Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: JI Packer was for many years professor of Historic and Systematic Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is a senior editor of Christianity Today and author of numerous books, including Knowing God, Rediscovering Holiness, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, and Quest for Godliness. He is an ordained Anglican minister and holds a doctorate of Philosophy from Oxford University.
On September 26, 2008, he sat down and answered questions from C.S. lewis Institute fellows and local pastors.
Dr. Packer, which writers have influenced you the most and which writers would you recommend?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Well, let me say at once that you asked me which writers, in my understanding of myself, have had most influence on me, and that's a different question from which writers would I recommend? But I'm going to answer the autobiographical question first, and then I will decide whether I'm going to say anything more.
John Calvin, Martin luther, John Bunyan, 17th century Puritan, John Owen, Richard Baxter, two more 17th century Puritans, Abraham Kuyper, a Dutchman, C.S. lewis and C.S. lewis, Buddy Charles Williams, who is little known but who has had a tremendous influence on me, not so much in forming my doctrinal understanding as in giving me imaginative projections which give color to the doctrinal understanding.
In other words, it's William's fiction first and then his bits of biography and theology afterwards that have made the difference.
People ordinarily have their own favorites among the inklings. Well, Williams is my favorite, although he's the most uneven of them.
Lewis, however, is the one who I think has given me most.
But I love them both.
Is there anyone else?
Yes, the first Bishop of Liverpool, John Charles Ryle, who was an evangelical popular writer, devotionally extremely strong.
His roots grow well down in the Puritan and Reformed perspective.
A wonderful communicator, in my judgment.
And his judgment on just about everything seems to me to have been as sound as a bell. He has given me a great deal.
That's the personal answer.
And then, well, all right, who do I recommend?
Get I will make a recommendation. Get the CS Lewis corpus of the corpus of theological writings, expository and apologetic. Get that under your belt.
Read John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, both parts, once a year.
I do that.
I don't see why you shouldn't.
Dip into Luther and Calvin and see whether you like them.
Liking does actually play a big part, I think, in the appreciation of both.
Some find both of them difficult, and some find both of them enormously congenial.
Try yourself out by dipping into both of them.
Beyond that, You do know I'm going to be very bold and lapse into bad manners and recommend two of my own books.
Apologies in advance, but I think that you'll benefit from my book Knowing God, which has had a very wide ministry over the nearly 40 years that it's been going.
And I think you will benefit you. I'm thinking of you as you know the CS Lewis Fellows, people who take seriously the furnishing of the mind with truth.
I think you will get benefit from my book Concise Theology published by Tyndall House, which is, I hope, popular. It's meant to be popular. A popular survey of the whole of Christian doctrine.
If I was a fool, I would ask. I would test the meeting to see if anyone has read it and I would ask anyone who has what they thought of it. But I'm not such a fool as that.
I'm simply telling you I think that it's more likely than not that you will get help from my attempt briefly to survey the whole range of Christian theology in a Bible based way and as far as possible to make it simple sing in the course of the exposition of it.
Well, that's enough of that. You will agree.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Dr. Packer, would you be willing to share how you go about your devotional life and the materials you use?
[00:06:24] Speaker B: I don't think I got anything out of the ordinary to share.
Like other Christians, I try to get up in the morning early enough to start the day with God and the Bible. Shall I say with God through the Bible.
I've been telling people for years that every Christian worth his salt ought to read the Bible from COVID to cover every year.
And I do that myself by using the one year Bible that Tyndale House publishes. I don't know whether you know, gives you every day a hunk of the Old Testament, a passage from the New Testament, a psalm or part of a psalm and something from the Proverbs.
And you do get through the whole Bible and the psalm Psalter twice in the course of a year.
The version that is used is the one that Tyndale House markets, the New Living Bible.
Now it's a scholarly update in that sense. A revised version of the Living Bible that Kenneth Taylor produced a generation back.
Kenneth Taylor paraphrased, I think it was the NIV for his children.
He wasn't a scholar, he was a communicator.
And that's where the text of the Living Bible came from. Very vivid, very lively, but sometimes inaccurate.
And what you have in the New Living is the language of the Living Bible retained with all Its vividness, indeed with increased vividness in many places.
It's still a paraphrase, but it's a scholarly paraphrase and it's not a word for word translation. But, but semantically, if you know that good word, semantically it is very accurate. That is, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, the New Living Translation catches the range of meaning that's being expressed.
So that if you ask the question, is this paraphrase expressing as much as the writer was expressing? The answer is again and again, yes.
Is it expressing less than the writer was expressing or was concerned to express, or more than he was concerned to express? The answer in each case is no. It is semantically accurate. The range of meaning is well covered.
Now, I'm not, what can I say?
I'm not a salesman for the New Living Translation because I was the general editor for a quite different translation that is an update of the Revised Standard Version, published now under the title, under the label the.
The English Standard Version, published also in Wheaton, but by a different firm, the firm of Crossway, incidentally. Next month a study version or study Bible using the ESV as text is going to be published. I've had a hand in that also, and I will express the view that it sets a new standard in study Bibles altogether.
And if I had to recommend a Bible for academic use, I would say the English Standard Version, which has all the strengths of the old RSV and a lot of the wording of the old rsv, and it has none of the weaknesses and limitations which the old RSV had, at least not so in my estimate, that's the one to go for.
But nonetheless, I can appreciate a semantically skillful paraphrase version.
I can enjoy its vividness.
I can be stimulated by that vividness.
And in my daily reading of Scripture, I use the One Year Bible and am so stimulated.
You'll find that there are any number of remarkable, how shall I say, remarkable aptnesses in the way that the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalm and Proverbs passages fit together.
It's a lovely tool for devotional use. This is.
Well, I read the Bible, and as I read it, I ask questions in order to get my thoughts into shape.
I think that when one reads the Bible, one always ought to be asking questions. And my Questions are basically 3.
What does this show me about God? God?
What does this teach me about life?
What does. What direction does this give me for my life today?
And you need to go through questions one and two before you're qualified really to answer Question three.
Otherwise you will answer three on the basis of impressionism and you will, in the outcome, miss a great deal of what each passage has to say to you.
I expect you have proved this of experience.
What does it tell you about God? What does it tell you about life with its ups and downs, with its joys and sorrows, with its temptations and its battles with so on, its responsibilities and so on, so forth?
There's a lot of thinking to do, but it's fruitful thinking.
And whether I do it well, of course, is another question. But this is what I try to do then.
Well, it comes after it comes in. It comes round in due course that it's breakfast time and on with the day's work.
I try during the day to remember whom I belong to and whom I'm serving.
I do try to cultivate practice, what they call arrow prayers, you know, where you're constantly making remarks or offering questions or reactions or praises to God as you go along.
It's called in some circles the practice of the presence of God. I'm not very good at it, but I try to do it.
And it does become more and more of a habit the more you try so that I'm attempting, you see, to live consciously in God's presence presence. As the day goes on in relationships, I try to remember that I must behave godly. And I try to control my tongue and my temper and sometimes my impatience.
And certainly when I'm in any sort of relation to another human being, I try to focus my interest on. On that human being and ask myself now, have I got any ministry to this human being?
The answer may be yes, the answer may be no. But at least one tries to act friendly and respectful and affirmative and warm. In all these relationships I have to fight my natural tendencies to shy withdrawal that's there in my makeup. And I have to counter it. Well, I try to counter it.
None of us ought to allow ourselves to be victims, to fall victims to our own temperament. So it's rather important that at some stage we should do an inventory of our temperament and discovery what our discover what our natural inclinations are and discern where there are weaknesses and whether there.
Where there are changes that could be made with advantage.
And then eventually comes bedtime.
By bedtime I am personally bushed.
So I don't attempt to do any serious praying at night.
Wish God good night and off to sleep.
Well, that's me. I have to do all my serious praying in the morning.
There are evening people, of course, same as there are Morning people.
Usually one. There's one of each in every marriage relationship.
One is an owl and the other is a lark. You've heard all that and you've observed that it's true, and it's not surprising it should be true. Opposites attract, did you know that?
Oh, yes, but that's not what I'm being asked about, so I won't say any more about it.
But seriously, find out when you are firing on all cylinders mentally and give God that good, good time rather than waiting until you're half asleep already before you start trying to talk to him seriously about anything.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Dr. Packer, what counsel would you give to those involved in church planning and disciple making?
[00:17:08] Speaker B: I would say understand that making disciples means making learners.
A friend of mine, recently deceased, published a book on this subject with the arresting title, Go make learners.
That was his way of paraphrasing, go and make disciples.
Disciples are learners. That's what the word means.
And of course, there won't be learning unless there's teaching.
So I'm going to tell the gang tomorrow that I may speak to tomorrow about the occasion when I was a theological student at a liberal college, learning, oh, yes, I did learn some things there, but I learned by reaction. That is, I learned by asking myself after each lecture, why did I disagree with so much of that? And making myself answer the question thoroughly.
Well, there came a moment of joy than the elaborate acreage of rather dreary liberal instruction in this seminary when a visiting lecturer said that in the pastoral ministry there are three priorities.
The first is teach and the second is teach, and the third is teach. And I thought that was a wonderful way of expressing, expressing a wonderful truth.
It seemed obvious to me before ever I got into pastoral ministry that that has to be the case.
And since I got into ministry, my ministry has had a pastoral dimension. Over the years I've had occasion to prove that, yes, indeed, that's the way it must be.
There are existing patterns of ministry which are intended to inspire and encourage and, how can I say, warm the heart and all that kind of thing, but without teaching, where the truths that are handled are simple truths that everybody knows already and they are just there in the sermon as a launch pad for the application.
Well, I have in my hand the Bible.
This is God's lesson, or series of lessons, if you like.
I want to teach the truth that's in the Bible.
I want to teach the range of the books, the contents of the books that make up the Bible.
I want people to thoroughly understand what the various writers of the Bible were concerned to convey.
And I try to ensure that in every bit of ministry that I do, whatever else the ministry is intended to accomplish, that there is real serious teaching at the heart of what I say, teach, teach, teach.
And if you ask whether Packer supposes himself at this very moment to be teaching, the answer is, yes, he does.
It becomes a mindset.
And well, that, it seems to me, is the way of wisdom. In church planting.
You gather a little group of people maybe, but people who are willing to be taught and you work with them. You don't have to set yourself up on a pedestal. Indeed, you're not likely to get very far if you do, you generate rather a sense of fellowship between you and them and them and each other, of course, and altogether you are moving forward into becoming a church. But your particular job as the church planting agent is teaching, teach, teach.
Keep the people who are going to become the congregation learning. Keep them aware that the Christian life really is meant to be a matter of learning from the moment it starts to the grave.
And ask for what, in effect, is a moral contract.
I'm going to teach.
I want you to agree that you'll come along with me and labor to learn.
Christianity needs to be learned.
It isn't the religion that is instinctive to all good men, which is what liberals of the old generation used to think.
It is a faith that has to be taught. Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said, go make learners.
So this is the really big thing that I would say, which I don't find said in all the texts that I see, because I don't see them all. But I do see some texts about church planting and wisdom for doing it. Tips about this, that and the other.
That's my burden.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Dr. Packer, what is your perspective on how the culture in the United States affects Christians?
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Well, I would answer that off the top of my head by saying everything, it seems to me, in US culture conspires to make us worldly, worldly minded, preoccupied with the things, perfectly lawful things most of the time, that are involved in keeping going in this life.
But these things preoccupy us so that spiritual concerns just don't preoccupy us. And I think we've got to watch against the pressure of the world to make us worldly.
We who live in. Who live in North America.
I don't live in the United States, but I live in southern British Columbia. The United States is only half an hour's drive away, so I think I know pretty much what it's like living here.
Beyond that. Well, no, let me elaborate it a little. Material values are insidious.
The bank balance, a nice home, getting on in terms of place and position in the firm, or getting on with the business that you've started yourself, getting ahead.
It's.
Well, it's the preoccupation that will most certainly get hold of you if you don't deliberately set yourself to counter it.
And you counter it by saying, now wait a minute, I am in this world to love and serve the God who saved me.
I am in this world to help people any way that I can.
These are my priorities.
On the Lord's day, for instance, I put fellowship with his people in church before the allurements of the countryside and the golf course and all that sort of thing.
I try to get my priorities clear and stick to them in that way.
Well, that's the way I think that we learn to counter the pressure to be worldly, that is simply living in terms of the set of values that unbelievers around us live by.
And we just have to be disciplined about it because the pressure is constantly on.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Dr. Packer, what is your perspective on how spiritual darkness operates in the West?
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Well, my perspective can be stated quite briefly.
I do believe that the world is full of hostile spiritual powers, just as the sixth chapter of Ephesians indicated when Paul wrote it nearly 2,000 years ago. I don't think anything has changed there.
I do believe, however, that the way of Satan and his cohorts is in Lisa in North America these days is to keep out of sight.
They don't always do that.
There are cultural situations in, in Africa and in some equatorial parts near the near equatorial parts of the world where Satan and his hosts gain more by frightening people, having them running scared from morning to night, scared of evil spirits, than he would gain by keeping out of sight.
So he has them running scared and scores that way.
But for us in the sophisticated west, he achieves far more by concealing himself.
And his spirits achieve far more by concealing themselves than by coming out into the open.
So your textbook to psych you up and arm you for the real spiritual warfare will be CS Lewis's Crew Tape Letters, an all time classic on the limited but within its limits, often effective wisdom of Satan on how to achieve corrupting effects while keeping out of sin.
And the focus of spiritual warfare must be there on whether we succeed in walking with God in a disciplined, consistent, holy way, despite all that the world throws at us and all the influences that might divert us from that or whether Satan gets us down in relation to what we know we should be and had hoped to be.
And I don't believe this negative, I think is important, though it may be controversial. I don't believe that the focus of spiritual warfare there is the disturbed minds of folk who may be suffering from a nervous breakdown or it may be more than that.
Our friends in the charismatic movement have been inclined to say, well, this is the center, this is the center of spiritual warfare.
Satan gets at the minds of people and tries to take them over. And we must try and develop pastoral and prayer techniques for dispossessing Satan of control of these people. In other words, spiritual warfare is with influences that don't appear on the surface and call attention to themselves rather than with erratic behavior on the part of anyone which does call attention to itself.
That's the controversial thing.
It's what I would argue against some of my charismatic friends.
I'll leave it to you to decide whether you would want to go along with me in thus arguing.
But I tell you that for me, that's the center and focus of our spiritual warfare.
The purpose of Satan and his cohorts is to allure us into sin and unbelief, and the battle is to keep clear of both and continue believing and rejoicing and obeying and living a holy life.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Dr. Packer, what theological trends do you see that concern you?
[00:30:55] Speaker B: We are certainly moving further and further into a multi religious milieu.
And in a multi religious milieu we can guarantee that there will be quite a number of liberal theologians who will speak, spend their strength arguing the unity of all religions.
So we can expect that as an option or a matter for debate and discussion to continue pretty much near the center of the world church. Well, at least the North American church, church's agenda.
There is also the understanding, the question of understanding fallen human nature and rehabilitating the doctrine of sin.
We are extremely weak, I think, all of us when it comes to stating the doctrine of sin in a modern context.
I don't mean by that that we don't have our formulations for affirming the reality of sin well worked out. I think we do. But they are formulations that seem to be 2 or 3 or 400 years old and they don't interact with what goes on consciously in the minds of unchurched people today.
A lot of church people do also.
So I think we need to work on the doctrine of sin and try and get beyond our present shallowness about it.
I don't See, evangelicalism being threatened at the moment by any particular theological point of view.
Evangelicalism really in theological circles, that is the circles occupied by the academics who go annually to conferences for the study of Old Testament, New Testament and theology.
At the moment, as I say, even amongst people who go to those conferences, evangelicalism has earned its so quite a bit of respect.
And it's recognized that the quality of evangelical expositions, of evangelical positions, the trustworthiness of scripture for instance, and therefore the historic and biblically attested dates for the biblical documents and with the date, the melia for them and so on, so forth, all of that, it's recognized, can be rationally defended and is being rationally defended by evangelicals. And it's become, I mean that sort of defense has become a respectable option.
When I was converted and started doing theology, well there were more than half a cent century ago, it wasn't a respectable option.
People knew that it was. They knew pretty much. Well, they could know because the books were there. They knew pretty much what evangelicals thought, but they were convinced that evangelical theology was obscurantist and outdated and not worthy of respect.
Well, evangelical scholarship, theological scholarship has blossomed to such an extent during the last half century that I don't think anyone can say that now.
And that's advance.
So as I say, we've gained some strength, we've earned some respect.
And from that standpoint, the priority for us is don't allow evangelicals, don't allow ourselves to fall back into any form of obscurantism or old fashioned fundamentalism or whatever.
Keep on with the kind of thoughtful, scholarly, biblically faithful scholarship of which there is already so much in existence if we know where to look for it.
There are a lot of evangelical publishers and they are publishing a lot of theologically respectable stuff.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Dr. Packer, what would you say to those who may be turned off by Puritan theologians because of Jonathan Edwards sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Well, the first answer is that Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is one of rather more than a thousand sermons of which Edwards wrote out the text. He always had a manuscript with him whenever he preached.
It isn't at the center of his ministry.
It was a sermon which in fact he preached in his own church.
Nobody, it seems, turned a hair.
Then he preached it in another church and it became the focus of a movement of repentance and revival.
It was very unfair to Jonathan Edwards to judge him simply as a specialist on the horrors of hell.
Well, he is in fact a very Great theologian across the board.
And once you get into the study of Jonathan Edwards, well, you can make pretty much a lifetime out of your interest.
And the Puritans, a number of them, were theologians of great stature. Richard Baxter, John Owen, Richard Sibbes.
They, I think, are the three frontrunners.
Along behind them and close to them come people like Thomas Goodwin, Thomas Watson, John Flavel, the Banner of Truth. Incidentally, keep these, most of these in print for us, which is very good.
Well, those are enough names perhaps to be going on with, but they were theological leaders in their own day, these fellows, and they deserve that much respect and that much careful study.
I've benefited, I would suppose, equally from both Baxter and Owen.
Their strengths are very different.
Owen is a master theologian.
Every point that he makes established from Scripture and the whole section synthesis of divine wisdom that he produces is consistently amazing, amazing in its fullness, amazing in its depth, amazing in its thoroughness, and amazing in its appeal directly to the conscience for admiration and praise and trust.
In that sense, Owen is a devotional theologian, although most of the topics on which he wrote were, well, theological topics as distinct. Distinct from what we would call devotional topics.
He is hard reading, but you get used to him.
Richard Baxter, on the other hand, is the co summit pastor preacher or preacher pastor.
He did a magnificent job virtually converting the town of Kidderminster where He ministered for 17 years.
He wrote a whole series of treatises which are both theologically very strong and devotionally very moving. He had a wonderful gift of sanctified rhetoric.
He also wrote the Reformed Pastor, which is a classic on the minister's identity and, well, identity and practice. Let me say it still is up with the leaders, whoever the leaders in that field are. For you, for you and for me.
He wasn't so much of a success as a theologian. But you don't read Richard Baxter for his theological explorations. You read him for his understanding of people and sin in the human system and grace in the human system.
Redemption, regeneration, sanctification.
Now that area.
He produced an old time classic compendium of Puritan wisdom about the Christian life in his one volume Christian Director.
I say one volume. There were about 800 pages. No, there aren't a thousand pages of it. And the print is tiny and the vitamin content is pretty much unlimited.
Those are the first two and they're equal. And Sibbes comes along behind.
In the 17th century, Sibbes was called, sounds rather uncouth today, the Sweet Dropper, because he was constantly writing about conversion and the encouragements that operate at different times and seasons and situations in the Christian life and today across the ages is enormously heartening to read.
You read some pages of sibs and you find that you're encouraged and strengthened for whatever it is that's facing you for the rest of the day.
Well, just those three I mentioned. There's Bunyan, of course. I read Pilgrim's Progress, both parts, annually.
And I would recommend all of you and all the clergy that I ever talked to to do the same.
Perkins is wonderful as a pioneer. That is to say, he was the first Puritan to write straightforward, practical devotional handbooks. Small books to guide people in faith and repentance and Christian life and all its different aspects.
And he's always clear and he's always strong and he's always coherent and he's always thorough in the way that he thinks things out.
But he isn't colorful in the way that Rick Baxter, Owen and Sibbes, each, in his different fashion, are colorful.
And all the topics that he deals with as a pioneer get dealt with again by other Puritans publishing their books, their devotional books, which are really series of sermons written up for the press in nearly every case.
And these later Puritan, later Puritan practical books do cover all the areas in which Perkins wrote pioneer material.
That's what I think about Perkins.
As for William Ames, well, his fame as a Puritan Rests on his very concise systematic theology.
I can't remember what he calls it now.
The marrow of divinity. Yes, that's right.
And his equally concise ethics, which he publishes under the title of conscience. The cases and power thereof.
And there's any amount of wisdom capsuled into William Ames. There really is.
I'm not saying that he's infallible. I am saying that he's enormously instructive and enormously nourishing.
He was an alum, really, of Perkins.
I think he was converted under Perkins ministry. And certainly Perkins mentored him.
Look in mercy on us, Lord. Gathered in this circle here we are, sinners, saved by grace, gifted by your Holy Spirit, burdened with responsibilities of ministry, caring for your flock as shepherds care for the sheep.
Who is sufficient for these things is the question that forces itself on all of us.
And the answer is that in every case, we are not sufficient for these things. Unless you, Lord, send your Holy Spirit, spirit of Christ, in power to us, to enable us to live with insight and wisdom and to speak with power and piercing force.
Sanctify us, then, we pray, Father, so that the gifts you've given us may be fully used for the furtherance of your kingdom and the health of your people.
Bless each one in this circle and the congregation that he serves and constantly enrich us so that we may enrich others and keep us all close to the cross. We pray we know that something's going wrong if we are ever out of sight of the Cross in the thinking and the teaching that we do we know that pride creeps in and often becomes a barrier between us as witnesses and acceptance of the truth to which we point.
Grant Lord that those who receive from us may never be able to detect pride in us as a distinction distracting and distorting factor in what we say.
But rather Lord, may faithfulness be the quality that everyone sees in each one of us.
Faithfulness to your word and faithfulness to our Savior.
And so Lord bless us as people and bless us in our ministries for Christ our Savior's sake.
Amen.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: The proceeding was approved.
