Pointing to the Pasturelands

I. Packer J.

Description

All theology is doxology.Anglican theologian J. I. Packer was one of the most widely respected Christian writers of the twentieth century. Author of over forty books and named one of the most influential evangelicals by Time magazine and the readers of Christianity Today, Packer's impact is immense. He was known for profound theological writing that was always lively and worshipful.Pointing to the Pasturelands recovers several decades of Packer's contributions to the pages of Christianity Today. This includes his editorial columns, longer articles, and brief answers to readers' theology questions. The book concludes with a profile of Packer from Mark A. Noll. Enjoy timeless insights from a man whose life was devoted to knowing God and making him known.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology
• Theology
• History of religions
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Lexham Press
• Date de parution: 10 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683595441
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

POINTING
to the
PASTURELANDS
Reflections on Evangelicalism, Doctrine, & Culture
J. I. PACKER
Pointing to the Pasturelands: Reflections on Evangelicalism, Doctrine, & Culture
Best of Christianity Today
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are the author’s translation or are from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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Scripture quotations marked ( NIV 84) are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked Revised Standard Version ( RSV ) are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Print ISBN 9781683595434
Digital ISBN 9781683595441
Library of Congress Control Number 2021940532
Lexham Editorial: Elliot Ritzema, Abigail Stocker, Abigail Salinger
Cover Design: George Siler, Brittany Schrock
CONTENTS
Foreword by Russell Moore
Part 1: Columns
1 Satan Scores Twice
2 ’Tecs, Thrillers, and Westerns
3 A Bad Trip
4 The Unspectacular Packers
5 Great George
6 All That Jazz
7 An Accidental Author
8 Decadence à la Mode
9 What Lewis Was and Wasn’t
10 It’s Wrong to Eat People
11 Nothing Fails Like Success
12 John’s Holy Sickness
13 Hype and Human Humbug
14 Mistaking Rome for Heaven
15 The Prayboy Club
16 Klaus Bockmuehl’s Rich Legacy
17 Why I Like My Pie in the Sky
18 Humor Is a Funny Thing
19 Fan Mail to Calvin
20 How Will I Be Remembered?
21 Surprised by Graphics
22 God’s Plumber and Sewage Man
23 Bungee-Jumping, Anyone?
24 Packer the Picketed Pariah
25 The Whale and the Elephant
26 Fear of Looking Forward
27 When Prayer Doesn’t “Work”
Part 2: Articles
28 Fundamentalism: The British Scene
29 Christianity and Non-Christian Religions
30 Charismatic Renewal: Pointing to a Person and a Power
31 Walking to Emmaus with the Great Physician
32 Poor Health May Be the Best Remedy
33 How to Recognize a Christian Citizen
34 What Do You Mean When You Say “God”?
35 The Reality Cure
36 Rome’s Persistent Renewal
37 Why I Left
38 What Is at Stake?
39 The Devil’s Dossier
40 Pleasure Principles
41 Why I Signed It
42 Thank God for Our Bibles
43 Still Surprised by Lewis
44 Wisdom in a Time of War
45 Why I Walked
46 The Joy of Ecclesiastes
Part 3: Good Questions
47 Can the Dead Be Converted?
48 Did God Die on the Cross?
49 Is Satan Omnipresent?
50 Hell’s Final Enigma
51 Text Criticism and Inerrancy
52 Prayers for Salvation
53 Experiencing God’s Presents
54 Reflected Glory
55 Incarnate Forever
56 All Sins Are Not Equal
57 Salvation Sans Jesus
Conclusion: Count Your Surprises
Epilogue: The Last Puritan
Sources
Scripture Index
FOREWORD
O n the same summer day in 2020, the world lost two historic figures—the civil rights leader John Lewis and the evangelical Anglican theologian J. I. Packer. What immediately came to my mind, for both of them, was the word “trouble.” Lewis, of course, had said, “Never, ever, be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Packer, much less memorably but just as truthfully, had once said, “Like a good pietist I’ve always wanted peace, and like Richard Baxter I’ve been involved with trouble, trouble, trouble, all the way.” In both cases, the notion of “good trouble” was able to sum up a life.
In Lewis’s case, many of us know exactly what is meant by “good trouble.” After all, despite the fact that we came to know him as an refined, elderly leader in the halls of Congress, we had all seen the pictures of him as a young man, beaten and bloodied by segregationist police forces attacking him and his fellow protesters as they marched against the Edmund Pettus Bridge. We thought of Lewis in terms of his courage in taking on an unjust and violent Jim Crow system in the American South. For Packer, though, the concept of “trouble” might not seem as readily evident.
After all, most evangelical Christians came to know Packer through his writings about God, the gospel, and the way of spiritual formation. For some, that came because someone handed them a copy of Knowing God in a church small-group study. For me, it came through my reading, as a teenage Baptist in Mississippi, of Packer’s columns each month in Christianity Today . I once talked to a Roman Catholic businessman who knew very little about evangelical Christianity but said he had read several of the Puritans. “How did you come across the Puritans?” I asked. He explained that Packer’s work on evangelical-Catholic cooperation had led him backward to many of Packer’s interests—including the Puritans he loved. Packer no doubt knew he was trying to introduce John Owen, Richard Sibbes, and others to a new generation of evangelicals, but he probably never imagined that such efforts would cross the Tiber too.
However we were first introduced to Packer, most of us were drawn to him not because he was in “trouble,” but because he seemed to us to be the antidote to much of what we saw had gone awry in evangelical Christianity.
When many were angry culture warriors, Packer was winsome and calm. When many were emotionally manipulative, Packer was reasonable. When many were anti-intellectual, Packer took the mind seriously. When many seemed to reduce Christian theology to syllogisms, Packer modeled piety and warmth of heart. When many wanted to downplay the supernatural or the morally rigorous aspects of the Christian faith to gain a hearing with modern culture, Packer pointed us back to the old paths of biblical authority. When many others wanted to keep narrowing evangelicalism down to an ever-smaller remnant of the convinced, Packer sought to remind us that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism—and that we have no right to seek a kingdom smaller than the one for which Christ died. In each of these, Packer took his readers seriously—and he spoke to us with both authority and tranquility, with both reason and compassion. I suspect most of us believed what seemed to be true to me as a young man reading those Christianity Today columns: that if we were ever to meet J. I. Packer , we would find not an evangelical “celebrity” but a Christian who would seem to us almost like a grandfather in the faith, ready to pray with us and to encourage us to keep trusting Jesus.
This doesn’t seem like trouble. But looking back over Packer’s life, we do indeed see trouble. Liberal Christians dismissed Packer as a “fundamentalist” because of his commitment to biblical inerrancy and the supernatural realities of Christian orthodoxy, while conservative evangelical separatists denounced him for staying within the Anglican Communion. Even within that communion, higher-church Anglicans sometimes saw him as too much of a “Billy Graham” type of evangelical, while lower-church evangelicals sometimes ignored his commitment to the sacraments. Progressives opposed him for his refusal to “evolve” on matters of sexual ethics, while the more narrowly Reformed of his fellow evangelicals acted betrayed when he coauthored and signed the “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” statement. This was all trouble. And, at every point, when Packer believed the integrity of faith or witness was at stake—whether in biblical inerrancy or in avoiding unnecessary schism in his church or any other matter—he was willing to stand and to speak and to write.
The reason we don’t think first of his “trouble,” though, is precisely for the reason he mentioned. He was a pietist. He loved Jesus, and he loved Jesus’s church. He was not, as are so many, a quarrelsome fighter seeking to find a “brand” by the intensity with which he fought his opponents. Instead, Packer truly believed that those who disagreed with him could be persuaded. And his primary audience was not those seeking the entertainment of controversy, but the One he knew would greet him at the judgment seat—One for whom the kingdom of God consists not in theatrics but in power, One who sees such power won not in an argument but in an empty tomb.
In all of this, Packer showed us what it was like to age and to die—without vindictiveness, revenge, bitterness, or moral collapse. His convictions were clear, but he was not spending his life seeking to police boundaries or to hunt heretics. Perhaps that is why books by authors who never would have spoken to each other would bear endorsement blurbs by J. I. Packer.
His life was one long column of what it means to know God and to grow into Christ, in suffering but always with joy. As you read this collection of essays, you can perceive what it means to be a thoughtful, reasonable, joyful model of evangelical Christianity. Behind all of these words, from various eras of his life, Packer shows us what it means to be in good trouble because he shows us what it means to carry good news.
—Russell Moore
Public Theologian,
Christianity Today
Part 1
COLUMNS
--> Chapter 1
SATAN SCORES TWICE
I t is distressing to see an old friend in trouble. It is doubly so when the trouble i