Biography
James Innell Packer was born on July 22, 1926, in Twyning, near Gloucester, England. As a boy he suffered a head injury when a bread van struck him as he rode his bicycle. The injury left him with a metal plate in his head and kept him from taking part in sports and games. He turned to reading and writing, and he later said that the accident, which at first seemed a loss, shaped his life. He grew up in a home that was not especially religious.
He went to Oxford University, where in 1944 he was drawn into the Christian Union. In a service at that time, the gospel became real to him and he committed himself to Christ. He later told of being confronted with the truth that he was a sinner who needed a Savior. At Oxford he also came under the influence of the writings of the Puritans, and he took up reading John Owen. This discovery shaped his thinking and his preaching. He came to love the old writers and he saw how much the modern church had lost.
He was ordained in the Church of England in 1952 and began teaching at Tyndale Hall in Bristol. He wrote his first widely read book, Fundamentalism and the Word of God, in 1958, defending the authority of the Bible. In 1961 he wrote an introduction to a reprint of Owen's work on the death of Christ, which reintroduced many readers to the doctrine of the atonement. His book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, in 1961, tried to show that God's sovereignty and the believer's duty to share the gospel work together and do not stand in conflict.
His most famous book was Knowing God, which appeared in 1973. It began as a series of articles and became a bestseller read around the world. It does not stop at telling the reader facts about God. It aims to show that to know God is the great purpose of a human life, and that the believer is to know Him in a living relationship. Packer wrote of the greatness of God, His wisdom, His love and His judgment, and he asked what difference these truths make to the soul. The book has led many people to a deeper faith and has remained in print for decades.
In 1979 Packer moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he taught at Regent College. He stayed there for the rest of his working life. From Vancouver he wrote, lectured and traveled widely. He served as general editor of the English Standard Version of the Bible, which was completed in 2001. He was also a leading voice among evangelical Anglicans. He held firmly to the authority of Scripture, and when his own denomination began to depart from the historic teaching of the church, he took a stand. In 2002 he walked out of a synod of the Anglican Church of Canada over the blessing of same-sex unions and later joined a body that held to the traditional faith.
He was not free from controversy. In 1994 he signed the statement known as Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which many of his fellow evangelicals thought went too far, and he took criticism for it. He accepted the criticism and was not a man to shy away from a stand. He was also known as a humble and generous person who treated those who disagreed with him with respect. His wife, Kit, stood by him for many years, and they had three children. He had a quiet humor and a love of old jazz, and he never lost his Gloucestershire accent.
In his last years he suffered from failing eyesight and from the weakness of age. He continued to write and think until he could no longer do so. He died on July 17, 2020, at the age of ninety-three, a few days short of his birthday.
Packer's life came back always to one theme. The aim of a Christian is to know God, and the way to know Him is through His Word and the work of His Spirit. He wrote that a person is truly educated only when he knows God. His books remain a guide for those who want to follow that path.