In July 2020, James Innell Packer departed this life. The theologian Alister McGrath, a friend of Packer, has provided a guide to his teaching career and the central themes of his work. Born in Gloucester, the son of a railway clerk and grandson of a pub owner who drank too much of his earnings, Packer was an unlikely candidate for scholar and theologian of the Church. But after being grievously injured when struck by a bread truck at age seven, his life was bent towards study, especially after being personally mentored by his school headmaster. An Oxford scholarship was the result. More importantly, Packer underwent a Christian conversion at age eighteen. A discovery of the writings of the Puritans turned his life towards theology and ordination as an Anglican priest. 

For Packer, theology was not an abstract discipline in which the theologian was above the Church; instead it is a devotional discipline that is marked by the relational activities of trusting, loving, worshipping, obeying, serving and glorifying God. Knowing God is Packer’s early classic.  Written in Puritan “plain style,” it is a book for “travellers” that deals with “traveller’s questions.” In later years Packer stressed the need for catechism in the church; we all tend to go off track unless collectively trained in “the significant old.” Eventually his eyesight failed and Packer lost the ability to read. Hence his last writings engaged the topic of human weakness and aging and how the Christian faith is able to “create and sustain a life of hope.” His was a life well-lived to the end. Why not “take and read” Jim’s favourite book, Pilgrim’s Progress?