At age seven, James Innell Packer was struck by a van while fleeing a bully outside his school in England. The accident left a permanent mark on his skull and kept him from sports, but it opened up time for reading, a habit that would shape his entire life as a theologian and writer.
At the University of Oxford, Packer attended lectures by C. S. Lewis, and in October 1944 he gave his life to Christ at an evangelistic meeting held by InterVarsity. From then on, his classical studies gave way to a theological calling that would span the 20th century.
Ordained deacon in 1952 and priest in 1953 in the Church of England, he taught Greek, Latin, and theology at Oxford and Bristol. His doctoral thesis on the Puritan Richard Baxter revealed an interest that would mark his entire body of work: the practical spirituality of the English Puritans.
In 1973 he published Knowing God, a book that distinguished knowing about God from truly knowing him, and it sold more than a million and a half copies. The work became essential reading in evangelical churches around the world, uniting theological rigor with personal devotion.
In 1979, he moved to Canada to teach at Regent College in Vancouver, where he remained for nearly four decades, training pastors and Christian leaders. There he strengthened his defense of the authority of Scripture and his passion for Puritan writings, recovered in works like Among God’s Giants.
In 1978, he helped draft the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a document that became a reference point for evangelicals who defended the complete reliability of the Bible against the advance of liberal theology. Years later, he served as general editor of the ESV Bible translation.
Not everything was consensus: his involvement in the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document, in 1994, was criticized by evangelicals who saw it as an improper concession on doctrinal differences, some pointing to an inconsistency between that engagement and his longstanding defense of Reformed doctrine. In 2008, he left the Anglican Church of Canada after a schism over the blessing of same-sex unions, surrendering his ministerial license.
From 2016 on, macular degeneration left him nearly blind, ending decades of relentless reading and writing. Packer died in Vancouver on July 17, 2020, at age 93, days before turning 94, leaving behind a call that still stands: to know God is more than to know about him.
