J. I. Packer

Life

His full name was James Innell Packer. He was born on July 22, 1926, in Twyning, Gloucestershire, England. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and in 1954 received his doctorate for a dissertation on the Puritan minister Richard Baxter. Ordained a priest in the Church of England, he served as a curate (a clergyman who assists the parish priest) in Birmingham.

He then taught at Tyndale Hall in Bristol. From 1961, for about ten years, he led Latimer House in Oxford, an evangelical research center he had founded with John Stott. In 1979 he moved to Regent College in Vancouver, Canada, where he taught for many years. In 2016 he lost his sight to macular degeneration and withdrew from public ministry. He died in Vancouver on July 17, 2020, at the age of 93.

Ministry and Achievements

• Writings: His best-known work, Knowing God (1973), relates the doctrine of God's character to the Christian life. It is reported to have sold more than 1.5 million copies. In his first book, "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God (1958), he defended the authority of Scripture.
• Theology: He was an evangelical Anglican theologian in the Reformed tradition, influenced by John Calvin and the English Puritans. He emphasized the authority of Scripture, holy living, prayer, and repentance.
• Bible translation: He served as general editor of the English Standard Version (ESV), published in 2001.
• Other work: He served for more than thirty years as a senior editor of the American magazine Christianity Today.

Influence on the Korean Church

Many of his books have been translated into Korean, including Knowing God, Keep in Step with the Spirit, and A Quest for Godliness (published in Korean as Puritan Thought). When he died in 2020, obituaries appeared in the Kukmin Ilbo, the Christian Daily (Kidok Ilbo), and the Korea Christian Press (Hanguk Kidok Gongbo), the denominational newspaper of the Presbyterian Church of Korea (Tonghap). The Kukmin Ilbo described him, along with Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Stott, as one of the leading evangelical theologians of the twentieth century.

Assessment

In 2005 the American newsweekly Time named him one of the 25 most influential evangelicals. Some of his decisions, however, generated controversy.

• Break with Lloyd-Jones: In 1966 Martyn Lloyd-Jones called on evangelicals to leave denominations that tolerated liberalism. Packer remained in the Church of England, and the two men eventually parted ways. Lloyd-Jones's followers criticized Packer's decision as ecclesiologically inconsistent. Packer countered that the appeal had lacked any concrete plan.
• Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT): When Packer signed this document in 1994, some conservative evangelicals charged that it obscured justification by faith alone (the doctrine of justification holding that a person is declared righteous through faith alone). Packer explained that although he could not accept the doctrinal system of the Roman Catholic Church, informal cooperation at the grassroots level was beneficial.
• Departure from the Anglican Church of Canada: In 2008 his congregation, St. John's Shaughnessy in Vancouver, voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada. At that time Packer also returned his license to minister to the diocesan bishop. The move reportedly stemmed from conflict over the blessing of same-sex unions.