His last published was Finishing Our Course with Joy (2014). One of his biographers, Leland Ryken, noted that “Although Packer could write specialized scholarship with the best, his calling was to write mid-level scholarship for the layperson… he regarded his informal theological writings for the layperson to be his calling.”īeginning in 1958 Packer authored no fewer than 47 books. In 2005 he was named as one of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals by Time Magazine. Packer was deeply influenced by the works of John Calvin and the English Puritans and brought seventeenth-century Puritan devotion to life for both his students and his readers. “Thus (for instance) in relation to evil, the balconeer’s problem is to find a theoretical explanation of how evil can consist with God’s sovereignty and goodness, but the traveller’s problem is how to master evil and bring good out of it.” The scholar believed that theology should lead to doxology : “Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology.” He wanted it to be a practical road map for travellers, not for onlookers on balconies only theorizing, watching pilgrims passing below. In its foreword Packer wrote: “As clowns yearn to play Hamlet, so I have wanted to write a treatise on God.” In his self-effacing manner, he said it was “at best a string of beads” but for millions of readers around the globe, Knowing God was indeed a veritable treatise on God, and a spiritual treasure. A prolific writer of almost 70 books, he is probably best known for the spiritual classic, Knowing God (1973). Packer was an English-born theologian in the evangelical Anglican and Reformed tradition who during the last half of his adult life called Canada his home. One of the most influential evangelicals in the English-speaking world died on July 17, just shy of his 94th birthday.
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