Carl Trueman said in his endorsement of my The Extent of the Atonement that he was happy to recommend this work of a “friendly critic.” Part 1 of my tribute to J. I. Packer demonstrates that I am “friendly.” In this second part of my tribute, I am a “friendly critic.”
This post contains my thoughts on Packer from the perspective of someone across the theological aisle who is not Reformed. I will highlight three major issues in Packer’s life and writings. Again, this is against the backdrop of my genuine appreciation of Packer and the myriad of things which he got right.
1. Sola fide & “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.”
Those not intimately acquainted with the life of J. I. Packer may not know about his split with Martyn Lloyd-Jones, or perhaps more accurately, Lloyd-Jones’ split with Packer; and his support for the document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” For details, the interested reader can consult the recent tributes to Packer by Justin Taylor and D. A. Carson at The Gospel Coalition, or the biographies of Packer by Leland Ryken and Alister McGrath.
The split with Lloyd-Jones related to the issue of sola-fide (salvation by “faith alone”), a disagreement that continued and was exampled in Packer’s support for “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” In his recent tribute to Packer, D. A. Carson said these controversies stemmed from Packer’s penchant for Anglican ecumenism in conflict with the fact that everyone knew Packer was a confessing evangelical.
From the perspective of Packer’s conservative evangelical critics, he was giving away too much. None doubted the depth of Packer’s personal commitments to the solas of the Reformation, but here he was making common cause with Anglicans who rejected the solas. He was siding with Anglicans at the expense of confessional evangelicals, as if the only barrier to the gospel were liberalism and not the matrix of Catholic dogma against which the English Reformation (not least The Thirty-nine Articles!) had contended.
Quite right.
Later, Packer joined the ranks of those who signed the document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” a move which further rankled his conservative evangelical cohorts. Carson succinctly summed up the problem:
. . . .but informed critics could not be entirely ignored when they argued that “agreement” between informed Catholics and informed Evangelicals was sometimes purchased at the price of finding common words that both sides could acknowledge as “theirs,” even while both sides had to acknowledge that each side understood the form of words differently. In the name of pursuing unity, agreement was sometimes achieved at a formal level while it was being lost at the level of substance.
Packer’s critics rightly viewed his signing of the document as problematic, as Justin Taylor put it, due to the “studied ambiguity in the wording that implied agreement on the gospel even as other theological differences remained…Sproul insisted the doctrine was essential, while Packer preferred to say it was central.”
Packer’s approach to sola fide and his support of the document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” is symptomatic of a broader problem: an ecumenism that leads to compromise.
From my perspective, the ECT statement illustrates, on the part of those evangelicals who signed it, a lack of discernment theologically when it comes to the essentials of the Christian faith and sound doctrine.
The issue turns over what is considered first and second-class essentials with respect to doctrine.
First class essentials include doctrines that must be believed in order for one to be saved—things like: God exists; Jesus is the Savior of humanity; the incarnation; Jesus died for our sins. Second class essentials include doctrines that the truly regenerate will not/should not repudiate—things like the Trinity and sola fide. Second class essentials allow for ignorance in a new believer, but not repudiation of the essential doctrine.
At issue is whether sola fide is a first-class essential doctrine or a second-class essential doctrine. Whereas Lloyd-Jones held it to be a second class essential, and so was open to partnering with like-minded evangelicals, Packer practically acted as though it was not even a second-class essential, and so was willing to partner with Catholics who repudiated sola fide. This was the ground for Lloyd-Jones’s separation from Packer.
You don’t have to believe in sola fide to be saved, but truly saved people will not repudiate sola fide, which Rome has done. Rome is on record since Trent in repudiating the doctrine and anathematizing those who assert it.
Packer was inconsistent at this point and can justly be charged with doctrinal compromise.
2. “Introduction” in the 1959 Banner of Truth edition of John Owen’s Death of Death in the Death of Christ.
A young J. I. Packer penned a red-hot introduction to the 1959 Banner of Truth edition of John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. This is Owen’s magnum opus defending limited atonement. Packer dished out invectives against universal atonement and those who held to it. In his more recent foreword to From Heaven He Came and Sought Her (2013), the latest scholarly attempt to defend limited atonement, Packer referenced his 1959 introduction and said: “I am glad to be able to say nothing in it needs to be modified or withdrawn.”
This is unfortunate because Packer’s 1959 foreword is uncharacteristically shrill in tone and loaded with epithets for his non-Calvinist brothers and sisters, falling just short of denying them a seat at the table of salvation.
This is a concern I have had with Packer for many years:
Here is a listing of the ubiquitous and sometimes uncharitable language that Packer employs about those who affirm unlimited atonement: unscriptural; destructive of the Gospel; unsound principles of exegesis; fallacious; dishonors the grace of God; dishonors God, cheapens the cross (3 times); makes Christ die in vain; destroys scriptural ground of assurance; anti-scriptural principle of self-salvation; grievous mistake; distorts the gospel; mental muddle; deprives God of his glory; trivializes faith and repentance; denies God’s sovereignty; degenerate faith; cheap sentimentalism; degrading presentation; new gospel; superficial; makes Christ a weak and futile figure tapping forlornly at the door of the human heart, which he is powerless to open; shameful dishonor to Christ; and undermines foundation. Owen informs us that if we will listen to him, he will teach us how to believe the gospel and preach it. Though not everything in this list is harsh (I would use some of Packer’s terms in critique of his and Owen’s view, such as “unscriptural,” “unsound principles of exegesis,” “fallacious,” “destroys Scriptural ground of assurance,” and “grievous mistake”), Packer’s criticism here seems beyond the pale. Packer has never retracted any of this contumelious language that would apply to most fellow believers, including many within his own Reformed tradition. (Allen, The Extent of the Atonement, 659.)
It is this kind of language that likely contributes to the emboldening of some of the young, restless and Reformed to don a similar angry attitude toward those with whom they disagree, especially over the issue of limited atonement.
I was interested to read this section of Justin Taylor’s tribute to Packer:
In 2015, while filming a short documentary on Packer for Crossway, it came time for my final question. I was off camera, and I asked how he might want to be remembered someday when he was gone.”
In his answer, one of the things Packer mentioned was the following:
I should like to be remembered as someone who was always courteous in controversy, but without compromise.
Usually J. I. Packer achieved this goal—in his conversations, preaching, and writing. One exception is the sore thumb of his introduction to Owen’s Death of Death. (Interestingly, in Taylor’s survey of Packer’s key writings, this one is omitted, though it has been very influential.)
His 1959 introduction was not one of Packer’s finer moments.
Regarding “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” Packer was courteous but compromised. Regarding his 1959 introduction, Packer was uncompromising but discourteous.
3. Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God—Problems with the Well-meant Offer and God’s Universal Saving Will.
Virtually every tribute to Packer in recent days has mentioned his book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. It is a good book—for the most part. But it is problematic on a few fronts.
Before we examine those fronts, let me share something of the genesis of this book. In 1999, I had lunch with Dr. Stephen Olford. For those of you who don’t know who Olford was, he was born in 1918 in Zambia, the son of missionary parents from England. He was known for his commitment to expository preaching and conservative theology. He had a world-wide preaching ministry until his death in 2004. Billy Graham said of him: “He is the man who most influenced my ministry.” He founded the Olford Center for Biblical Preaching in 1988, which continues under the leadership of his son, David. Stephen Olford was a friend of Martyn Lloyd-Jones and J. I. Packer.
At this luncheon, I sat spellbound as Olford recounted his life experiences and one particular situation involving himself, Lloyd-Jones, and Packer. Olford was preaching a crusade in England and during his altar call at the end of the service, some of the students of Lloyd-Jones were “disruptive” (Olford’s word) because they did not agree with the giving of a public altar call.
After the meeting, Olford phoned Lloyd-Jones and said: “Martyn! Martyn! Some of your boys were disruptive at the end of my preaching!” Angered at the way the young men had acted, Lloyd-Jones responded to Olford: “I will take care of it!”
Olford informed me that Lloyd-Jones called J. I. Packer and asked him to consider writing something that would address the issue of the tension between the sovereignty of God and evangelism. The result was Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, which appeared in 1961.
So what’s the problem?
Packer falls prey to the old Calvinistic saw “we evangelize because we don’t know who the elect are” motive. Now to be clear, this is not the only motive Calvinists mention for evangelism. They also appeal to the biblical mandate, and rightly so.
But in line with most Calvinists who affirm limited atonement, Packer essentially says we evangelize out of our ignorance of God’s secret will rather than because of our knowledge of his revealed will. (Reformed thought generally affirms a distinction in God’s so-called “secret will” and “revealed will”.) Packer’s view on the extent of Christ’s death has a distorting effect on his views of the will of God in the free offer of the gospel.
Packer failed to do justice to the revealed will of God in Scripture as a motivating factor in evangelism. He says virtually nothing about the desire of God for the salvation of all people in the book, though he affirms it elsewhere, nor does he say much about the free and well-meant offer of the gospel. His focus is more on reconciling God’s decretal will with evangelism such that he scarcely mentions God’s revealed will—the desire for all to be saved (2 Peter 3:9). This is the tendency of those who are deeply immersed in John Owen’s theology of limited atonement.
(Owen was not in the mainstream on the will of God and the gospel offer in the Puritan era. One can see this when comparing Owen’s interpretation of key texts such as Ezekiel 18:23, 33:11; Matthew 23:37; John 3:16; and 2 Peter 3:9 with that of Thomas Manton, who was an example of the mainstream during the Puritan era.)
Many twentieth and twenty-first century Calvinists who affirm limited atonement have a serious blind spot when it comes to God’s well-meant desire for the salvation of all people. For example, like Packer, R. C. Sproul rarely affirmed God’s universal saving will.
Packer’s book gives inadequate attention to the Bible’s own teaching on the subject of God’s universal saving desire and his well-meant gospel offer, not to mention mainstream Reformed theological teaching affirming these points, though inconsistently from the platform of limited atonement. The result is a certain theological imbalance.
Packer’s decretal bent caused him to neglect God’s revealed will on this subject. His lack of zeal in this area is due to the debilitating effects of John Owen’s limited atonement.
I have addressed these issues more in depth in my The Extent of the Atonement (B&H Academic, 2016), and in shortened form in my The Atonement: A Biblical, Theological, and Historical Study of the Cross of Christ (B&H Academic, 2019).
In spite of these shortcomings, J. I. Packer was a giant among us. Read everything he wrote. You will come to know better the Savior he loved and preached, and the Bible he studied and obeyed.