Retire? Not in Bible, not in plans

J.I. Packer finding much to do at 82

By Sue Nowicki
snowicki@modbee.com

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It's been a good year for J.I. Packer, one of the world's best-known theologians. In March, the Anglican pastor and Regent College professor won Bible of the Year and Book of the Year honors for editing the English Standard Version Study Bible. He also released two of his own books — "Praying: Finding Our Way Through Duty to Delight," in June, and a yearlong devotional using his seminal work, "Knowing God," due out later this month.

Packer, listed as one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" in 2005, sat down with The Bee at the Christian Book Expo in Dallas earlier this year to talk on a wide range of subjects, from growing up in England to C.S. Lewis' impact on his life to becoming embroiled in the Anglican/Episcopal dispute. Here's what he had to say:

Q: How old are you?

A: 82. You know, the Bible doesn't have the word "retirement" and it doesn't even have the words "slow down."

Q: When you were a young lad in England, what did you think you would be when you grew up?

A: A teacher. Not because I knew anything about the various professional possibilities, but because my mother had been a teacher and a very good one. I know now that if I'd been properly assessed in terms of potential — none of that was done in the 1930s and the early 1940s — I'm sure I should have been a lawyer. I think I could have practiced law quite efficiently and with sufficient interest to guarantee competence. But at age 18, I became a believer, and the Lord said something different that I had never thought about before.

Q: What did you hear?

A: I was doing the Oxford general degree, just a four-year affair with an emphasis on the classics, Latin and Greek, language, culture, literature, so on. And I came to realize that I wouldn't get job satisfaction from any life activity except shepherding the Lord's people and holding out the Gospel in the hope of seeing more people coming to faith and enlarging the flock. That is how it came to me: "Shepherd, shepherd, look after the flock."

Q: Was C.S. Lewis at Oxford at the time, and did he influence your faith?

A: Yes. The books of C.S. Lewis had a very profound, indirect affect on me. Lewis, of course, was a Catholic-Anglican rather than an evangelical, but he erected around me all the scaffolding of orthodox Christianity, in terms of which I was opened to the authentic Gospel. His writings still help me. He was certainly the 20th century's No. 1 apologist. The older I get, the more I appreciate his real genius in Christian insight and communication. He was never my professor. He was a professor of English and the most popular lecturer at Oxford. He was, in fact, operating weekly as the anchor man in the Socratic Society. It was a club where inquirers, with an interest in Christianity, could hear the pros and the cons of the Christian faith.

Q: You're such a prolific writer yourself, but you're probably best known for one book, "Knowing God," first published in 1973. Why do you think that particular book has been such a big seller?

A: It rang a bell because it covered ground and did a job that many people felt needed to be done, but which nobody was attempting at that stage. What was happening was that in evangelical circles, all the emphasis was being laid on personal experience and devotion in the sense in which husbands and wives are devoted to each other. There was not a great deal of intellectual effort going along with it. What I did in "Knowing God" is to write a series of practical articles intended to lead the reader to faith.