“J. I. Packer in His Own Words”: A 20-Minute Documentary on His Early Life, Theological Influences, and Enduring Legacy

It has been an honor for Crossway to publish Leland Ryken’s new biography, J. I. Packer: An Evangelical Life, and Sam Storms’s study, Packer on the Christian Life: Knowing God in Christ, Walking by the Spirit. 

We have also had the opportunity to publish several of his most recent books, including:

Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging (2014)
Weakness Is the Way: Life with Christ Our Strength (2013)
Taking God Seriously: Vital Things We Need to Know (2013)

Who is J. I. Packer?

He once described himself as “English by birth, Canadian by choice, Christian by conversion, and Calvinist by conviction, I speak as an evangelical who finds his home in the worldwide Anglican church family.”

Sam Storms describes Packer as a  Puritan, theological exegete, and latter-day catechist—based on the following self-designations from Packer:

I would ask you to think of me as a Puritan: by which I mean, think of me as one who, like those great seventeenth-century leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, seeks to combine in himself the roles of scholar, preacher, and pastor, and speaks to you out of that purpose.

[My goal as a Christian theologian] is not adequately expressed by saying that I am to uphold an evangelical conservatism of generically Reformed or specifically Anglican or neo-Puritan or interdenominational pietist type, though I have been both applauded and booed on occasion for doing all these things, and I hope under God to continue to do them. But if I know myself I am first and foremost a theological exegete.

[I am] a latter-day catechist—not, indeed, a children’s catechist (I am not good with children), but what may be called an adult or higher catechist, one who builds on what children are supposed to be taught in order to spell out at adult level the truths we must live by and how we are to live by them.

My colleagues Jon Marshall and Josh Dennis have filmed a beautiful documentary of this gracious and Christocentric octogenarian, allowing a fascinating father in the faith to speak in his own words:

J. I. Packer, “Inerrancy and the Divinity and Humanity of the Bible,” in Honouring the Written Word of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer, Volume 3, 162 (emphasis added).

J. I. Packer, “In Quest of Canonical Interpretation,” in Honouring the Written Word of God, 223 (emphasis mine).

J. I. Packer, “Reflection and Response,” in J. I. Packer and the Evangelical Future, 174 (emphasis mine).