THE COLLECTED SHORTER WRITINGS OF J. I. PACKER
Vol. 1: Celebrating the saving work of God
Vol. 2: Serving the people of God. Paternoster. £19.99 each
ISBN 0853644964 and 0853649049
I have strong - if occasionally ambivalent - feelings about James Packer. The day before I left for university, the minister of the local church gave me a copy of Packer's God's Words.
This was to be my first introduction to solid evangelical theology and was to kindle a passion which has remained with me ever since. To discover that one could be an evangelical and think about one's faith was a moment of true enlightenment. In the years that followed, God's Words was joined on my bookshelf by Knowing God, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 'Fundamentalism' and the Word of God, and (my favourite) Keep in step with the Spirit. Each had a profound effect upon my own thinking. I confess that Packer's Anglicanism confused me then and still does so - I guess I'm an unreconstructed M L-J man on that score - but the fact that he was a jazz fanatic almost compensated for what I perceived to be his ecclesiological failings. After all, it is surely impossible not to be impressed by a man who can cite Jelly Roll Morton and the Red Hot Peppers in a theological essay.
