the event, however, the expected confrontation between Lloyd-Jones and his critics centred on John Stott, not Packer.
On 18 October 1966, the National Assembly of Evangelicals brought together evangelicals from a wide variety of backgrounds at Central Hall, Westminster. Lloyd-Jones delivered the opening address to the Assembly. To the surprise of many, Lloyd-Jones adopted a mildly confrontational tone, arguing that evangelicals had failed to come to terms with the biblical doctrine of the Church: ‘Ecumenical people put fellowship before doctrine. We, as evangelicals, put doctrine before fellowship.’ Orthodox Christian believers who insisted on remaining in denominations ‘tainted’ by theological liberalism were, in effect, guilty of schism. They should leave and preserve their integrity. John Stott, who chaired this opening session, felt he had to intervene at this point, suggesting that the rightful and proper place of evangelicals may actually be within those mainstream denominations, which they might be able to renew from within.
Debate continues about precisely what Lloyd-Jones meant by his words, and whether Stott was right to intervene in this way. The religious press coverage of the occasion, however, seems to have crystallised wider perceptions of the events and their implications. The Baptist Times reported that Lloyd-Jones ‘seemed to be encouraging evangelicals to secede from their denominations’. The Christian summarised Lloyd-Jones’ speech under a banner headline ‘Evangelicals – Leave your Denominations’. A major division now opened up within English evangelicalism over the specific issue of whether evangelicals had a defensible place within mainline British denominations, such as the Church of England.
That division extended to the Westminster Fellowship itself. At its next meeting on 28 November 1966 it became clear that there was a diversity of views over the issue of secession among those present. Lloyd-Jones declared that he believed the Fellowship had served its purpose, and should be disbanded. It was subsequently reconstituted in such terms that those who believed that the mainline denominations could be reformed from within were excluded. Ecclesiology, which had always been acknowledged as an issue over which evangelicals could disagree, had suddenly become a divisive and polarising thorn in British evangelicalism’s side.
For Lloyd-Jones, it was inevitable that there would be ‘a crisis on what is to me the fundamental issue, namely, do we believe in a territorial church or a gathered community of saints?’. It was far from clear that there need be such a crisis. The sixteenth-century Reformation had seen debate over precisely this issue, with Luther and Calvin adopting a territorial model, and the Anabaptists a ‘gathered community of saints’ model. It was well known that a close reading of the New Testament or a study of historical theology did not give a clear answer to this question, allowing most evangelicals to conclude that, while important to individual churches, this question could be seen as a secondary debate. Yet it was now being presented as a gospel issue, central to evangelical identity.
Where Lloyd-Jones proposed a vision of the Church as a ‘gathered community of saints’, Packer and Stott made the case for evangelicals seeing themselves as an ecclesiola in ecclesia – in other words, as a reforming body embedded within a state Church. Lloyd Jones and his colleagues argued for a ‘pure body’ doctrine of the Church, in which only those with explicitly evangelical convictions were to be accepted for membership. Packer conceded that his was the belief of mainstream Protestant Reformers, including both Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Packer developed and justified his views on the nature of the Church further in the course of the next decade. His fullest statement of his approach was set out in two pamphlets published by Latimer House, in which he notes the difficulties facing evangelicals in doctrinally mixed churches, such as the Church of England. The arguments which Packer counters in these works are primarily those deriving from the circles around Lloyd-Jones, particularly the demand that evangelicals withdraw from such mixed churches to form ‘pure’ denominations:
Some have urged evangelicals in ‘doctrinally mixed’ churches to withdraw into a tighter fellowship where the pre-critical, pre-liberal view of Scripture is rigorously upheld and sceptical revisionism in theology is debarred. It has been said that failure to do this is as unprincipled as it is foolish. It is unprincipled, the argument runs, because by staying in churches which tolerate heretics you become constructively guilty of their heresies, by your association with them; and it is foolish because you have not the least hope of cleaning up the Augean stables while liberals remain there. Withdrawal is the conscientious man’s only option.
Packer responded by noting that all mainstream churches are, as a matter of historical fact, founded on a set of beliefs (embodied in the Christian creeds and sets of confessional documents) which commits those churches to theological orthodoxy. Some may depart from this; evangelicals within those churches have a duty to recall them to faithfulness. They cannot be regarded as ‘guilty by association’ if they protest in this way. The very idea of ‘guilt by association’ was, for Packer, ‘a nonsense notion, which has been given an unhappy airing during the last two decades’. If trends towards liberalism are not resisted, a denomination will slide into heresy. And who will protest and argue against this, unless evangelicals remain within those mainline churches for as long as possible?
Packer also offered a criticism against those who argued that their own congregations or denominations were theologically correct. He noted that smaller doctrinally ‘pure’ bodies, such as the Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches, are open to the charge that they might ‘purchase doctrinal purity at the price of theological stagnation, and are cultural backwaters out of touch with society around’. Underlying this point is Packer’s conviction that cultural engagement – of such importance to effective evangelism – is not assisted by a total withdrawal from the society which is to be evangelised.
As a result of these serious disagreements about the nature of the Church, the longstanding friendship between Lloyd-Jones and Packer was now somewhat strained, though not yet irreparably broken. Both had made public statements that showed that they held opposed positions on a question which Lloyd-Jones had made of defining importance for evangelicals. Packer held that evangelicals within the Church of England must be free ‘to pursue their historic bilateral policy of fellowship with evangelicals in other denominations, and full involvement in their own church’, and appealed to writers such as George Whitefield, Charles Simeon and J. C. Ryle in support of his position.
The National Evangelical Anglican Congress (1967)
It became clear that evangelical Anglicans needed to consider their positions in the light of these developments. As it happened, plans were already under way to convene a National Evangelical Anglican Congress. These were now given a sense of urgency, as well as a specific focus for discussion. The Congress was planned for April 1967 at the University of Keele. It was obvious that Latimer House was strategically placed to resource the proposed event, so it became its organisational and theological hub, including hosting a series of meetings which led to the production of Guidelines, the collection of essays which developed and defended the Keele agenda. These essays showed how evangelicals within the Church of England could reassert their presence within that Church over and against both liberal Anglicans who wished to exclude them from membership, and some Free Church evangelicals, loyal to Lloyd-Jones, who argued that they had no business being members of that Church in the first place. As Packer later remarked, ‘Keele was the child of Latimer House.’
Yet even before the Congress of 1967, it was clear that Latimer House was being seen as a core theological resource by younger evangelical clergy of the Church of England. A conference on ‘Facing the Future’ held at Swanwick from 28 February to 2 March 1966 attracted two hundred such clergy, who called for a significant increase in Latimer House’s funding to allow it to continue its work of identifying the issues which would confront the Church of England in the future. Perhaps most importantly, the conference asked Latimer House to convene Study Groups, focusing on these issues. By January 1967, Packer and Beckwith had set in place plans for thirteen such groups. Philip A. Crowe was appointed as ‘Study Groups Secretary’, responsible for the coordination, administration and development of this new enterprise and by November 1967, in the aftermath of the National Evangelical Anglican Congress, the number of study groups had risen to fourteen, with 142 active members.
The National Evangelical Anglican Congress took place in early April 1967 at Keele University in the north-west of England where a thousand people – 519 clergy and 481 laypeople – gathered for three days of intense debate and discussion of nine papers, charting possible ways ahead for evangelicalism within the Church of England. The papers included a significant reflection on ‘Renewing the Local Church’ by Packer’s former colleague William Leathem, as well as Packer’s own views on theological confessionalism. Delegates were assured that the purpose of the Congress was not just to ‘beat old Evangelical drums, or shout old Evangelical slogans’, but instead to ‘grapple with live issues’ and do ‘some serious up-to-date thinking’. The nine conference addresses were designed to stimulate and unite, and appeared to have achieved their intended goals. For Packer, Keele brought evangelicals closer together, both intellectually and spiritually, and showcased conservative evangelicalism’s vitality, energy and intellectual vigour.
While the Congress is rightly judged as a landmark in the history of Anglican evangelicalism, the nature of its legacy remains contested. At one level, it commended active engagement between evangelicals and the Church of England; at another, however, it created an uneasy tension between loyalty to the institution of the Church of England on the one hand, and a more profound loyalty to the gospel on the other. Although the longer term ramifications of these tensions were perhaps overlooked in 1967, they have since led to significant fractures within both the Church of England and international Anglicanism. In 2002, Packer himself left the Anglican Church of Canada over issues of gender politics – something which nobody at Keele could have foreseen.
But what of Packer himself? Some thought that he would bask in the ‘triumph of Keele’ (that unfortunate superficial phrase was widely used at the time), which had seen Latimer House recognised as evangelical Anglicanism’s theological ‘think tank’ and Packer as its premier theologian. But he realised that Latimer’s role was changing. By 1968, he later reflected, Latimer House was in the process of becoming a networking facility, aiming to coordinate evangelical scholars, writers and activists around the country. It was, Packer conceded, something that needed to be done. Yet he himself had other objectives: exploring the importance of theology for the life and ministry of the Church, for example, and developing resources that could help churches apply theology constructively and critically to their outreach and pastoral care. It was, he began to feel, an opportune moment to consider moving on.
Reflections on Possible Futures
What could Packer do next? Colin Brown, a member of staff at Tyndale Hall, Bristol, took the view that Packer ought to apply for a major British academic position – such as the Lady Margaret Chair of Divinity at Oxford, which became vacant in 1968 following the death of the patristic scholar Frank Leslie Cross. Packer, however, did not see a purely academic position like this as affirming his own understanding of his calling: ‘I really am called, if I know anything at all, to make ministers and establish consciences, rather than to advance learning as an Oxbridge professor should.’
Packer could also have taken up a position at a leading North American seminary. His growing international reputation would have made him an attractive proposition for a conservative evangelical seminary, such as Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia or Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Rumours of this possibility were in circulation in England in 1968. John Wenham, a leading evangelical New Testament scholar who served as the Secretary to the Council of Latimer House, expressed alarm at the thought of such a move, given Packer’s reputation and influence. British evangelicalism could not afford to lose him.
Wenham was right to believe that such a development was possible. Having spent some time in 1966 as a visiting professor at Westminster, and lectured at other seminaries in the Chicago area, Packer had noted approvingly how the ethos of American seminaries appeared to be determined more by the tone of their faculties than by their presidents. The faculty were all treated as equals and were specialists in their fields. In contrast, Packer observed, the British equivalent of a seminary – the theological college – consisted of a Principal and a small number of members of staff, modelled on a vicar and his curates (a parish model), or a headmaster and his junior masters (a school model). Packer argued that this model was outdated.
In its place, Packer proposed ‘some sort of parity pattern’, in which the Principal of a theological college related to the members of staff like ‘a faculty chairman in a university, or the leader of a team ministry of specialists’. In particular, Packer stressed the need to involve the teaching staff in the government of colleges, through direct staff representation on college governing bodies. Failure to do this would inevitably generate friction within the staff bodies.
Despite all this, Packer believed that he was called to serve in the British context, even if he was willing to spend time lecturing and teaching in North America. Rather than move to a North American seminary, he began to explore the idea of assuming a senior position in a theological college, and reshaping its structures in the light of their American equivalents. In June 1968, Packer informed the Latimer House Council that he was interested in pursuing the possibility of becoming the next Principal of the London College of Divinity, an evangelical theological college of the Church of England which had announced its decision to relocate to Nottingham in the East Midlands in the summer of 1970. The Governors of the College were looking for a dynamic and farsighted Principal to lead it as it entered a new phase. Packer figured that he might be able to offer the leadership they were seeking.
In the end, however, the Governors appointed the rising star Michael Green to the position. Green, who was already a member of staff at the College, had been the youngest of the plenary speakers at the Keele Congress, and was recognised as someone with significant leadership skills. Green immediately invited Packer to take up the newly created position of Director of Studies at the college and Packer initially accepted the offer; after further reflection, though, he felt that this was probably not right and withdrew his acceptance. Packer shared his uncertainties over his future with the Latimer House Council at its meeting in July 1969, and expressed the view that he ought to leave Latimer House at some point in 1970, even though at present there was no prospect of a new position elsewhere. While the Council was supportive of Packer, they naturally had to begin to consider potential replacements for him.
But events were in motion elsewhere which would lead to Packer becoming Principal of Tyndale Hall, Bristol – the theological college at which he had taught with such distinction from 1954 to 1961. Although not realising it at the time, Packer was about to enter a phase of his ministry which boded well, yet would unexpectedly turn out to be one of the most stressful of his entire career.
We shall presently resume our narrative to tell the story of events in Bristol from 1968 to 1971, and how these shaped the direction of Packer’s work. But first, we must turn to a theme which has been significant throughout Packer’s career, and would be an important consideration in leading to his appointment as Principal of Tyndale Hall – the role of theology in the life of the Church.