J. I. Packer Quotes
Not until we have become humble and teachable, standing in awe of God's holiness and sovereignty...a cknowledging our own littleness, distrusting our own thoughts, and willing to have our minds turned upside down, can divine wisdom become ours.
Packer, J. I. Knowing God. InterVarsity Press, 1973, p. 97.
Bigots in Judeo Christian societies have always justified their bigotry with Biblical passages which they take our of context or interpret as supporting—sometimes commanding—their views. Just as the overwhelming majority of clerics in the world condemned slavery just before the Civil War, a few Southern ministers could be found who claimed that slavery was God’s will and cited Biblical passages in support of their inhuman viewpoints.
James Innell Packer was an English-born Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, known for his best-selling book, Knowing God, written in 1973, as well as his work as an editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He was one of the high-profile signers on the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a member on the advisory board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and also was involved in the ecumenical book Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994. His last teaching position was as the board of governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, in which he served from 1996 until his retirement in 2016 due to failing eyesight.
