J.I. Packer: A Biography

By Alister E. McGrath

Book Overview

His books have sold over three million copies worldwide and Christianity Today readers named him one of the most influential theological writers of the 20th century. Now J.I. Packer's life and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801011574
• ISBN13: 9780801011573
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Baker Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Bio of a great theologian by a great theologian

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

The life of a good man

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.

An engaging and informative biography

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.