Book Review: The J. I. Packer Collection: Selected & Introduced by Alister McGrath

Author: J. I. Packer edited by Alister McGrath
Publisher: IVP
Number of pages: 284




Review: Alister McGrath (professor of historical theology at Oxford University and author of J.I. Packer: A Biography) has collected 16 separate essays by Packer and arranged them in chronological order, the first dating from 1954 and the last from 1998.

If one were to organize these essays thematically, they would testify to Packer’s statesmanship in three different areas.

1. Statesman for Christian apologetics. Here is where Packer is at his best: defending the historic, evangelical faith. His genius mind is not shrouded, as others are, in verbose terminology and syntax, but exposed in his crisp and elucidating explanations of the doctrine of Scripture (“Revelation and Inspiration,” 1954), the exclusivity of the Gospel (“Christianity and Non-Christian Religions,” 1959; “The Problem of Universalism Today,” 1969; “Is Christianity Credible?,” 1981), the deity of Jesus Christ (“Keep Yourselves from Idols,” 1963; “Jesus Christ the Lord,” 1977; “A Modern View of Jesus,” 1987), penal substitution (“What Did the Cross Achieve?,” 1974) and “the divinely executed retributive process that operates in the world to come,” i.e. “the reality of hell” (“The Problem of Eternal Punishment,” 1990)

Here we find him taking his enemies head on. (Of Dr. Robinson’s book he said, “It is just a plateful of mashed-up Tillich fried in Bultmann and garnished with Bonhoeffer. It bears the marks of unfinished thinking on page after page.”) He stands up even to his friends. (In defending the doctrine of eternal punishment, he specifically mentions John Stott and said that he, among others, “appear[s] to back into [the belief in annihilation or conditional immortality] in horrified recoil from the thought of billions in endless distress, rather than move into it because the obvious meaning of Scripture beckons them.”) One thing is clear: Packer is not the man to mess with!

2. Statesman for theological spirituality. A major emphasis in Packer’s writings comes from a failure that he observed in seminaries to make any real connection between Christian theology and Christian living. He opposes the approach to theology that “separates the questions of truth from those of discipleship; it proceeds as if doctrinal study would only be muddied by introducing devotional concerns; it drives a wedge between theology and doxology, between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, between knowing true notions about God and knowing the true God himself, between one’s thinking and one’s worshipping. Done this way, theology induces spiritual pride and produces spiritual sleep. Thus the noblest study in the word gets cheapened. I cannot applaud this.” The problem, as Packer saw it, was found in the “cultural assumptions, especially within the western academy, which have forced theology to see itself as an academically neutral subject, not involving commitment on the part of its teachers or students, which is primarily concerned with information about abstract ideas.”

In contrast, Packer says we should approach theology “so that our thinking about [God] becomes an exercise of homage of him.” Packer’s goal was to “arrange a marriage” between systematic theology and spirituality. “Properly understood, theology embraces, informs and sustains spirituality.” Out of this flowed, of course, his most famous book, Knowing God (1973). The articles pertaining to the topic of theological spirituality in this collection are “On Knowing God” (1975), “An Introduction to Systematic Spirituality” (1990), and “Evangelical Foundations for Spirituality” (1991).

3. Statesman for ecumenical “great-tradition Christianity.” In later life, Packer saw the difference between Protestant churches and the Church of Rome overshadowed by a new and greater division within Christianity: a division between those who “honour the Christ of the Bible and historic creeds and confessions” on the one hand, and “theological liberals and radicals” on the other. Why should not conservatives form an alliance across the denominations to fight this radicalism? “Domestic differences about salvation and the church should not hinder us from joint action in seeking to re-Chrstianize the North American milieu.” This is what motivated him to sign the document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (ECT) in 1994 and to speak at the Aiken Conference, organized by leaders within the Orthodox Church, in 1995. (The essay he gave at that event is published in this book as “On from Orr,” 1996.)

Towards the end of his essay he asks, “Can conservative Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholics of mainstream type join together in bearing witness to all that I have spoken of? I urge that we can, despite our known and continuing differences about the specifics of the salvation process and the place of the church in that process” (emphasis mine). There was only one hindrance: “To be sure, fundamentalists within our three traditions are unlikely to join us in this, for it is the way of fundamentalists to follow the path of contentious orthodoxism, as if the mercy of God in Christ automatically rests on persons who are notionally correct and is just as automatically withheld from those who fall short of notional correctness on any point of substance. But this concept of, in effect, justification, not by works, but by words--words, that is, of notional soundness and precision--is near to being a cultic heresy in its own right, and need not detain us further now, however much we may regret the fact that some in all our traditions are bogged down in it.”

It is on this point, in my opinion, where the great Packer fails, and does so miserably. I am reminded of Peter in Galatians 2 who began to undermine the Gospel for which he had fought so valiantly to uphold. Packer has fought valiantly to uphold the truth of the Gospel. We should never forget our debt. Sadly, he undermined through his actions much of his life’s labor. We should never forget the danger of doing the same.