Customer Reviews

J.I. Packer: A Biography

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McGrath is always worth reading, but for my money McGrath on Packer is one of the best things he has produced to date. I cannot remember when I have enjoyed a book more, but then I am biased! Let me explain. Jim Packer is one of the four or five individuals who have most profoundly shaped my life and ministry - I am an Episcopal priest, by the way. But this book is more than the telling of one man's story. McGrath weaves his biography around the development of theology in the post-World War Two period with breathtaking skill. It tells the story of the worldwide regeneration of evangelical Christianity in the second half of this century - evangelicalism in general, Anglican evangelicalism in particular. I first met JimPacker when I was a seminarian and was immediately attracted by his solid, no nonsense approach to theology. He introduced me to the theological methodology of the Puritans, an approach to believing that seemed unruffled by the fads and fancies that sweep the Christian world, fashions that so often knock it off its feet. Jim is a man, I discovered, who loves God, loves the Scriptures, and applies his immense intellect to sharing that delight with others. I never thought I would ever be able to do more than admire him from a distance. Then in the early 1970s we moved to Bristol in the West of England, and the Packers became personal friends and neighbors when for several years we lived at opposite ends of the same short street. One of the treats of those years was occasional chats with Jimover tea or coffee, conversations that were to play a fundamental role in the direction my own life and ministry. In 1975, a few days after my younger daughter was born, a mid-morning coffee conversation with Jim set in motion the circumstances that led us across the Atlantic Ocean little more than a year later. A few years later the Packers followed, settling in Vancouver, where Jim became Professor of Theology at Regent College. From McGrath I discovered that Jim had made up his mind to move to North America when the right thing was offered at about the same time he was persuading us to hop "The Pond." He obviously played his cards very close to his chest! But I digress. McGrath presents Packer in a multi-faceted manner. Not only does he trace Packer's life with great care; he also shows the process of his theological development. He pays significant attention to the substance of his teaching as well as his pedagogical method. More than this, Jim Packer is presented as a man with an innate sense of strategy. He came to faith when a freshman at Oxford. Evangelicals were then a tiny despised minority in the Church of England. During much of the next half century he was to play a major role shaping their journey to intellectual and ecclesial leadership in the English church. Although one of the primary architects of evangelical renewal in Britain, Packer can arguably be said to have had more influence on the healthy development of biblical Christianity on the western side of "The Pond." On moving to Vancouver in 1979, Jim was well positioned to place a major role on the evangelical scene in Canada and the USA, as well as in North American Anglicanism. While McGrath explains the part he has played in Canadian Anglicanism, nothing is said of the small but significant role he has played in the Episcopal Church where, since the 1870s, evangelical Christians have been a tiny minority. Few who were at the Three Rs Conference in Orlando in 1985 will forget his description of "the convergence of the saints" as evangelicals, catholics, and charismatics sought to make common cause. Convergence is, perhaps, one of Packer's great themes in the last 20 years. He thinks of himself as "a great tradition Christian," seeking mutualities between Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox. He has little time for that false face of ecumenism that has sought unity by sweeping significant theological differences under the rug. His approach to theology and debate reflects the robust theology of the Puritans in which he has soaked himself over the decades, since discovering their treasures in a musty library in Oxford when an undergraduate. Believing with all his heart that bad theology does untold damage, Packer has used his incisiveness to constantly prod Christians beyond sloppy theologizing. McGrath believes that James Innell Packer, the son of a minor railway clerk from Gloucester, has made a lasting contribution to the progress of the Christian faith in the 20th Century. He tells us that he "offers a judicious counterbalance to the anti-intellectual and unhistorical trends in evangelicalism, affirming the importance of theology, tradition and historical scholarship as tools for the consolidation and stimulation of the evangelical vision" (p. 281). Certainly, for those of us who have come under his influence, Jim has modeled to us a theological method that refuses to be careless, unthinking, parochial, or small-minded. He has shown us that a healthy faith is one that engages what Hercule Poirot called "ze little gray cells," and that the church will not be renewed if the mind is not renewed. Do I have criticisms of McGrath on Packer? Yes. Criticism number one is that it is not long enough! There are occasions when something is touched upon but never properly savored. I would also have loved a great deal more on Packer's alliance with Eric Mascall and Bishop Graham Leonard in the late 1960s, to oppose the abortive Anglican-Methodist union scheme in England. I would also have liked more on the strategic importance for English Christianity of the Keele congress of Anglican Evangelicals in 1967, and the part Packer played in formulating it. I suspect that this biography is the first of many over the next generation or so that will explore the unique contribution of Jim Packer both the world Anglicanism and to the cause of orthodox Christian theology. I think it entirely possible that history will conclude that Packer could be put alongside C. S. Lewis, John Stott, and Michael Ramsey, as one of the major Anglican contributors to the changing face of Christianity in the last century of the second millennium.

Are you looking for a spiritual blood transfusion? Look no further! JI Packer's enthusiasm for God and tenacity for right thinking regarding the bible is contagious! His interactions with Stott and Lloyd-Jones provide brilliant historical insight into the tension of "reform from within" vs "be ye seperate".

Many Christians miss out on the experience that excellent spiritual biographies provide. Don't be one of them!

As far as the previous writer that didn't think McGrath did a good job writing, I couldn't disagree more. Type the words "Alister McGrath" into the Amazon search engine and you'll find many people like the way Dr. McGrath puts sentences together.

I found Alister McGrath's biography of Packer to be most interesting. Here is a man (Packer) who is truly bringing honor to the name of Christ and His church (when in the age of supposed regenerate men that consistantly do otherwise). McGrath is a man of like public character and a honorable person to do such a work. I was pleased to read such a work, and am looking forward to further McGrath biographies having to do with such honorable men (McGraths work on Calvin was also quite excellent). This was a easy and uncomplicated read, factual and supposing nothing yet is thorough enough. I would suggest the work highly.

Anglican and Evangelical, conservative and ecumenical, Packer has been a central figure in a variety of theological movements in North America and Europe for nearly two generations. Thus is this first major biography of Packer much overdue.

McGrath is an astoundingly prolofoc writer, but he has taken great care to tell the story of Packer's life in generous detail. Written in a plain, almost artless, style, McGrath provides an exceedingly clear, accessible portrait of a very complex man. A professor of systematic theology at OXford, McGrath is himself an ex-liberal who, in his steadt migration to the right, is passing many leftward drifting evangelicals. This is evident in this openly sympathetic biography of one of the great statesman of contemporary conservative evangelicialism.

The story begins with Packer's blue-collar childhood in England as the son of a railway worker. His destiny as a schaolr is traced to a chnace encounter with a schoolyard bully who chased him into traffic. The resulting head injury Packer sustained forced him indoors for a summer, where books and an inexpensive typewriter revealed an exciting new world. While an undergraduate at Oxford, Packer was again redircetd by the hand of Providence. As nominal Anglican, Packer was generally mortified by the anti-intellectualism and the sheer tackiness of the evangelical studnet ministry on campus. Yet he was haunted by and irresitibly drawn to the weighty claims of the Gospel which were so gleefully proclaimed by these same evangelicals. Befor elong Packer was reluctantly but profoundly converted.

His discovery of the Puritans, at a time before the Banner of Truth Trust brought them back into print, gave Packer a zeal to reintroduce their marriage of intellectual rigor and passionate piety to the modern church. After completing his doctoral work, he devoted himself to the training of future pastors, first at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and most recently at Regent Collge, Vancouver. Nearly all of the 30-odd books he has written have been directed to the Church rather than the academy. Still, given his academic style and his rugged Calvinist theology, Packer's book Knowing God is probably the most unlikely Xian bestseller of the past half-century. Packer's consistent two-fold aim has been to work for renewal as an evangelical conservatove within the Anglican Communion and to work toward ecuemnism with evangelicals of other denominations. While McGrath shows Packer to be an irenic man of deep integrity, this two-fold ecumenical strategy has involved him in heated controversy throughout his career.

McGrath develops his biography chiefly around these controversies. For example, early in his career Packer was virtually shunned by the British evangelical community for daring to express his misgivings about the Kewwick holiness (or "Victorious Living") movement. Unwilling to tickle even the most pious ears, Packer showed how naive pietism inevitably lapses into Pelagianism. "After all," as McGrath sums up Packer's position, "Pelagianism is teh natural heresy of zealous Xians who are not interested in theology" (p. 78). Other controversies here recounted include Packer's unashamed defense of biblical inerrancy in a 1958 book, his painful break during the 1970s with his mentor Martyn Lloyd-Jones and, most recently, his co-authoring of teh controversial document entitled "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" (ECT), together with Charles Colson and Richard John Neuhaus. McGrath's biography is much more than the personal story of a solitary evangelical figure, but rather an insightful persepective onto some of the major developments of the post-WWII Western Church.

No, I'd have to agree that McGrath's biography is not one intensely personal. However, it places Packer firmly in the matrix of a growing British evangelical movement that influenced English-speaking Christianity. It excels in tracing the development of Packer's involvement in and influence of British and North American institutions and his contributions to English Theology generally. It's a quick read: engaging and well-written.

Packer wrote the two books, which have profoundly affected my Christian life: "Knowing God" and "Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God." I like McGrath'writings so when I saw the book on the shelf of a bookstore, I grabbed it and almost ran to the checkout counter.

The scope of this book is more than just J. I. Packer. It also covers Packer's influence on Evangelicalism on both sides of the Atlantic. The beginning of the book and the ending chapter were very good. The beginning of the book covers the conversion of a brilliant student of theology into a committed theologian and Christian leader in Great Britain. Packer's boldness and commitment to what he later called 'systematic spirituality' (theology that encourages faithful service)was inspiring. Packer discovered Puritan writings and saw immediately the corrective Puritan life and theology provided for the superficiality of the Church in the 20th century. The ending where the book covers Packer's impact on the 20th and 21st century was very interesting as well. There are sections in the middle that are boring, however; where it covers the theological disputes within Anglicanism and the bickering during the merger of three theological colleges into Trinity college. These sections seem to go on for over a hundred pages.

I strongly recommend the biography. Packer's stress on theology in practice should be a strong exhortation to the Church today and Evangelicalism specifically. His commitment to Church history and theology in light of today's Christianity lite preaching is truly needed. Packer did not preach a prosperity gospel; he preached a historical theology that deepened the soul's thirst for God and its desire to serve God.

This book is challenging in parts and it is dry in parts. The biography tends toward hero worship. Perhaps, a better biography will be written on Packer, but this book tells a good story that needs to be heard.

A well written and easy to understand biography. It was not what I expected, however. I wanted to know a little more about Packer, the "man." Instead, there was a lot of English church history. Still, it was very interesting reading and it shed some light on Packer's motivation and the development of his theological thinking.

This biography looks at Packer through a theologian's eyes, so it suited me well. It thoroughly outlines Packer's theological development, approach to theology, influence on Anglican and Evangelical Christianity, and interactions with major churchmen and movements in Christianity.

There are plenty of details about the state of Christianity in England, as other reviews have mentioned. I rarely found these a burden, and I was grateful for the way McGrath explained Packer's religious environment. He didn't assume much previous knowledge. I had already been curious about how certain movements developed in England, and now I am far better informed. That said, I would have preferred fewer details on the issues and controversies among the Bible colleges of England.

The only things I think this biography is missing are details of Packer's family. We get to read how Packer met and married his wife, but very little else. I wanted to see something of how this great man raised his children, but they got only one or two mentions, with no accompanying details whatsoever. This might be due to Packer's privacy, of course.

If you are a Christian interested in theology, read this book. Packer has had a tremendous influence on Evangelical theology; he is an integral part of its heritage. He is a model for all God-fearing theologians in his combination of thinking and worship. I finished the book with a sense of gratitude to God for working through this man to profoundly edify his church.

There is no doubt J.I. Packer has been and will continue to be one of the 20th century's most important theologians. His contribution to the current debate between the liberal and evangelical wings of Canada's Anglican Church is critical. As described by McGrath, Dr. Packer has maintained a theological position of integrity throughout his life.

However, I hope he will one day be served by a biography that is much more readable than this biography by Alistair McGrath. Despite my interest in Dr. Packer, I found reading it a definite struggle. Only my interest in the subject caused me to finish the book.

Did anyone edit this book? McGrath's sentences go on and on - and I found I couldn't pin down his opinions. Often half or more of the sentences in the book were extraneous. Perhaps he has written in a classic academiceze style - but I found myself really struggling and wanting him to make his points clearly and succinctly.

Although many may read the book due to interest in Dr. Packer's life and work, it was definitely a struggle and I cannot recommend it as a well-written biography.