Influential Theologian J.I. Packer, Author of Knowing God, Dies at 93 –

J.I. Packer, one of the most influential theologians of the past century and the author of Knowing God and more than 40 other books, died July 17. He was 93.

Born in England, Packer served as a professor at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia from 1979 until 2016, when he ended his public ministry due to failing eyesight (macular degeneration).

Although Anglican, Packer had a huge influence on evangelicals; his books were widely assigned and read in Christian colleges and seminaries around the world.

He signed the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy in 1979.

Among his most popular books were Knowing God (1973), A Quest for Godliness (1990), Fundamentalism and the Word of God (1958) and Concise Theology (1993).

He often told his students, “Theology, friends, is doxology.”

Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Calif., said Packer was “a man who had an enormous impact on my life.” Mohler was an 18-year-old young man in the late 1970s who was “trying to figure out what it meant to be a Christian” when he discovered Packer.

“It was reading J.I. Packer’s book, Knowing God …. [that] made a decisive difference in my life,” Mohler said. “For the first time, I had someone talk to me about what it meant to know God – to recast the Christian devotional life … as not only knowing about God but knowing God.”

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