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"I love pregnant brevity, and some of my material is, I know, packed tight (Packer by name, packer by nature)." So says James Innell Packer about his writing style, to which he adds this apology: "I ask my readers' pardon if they find obscurity due to my over-indulging this love of mine" (God's Word: Studies of Key Bible Themes, 1981).

He need not worry. Packer's ability to address immensely important subjects in crisp, succinct sentences is one of the reasons why, as both author and speaker, he has played such an important role among American evangelicals for four decades.

It is not easy to assess the exact nature of his impact on American evangelicals or the reasons for it. For one thing, Packer has never lived in the United States. Since 1958, his books and essays have been widely read in the States, and he has traveled extensively to address American audiences; yet his activity has proceeded from outside the United States-first from a variety of posts in England, and since 1979 from his position as professor of theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Further, his wide-ranging labor has aimed directly at the shadowy intersection between popular and academic concerns. He is a scholar who found his vocation in popular communication, a popular communicator who never abandoned scholarship.

Complex as it is to assess the impact of this multi-gifted contemporary, the effort is worthwhile. Learning about him may assist us in learning something about ourselves. And making such an effort may even illuminate the cause of Christian truth to which Packer has devoted his adult life.

The making of the wordsmith

J. I. Packer was born in Gloucestershire, England, 70 years ago this past July. At Oxford University he earned B.A. degrees in the classics and theology and a D.Phil. in theology. Important as Oxford was for him academically, it was even more important for his faith: here he fully encountered the Christian gospel and was converted; and from Oxford he set out on his life's course as an interpreter of Scripture and a promoter of classical evangelical theology.

The link between Packer the scholar and Packer the young Christian was his fascination with the Puritans. The Puritans provided for him a subject for doctoral studies, a model for Christian life, and (many years later) the subject matter for one of his most important books, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (1990).

After graduate studies at Oxford, Packer filled a number of posts at Tyndale Hall and College (Bristol) and Latimer House (Oxford), both institutions associated with the evangelical wing of the Church of England. In 1979 he moved to Canada as a professor of theology at Regent College (Vancouver). By that time, however, he was established as a widely read author, and he had already embarked on a far-flung ministry that had taken him to Australia, New Zealand, and many points in North America.

The packing of words

Packer's reputation, early and late, has rested on an ability to penetrate contested issues lying at the heart of Christian faith, and to do so with clarity, profundity, charity, and the benefits of historical learning. The book that first won him a hearing in the United States was 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God: Some Evangelical Principles (1958), which he published in the wake of controversy over Billy Graham's landmark visit to Great Britain in 1955. His conclusion for this substantial but pithy volume marked out a path from which he has never deviated. Packer recognized merit in criticism of evangelicalism, but he did not waver from expressing clear, evangelical convictions: "We must keep before us the real issues in this debate … the authority of Christ and of Scripture; the relation between the Bible and reason; the method of theology, and the meaning of repentance; the choice between Evangelicalism and Subjectivism."

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September 16 1996, Vol. 40, No. 10