J. I. Packer

James Packer Innell, known as JI Packer ( born July 22, 1926 in Gloucester, England) is a naturalized Canadian theologian in the evangelical Anglican tradition; he is regarded as one of the most influential evangelicals of the 20th century. He is active as an emeritus professor at Regent College in Vancouver.

Packer is best known for his book God recognize ( Knowing God ), from which in North America alone a million copies were sold.

Life

Packer is the son of a clerk of the Great Western Railway. At his school, he won a scholarship to Oxford University where he received a Bachelor of Arts made ​​in 1948. During his studies he met for the first time CS Lewis, whose teachings would be an important influence in his life. He taught for a short time at the Greek Evangelical Oak Hill Theological College in London and began to study theology in 1949 at the Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. In 1952 he became a deacon in 1953 ordained a priest of the Anglican Church and was active in the evangelical wing of the Church of England.

From 1952 to 1954 he was curate of a church in Birmingham. In 1955 he received his doctorate in philosophy. 1955-61 he gave lectures at Tyndale Hall, an evangelical college in Bristol. 1961/62 he was librarian of Oxford, founded in 1960, Latimer Trust, an Anglican evangelical research institution, of which he then took over until 1969, and where he is an honorary president until today. In 1970 he became rector of Tyndale Hall, and in 1971 vice-principal of Trinity College, which was formed from the merger of the three evangelical colleges in Bristol.

In 1977, the then British subject, the only founding member of the " International Council on Biblical Inerrancy ," who was not a citizen of the United States. In this body he was instrumental in creating the Chicago Statement on Biblical inerrancy of 1978 and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics in 1982, when he assumed a mediating role.

1979 Packer moved to Canada to accept a professorship at Regent College in Vancouver, where he remained until his retirement.

He is the executive editor of Christianity Today and controls often posts to this journal at.

Packer was overall editor for the English Standard Version, an Evangelical revision of the Revised Standard Version, an English-language translation of the Bible.

Since he lives in Vancouver, Packer belongs to as an honorary curate of the conservative community of St. John's Shaughnessy, considered to be largest Anglican church of Canada, until they decided in February 2008 to leave the Anglican Church of Canada. Since then, the community sees itself as part of the Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur de América, as they no longer felt with the bishop and the synod in communion since the decision of the diocese to allow the blessing of same-sex couples. This status is controversial because it is the principle of the territoriality of the local Churches, which represents an essential principle of Anglicanism since the Reformation undermines and subverts the recommendations of the Windsor Report. Packer explained this decision so that the decision of the diocese in this context, a distortion of the gospel is, deny the authority of Scripture and endangers the salvation of others.

Theology

Packer sees himself as a Calvinist theology in the tradition of the Puritans.

He is a major proponent of biblical inerrancy, but rejects any fundamentalist biblicism:

" I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, and maintain it in print, but I can not see exegetically did anything Scripture says, in the first chapters of Genesis or elsewhere, bears on the biological theory of evolution one way or the other. On Itself did theory, as a non -scientist, watching from a distance the disputes of the experts, I suspend judgment, but I did recall BB Warfield was a theistic evolutionist. If on this count I am not an evangelical, then neither was he. "

"The fact That Certain cultural and dispensational changes have changed the application of Certain biblical passages to our time, as Compared with the time whenthey were first written, must not be confused with the trustworthiness -that is, the inerrancy -of the passages Themselves, as expressions of the truth and will of God to splat for Those theywere first Addressed, and as applications of Those unchanging truths about God and man Which We therefore must apply, as God's wisdom leads us, to our own different situation. "

In 1978 he was one of the signatories of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which affirmed the inerrancy of the Bible.

In recent years, he has supported the ecumenical movement but believes that Christian unity should not come at the expense of orthodox Protestant doctrine. Nevertheless, he has harvested because of its ecumenical advocacy of some conservatives criticism, especially after the publication of the book Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission (ed. Charles Colson, Richard J. Neuhaus ) in which Packer wrote a post.

Writings

  • Knowing God. . Reprint 1973 1993, ISBN 0-8308-1650 -X.
  • Fundamentalism and the Word of God. In 1958. Reprint 1984, ISBN 0-8028-1147-7.
  • Keep In Step With The Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk With God. In 1984. Reprint 2005, ISBN 0-8010-6558-5.
  • Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. In 1961. Reprint 1991, ISBN 0-8308-1339- X.
  • A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. 1994, ISBN 0-89107-819-3.
  • Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs. 2001, ISBN 0-8423-3960-4.
  • Collected Shorter Writings. 4 volumes.
  • The Redemption and Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter. 2003, ISBN 1-57383-174-3 ( based on his dissertation, 1954 Oxford).
  • With Thomas A. Howard: Christianity: The True Humanism. 1985, ISBN 1-57383-058-5.
  • Rediscovering Holiness. 1992, ISBN 0-89283-734-9.
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