![]() ![]() “At the beginning of the meeting, Packer was a gentle skeptic at its end, he was convinced that the Bible was the Word of God. Six weeks later, at a Sunday evening Bible study, Packer came to a stark realization about the nature of the Bible. He had to “come in.” So at the invitation he responded, and at that moment experienced Christian conversion. He immediately recognized what he had to do. It proved critical, for at an evening lecture on Sunday, October 22, 1944, Packer suddenly had a vision of being on the outside looking in. When Packer arrived at Oxford in 1944, he came in contact with the Christian Union. Lewis sparked his thinking further and “…reinforced his growing interest in the truth of Christianity.” 2 His coming in contact with the writings of C. He began to read the Bible and to think through matters relating to the Christian faith. He had never heard anything about conversion. At this stage his Christian faith was nominal. His parents’ gift of a typewriter on his eleventh birthday provided him with a tool he would use throughout his lifelong writing career.Īs a child, Packer attended church along with his parents, and at age 14 went through confirmation. The whole experience became one of his defining moments, setting him on a track of reading, study, and scholarly accomplishment. This event, with its six-month convalescence away from school, led to his immersing himself in books, and gaining a new love of reading. It left him with a hole in his head, over which he wore a metal plate until he entered college. ![]() He sustained a major head injury that sent him to hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove bone fragments and repair the damage as much as possible. Upon entering school in 1933 he was bullied, and on a fateful day at the beginning of the first term, another boy chased him into the path of a passing bread van, which struck him, throwing him to the ground. Born July 22, 1926, in the village of Twyning, near Gloucester, southwest England, where his father worked as a clerk for the Great Western Railway, he began life as a shy, socially awkward, introverted boy in this working class family. Packer’s inauspicious beginnings belie the prominent and influential leader he would become. ![]() In so doing he has emerged as one of the giants of the evangelical world, whose influence will continue for years to come. He has remained faithful to and consistent in his convictions and theological positions, and their application to the Christian life and the ministry of the church. In the face of periodic opposition and criticism-some of it severe and wounding-and being alienated by segments of evangelicalism whose views diverged from his on controversial issues, he charted a straight, sometimes painful, course through the theological currents of the second half of the 20 th Century and into the 21st. Packer’s prodigious influence and leadership in the evangelical world began early. Packer and the Shaping of Modern Evangelicalism.’” 1 This stream of Christianity emphasizes the centrality of the Bible and spiritual rebirth in Christian experience. Such was his influence that in his 1997 biography of Packer Alister McGrath can write, “An entirely appropriate subtitle for this work might have been ‘James I. The life story of James Innell Packer is the story of a shy, introverted young boy of humble beginnings who became a dominant voice guiding the development of British and North American evangelical Christianity after WWII. ![]()
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