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James Innell Packer (born July 22, 1926 in Gloucester, England) is a British-born Canadian Christian theologian in the Calvinistic Anglican tradition. He currently serves as the Board of Governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is considered one of the most influential Evangelicals in America.
Biography
The son of a clerk for the Great Western Railway, Packer won a scholarship to Oxford University. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, obtaining the degrees of Bachelor of Arts (1948), Master of Arts (1952), and Doctor of Philosophy (1955).
It was as a student at Oxford where he first met C. S. Lewis whose teachings would become a major influence in his life. In a meeting of the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, Packer committed his life to Christian service.
He spent a brief time teaching Greek at Oak Hill Theological College in London, and in 1949 entered Wycliffe Hall, Oxford to study theology. He was ordained a deacon (1952) and priest (1953) in the Church of England, within which he was associated with the Evangelical movement. He was Assistant Curate of Harborne Heath in Birmingham 1952-54 and Lecturer at Tyndale Hall, Bristol 1955-61. He was Librarian of Latimer House, Oxford 1961-62 and Principal 1962-69. In 1970 he became Principal of Tyndale Hall, Bristol, and from 1971 until 1979 he was Associate Principal of Trinity College, Bristol, which had been formed from the amalgamation of Tyndale Hall with Clifton College and Dalton House-St Michael's.
In 1978, he signed the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which affirmed a conservative position on Biblical inerrancy.
In 1979, Packer moved to Vancouver to take up a position at Regent College, eventually being named the first Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology, a title he held until his retirement. He is a prolific writer and frequent lecturer, but he is best known for his book, "Knowing God". He is a frequent contributor to and an executive editor of Christianity Today. In recent years, he has supported the ecumenical movement but believes that unity should not come at the expense of abandoning orthodox Protestant doctrine. Nonetheless, his advocacy of ecumenicism has brought sharp criticism from some conservatives, particularly after the publication of the book Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission (ed. Charles Colson, Richard J. Neuhaus) in which Packer was one of the contributors.
Packer served as general editor for the English Standard Version, an Evangelical revision of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
As of 2008, Packer is a parishioner of St. John's Shaughnessy Anglican church in Vancouver, which in February 2008 voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada because the St. John's church believes that the ACC is no longer teaching in accordance with scripture. So, they joined the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of America. Packer, on 23 April, handed in his licence from the Bishop of New Westminster.
Works
- Fundamentalism and the Word of God (1958; reprinted 1984) ISBN 0-8028-1147-7
- Keep In Step With The Spirit: Finding Fullness In Our Walk With God (1984, reprinted 2005) ISBN 0-8010-6558-5
- Knowing God (1973, reprinted 1993) ISBN 0-8308-1650-X
- Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (1961 by Inter-Varsity Fellowship) (reprinted 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
- One Faith: The Evangelical Consensus with Thomas Oden (2004) ISBN 0-8308-3239-4
- Collected Shorter Writings in four volumes
The Redemption and Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter (2003, based on his 1954 Oxford dissertation) ISBN 1-57383-174-3
- Christianity: The True Humanism with Thomas Howard (1985) ISBN-10: 1-57383-058-5
- Rediscovering Holiness (1992) ISBN-10: 0-89283-734-9
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