Final week (July 17, 2020), God welcomed J. I. Packer to his life after loss of life, with Christ, and I’m assured that he was obtained with a hearty: “Properly completed, my good and trustworthy servant.” Many individuals who knew him significantly better than I did have printed tributes to him, however I need to share my very own causes for being very grateful to this nice servant of God, for his contribution to my very own life and theological formation, by publishing right here a letter which I wrote to him, twenty years in the past, for exactly that function. (After all, the images I’ve added right here weren’t within the unique letter.)
Dr. Packer by no means joined the e-mail world, as a result of he at all times wrote along with his typewriter. Consequently, I mailed my letter to him by common submit, and I obtained his response by way of a fax from Regent Faculty.
My letter of July 26, 2000
Pricey Dr. Packer,
Whereas on trip lately, I learn Alister McGrath’s biography of you and it left me with a profound sense of gratitude for the contribution that your theological work has made to my very own life and work as a theologian. I first meant to drop you a observe of appreciation however then determined additionally to offer you a replica of my latest guide, because it offers with a topic on the interface of systematic and sensible theology which you’ve addressed so splendidly. I hesitate to ship the guide to you, lest it seem as extra of a burden than a present, however I’m doing so in hopes that you’ll really feel no obligation to learn it until it pursuits you. Please obtain it as my expression of gratitude in your ministry. The analysis for the guide was completed throughout a sabbatical yr at Wycliffe Corridor, Oxford, and so I significantly loved McGrath’s remedy of your personal associations with Oxford and different theological coaching establishments in England. We worshipped at St. Aldate’s throughout that yr and had been richly blessed by the expertise.
I can greatest describe to you the methods wherein you’ve had an impression on me by tracing just a few of the factors at which your work has affected me. I used to be not raised with Calvinist educating and I nonetheless keep in mind the horror with which I used to be first taught a Calvinist understanding of conversion in a course on private evangelism, at London Faculty of Bible and Missions (now a part of Tyndale College). As an M.A. pupil at Wheaton, the sunshine went on for me via the studying of John Murray’s Redemption Achieved and Utilized. The following yr, I used to be a Lecturer at LCBM, throughout Kermit Ecklebarger’s sabbatical and, providentially, had my workplace subsequent to Don Leggett who has continued at Tyndale. Don is a thoroughgoing Calvinist and I used to be benefited by many hours of dialog with him that yr. It was he who obtained me into studying the Banner of Reality journal and their publications.
It was at that time in my life that I used to be a lot blessed by your guide on Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God . I had beforehand learn a few your books on Scripture, which had been very useful, however this one caught me proper on the time when my very own grasp of God’s sovereignty was below main growth. I recall passing on the essence of your work after I was invited to talk at a youth retreat. The fabric produced the identical kind response I’ve gotten used to in years of educating since then. For some, the sunshine went on they usually went off eagerly to pursue this fact in Scripture. Others expressed the form of horror that I had initially felt in that non-public evangelism course at Bible Faculty. I’ve now taught theology for greater than 30 years, in non-denominational faculties the place few of the scholars come from Reformed church buildings. I’ve observed that folks appear to be born Arminian and solely develop into Calvinists kicking and struggling, as a result of the broad testimony of Scripture compels them to take action. Solely then does the great thing about this fact start to develop on them.
In regard to my Calvinistic theology, I assumed that your introduction to John Owen’s Dying of Dying was very good. I’ve continued to be one of many uncommon breed (in evangelical Baptist circles) of 5 level Calvinists. Your lucid description of the 5 factors of Dort, coming to me shortly after Murray’s biblical exposition of specific redemption, has had an enduring impression. In recent times, I’ve been happy to see that Wesleyan theologians are noting the incoherence of common atonement and penal substitutionary atonement. My very own insistence on this truth is normally a little bit of a shock to my college students who’ve often been taught a penal substitutionary view but in addition imagine that Christ died to save lots of everybody. I definitely don’t have any want to shake their confidence in Christ’s penal substitution, however I do push them to coherence and it usually ends in a extra cautious method of talking about whom Christ died to save lots of.
A second space wherein you’ve had an affect in my life has been in regard to my perspective to Pentecostals and charismatics. In my Wheaton years, within the early days of the charismatic motion, I had very a lot needed the present of tongues. I used to be prayed for by Pentecostals however nothing occurred. I later turned a member of a mission which was decidedly cool towards charismatic demonstrations and suspicious of those that claimed to have been blessed by the Spirit in particular methods. My theology of the Spirit was non-Pentecostal however I used to be a lot much less vital of charismatics than my colleagues had been. I believe it was in about 1974 that somebody gave me a replica of an deal with that you just had given at an IVCF assembly, presumably at MacMaster College. It rang a bell with me and I’ve cited it periodically. I later started to subscribe to the little bimonthly printed by “Allies for Religion and Renewal” and was happy to search out your identify among the many Board members. It demonstrated the form of ecumenical graciousness that I needed to challenge from inside my very own Calvinist framework.
I attended two of their conferences, and it was at the second (in Wheaton, in about 1987, I believe) that we had the one dialog that has occurred between us. I had beforehand written to you within the mid-70s about the potential for doing doctoral work with you at Bristol. You had recommended Westminster and I ultimately ended up doing a worthwhile Th.M. program there. The purpose of our dialog on the Allies convention, nevertheless, was that I used to be then in dialog with Carey Corridor concerning the Macdonald chair and I needed to select your mind a bit concerning the state of affairs. That they had a troublesome time determining the place they needed to go along with that place and by the point they obtained the ultimate brief record put collectively, I had already accepted a place at Windfall Faculty and Seminary. Stan Grenz was finally appointed. Anyway, I point out all this to say that I tremendously appreciated your ministry and presence on the Allies Convention, the place Orthodox and Roman Catholics with heat hearts for God had been capable of profit from the ministry of a Protestant whose theology shouldn’t be Pentecostal however whose deep roots within the Puritans fosters a vibrant pneumatology. I used to be additionally grateful for the transient dialog we had. Your guide, Maintain in Step with the Spirit , later enunciated an understanding of the Holy Spirit that accords very properly with my very own.
The third space wherein I’ve felt one thing of a kindred spirit was in your ecumenical work in pursuit of widespread opposition to secularism with Roman Catholics. ECT [Evangelicals and Catholics Together] has turned out to be very controversial, however I’ve appreciated its spirit. As a theology instructor at Asian Theological Seminary, within the Philippines, I had finally enrolled within the Jesuit [Loyola] College of Theology for completion of a Ph.D. program. It was a superb expertise. I focussed my work within the early Church fathers, the place we had been on widespread floor. (My dissertation was finally printed within the ATLA monograph sequence, as Irenaeus on the Salvation of the Unevangelized.) I developed eager appreciation for the spirituality of the Jesuit professors with whom I labored. That ready me for participation within the Asian version of the Evangelical-Roman Catholic Dialogue on Mission sponsored by the Lausanne Persevering with Committee. As I recall, you had been concerned within the Euro-American version of these discussions.
One final space wherein I’ve benefited out of your knowledge and located myself on widespread floor has been in regard to the ministry of girls as educating elders. I’ve usually wished that I might be “egalitarian” however my examine of Scripture has not allowed me to maneuver in that course. Your individual feedback on the matter have strengthened me to proceed in obedience to Scripture as I perceive it, no matter its counter-cultural conclusions.
Other than the precise impact of your books and articles, as I’ve learn them via the years, your godly spirit and your want to do theology that’s eminently sensible have been a fantastic instance to me. The guide that I’m giving might be much less accessible to the typical church particular person than a lot of your personal work has been, however I believe it displays the identical want to know God and his methods on the earth in a fashion that bears fruit in godly residing.
This letter might have offered you with extra details about me than you want however I relate this stuff by the use of expressing deep thankfulness for the ministry that God has given you in my very own life and the lives of numerous others. Might God proceed to bless you and make you a blessing.
Love in Christ,
Terrance Tiessen
Dr. Packer’s response of December 5, 2000
Pricey Dr Tiessen
Your letter, and the present of your Windfall guide, arrived greater than 4 months in the past, and I have to apologise that solely now am I acknowledging them. The guide nonetheless waits to be learn, and the letter sat for ages in a ‘pending’ pile whereas I chased my tail with different issues. Life has been very full; retirement is clearly a calling for a youthful man.
It was a really blissful expertise to search out that you just had develop into Reformed, labored in Oxford, and picked up some factors from my very own ministry. Thanks for sharing all of that. How nice it could have been to have you ever as a colleague right here in Vancouver.
I used to be grateful in your present, and maybe we will be in contact once more someday. Meantime, all blessings for the Christmas season, the New 12 months, and all of your work at Windfall and past.
Yours sincerely in Christ
James Packer
A postscript
My rereading of this correspondence of 20 years in the past jogged my memory of the blessing Dr. Packer was to my theological formation and to my life normally. As I’ve written this submit, quite a few issues got here to thoughts which I might have added to my record of causes to offer due to Dr. Packer, however I’ll not lengthen this submit by stating them right here. I’ve now reached the stage in my very own life after I can affirm personally the validity of his assertion that “retirement is clearly a calling for a youthful man.” There’s a nice deal I need to try this I’m not discovering time to work on.
One of many issues which has excited me about my life as a pupil of God’s phrase, and as a theology instructor, is the sense of steady progress within the data of God which I’ve loved all through my life. This has resulted in some vital modifications in my very own theological understanding. My conversion to perception that God is meticulously in command of the entire of human historical past, understanding the everlasting function he established earlier than he created something, was monumental. I used to be simply 23 years outdated at the moment, however my conviction of the rightness of this mannequin has grown stronger slightly than weakened, because the years have passed by. However there are vital methods wherein my theological mannequin has been modified, even throughout the 20 years since I wrote the above letter to Dr. Packer. A few of these modifications have moved me in instructions which I do know wouldn’t have been pleasing to Dr. Packer. Others, I believe, would have met with favor.
I used to be reminded of a kind of modifications as I typed my paragraph regarding John Owen’s understanding of Christ’s single intent in his atoning work, specifically, to supply the bottom for the salvation of solely God’s elect. In that regard I’ve come to imagine that God has broader and narrower targets in redemption, and I now establish with the “hypothetical universalists” who made up nearly all of the English delegation to the Synod of Dort. Consequently, I assert that I’m nonetheless a “five-point Calvinist,” as a result of I affirm the Canons of Dort, which reaffirmed the traditional Christian formulation of Christ’s atoning work as “adequate for all and environment friendly for the elect.” I unpacked my present perspective in a weblog submit entitled “’4- level” and ‘five-point’ Calvinism outlined.”
I think that the change in my theology which might most have disturbed Dr. Packer would have been my gradual transfer towards conditionalism or annihilationism, the understanding of hell which was held by his pricey pal, John Stott, for a few years earlier than he went public about it. In recent times, I’ve develop into satisfied that the widespread perception in “everlasting aware torment” is completely unbiblical and owed extra to Augustine’s affirming Plato’s perception within the indestructibility of the soul than it did to the educating of Scripture. (An account of the ultimate stage of my journey towards annihilationism could be learn on the net.)
This alteration in my eschatology got here a while after my abandonment of the “gospel exclusivist” understanding of God’s saving work, in favor of the “accessibilism” for which I argued in Who Can Be Saved?, however the two positions mesh properly with each other and with hypothetical universalism. In addition they align properly with the mannequin of God’s windfall which I dubbed “center data Calvinism,” after I wrote Windfall and Prayer. Having been satisfied by Paul Helm that God’s data of counterfactuals solely must be “center” if individuals are libertarianly free, I now name my mannequin “hypothetical data Calvinism.”
When Dr. Packer thanked me for my letter and the copy of my guide, he had nonetheless not learn the guide. A while later, nevertheless, I obtained an excited message from considered one of my former college students at Windfall Theological Seminary. He had gone on to review at Regent Faculty, and he wrote to inform me that Dr. Packer had come into a category that day and had held up earlier than them all a replica of Windfall and Prayer, with the assertion that “that is the perfect guide on this topic.” My former pupil was fairly enthusiastic about that as a result of he knew me personally. Provided that endorsement by Dr. Packer, I might very very similar to to have heard his ideas about my proposal that God made vital use of his data of counterfactuals (that’s, of what each doable creature would do in any hypothetical state of affairs) when he determined which of all of the doable worlds he would actualize. That God knew counterfactuals as a side of his pure or crucial data was confirmed by the Reformed scholastics whose theology Dr. Packer beloved, so this is able to not have been problematic for him. What I wish to have recognized, nevertheless, was whether or not he thought my mannequin to be useful, or how he would need it tweaked to be totally passable. Sometime, maybe he and I’ll have a chance to speak about that collectively, after I be part of him within the presence of the Lord.
It’s great to have lived within the time of Dr. Packer, and to have been one of many many 1000’s who’ve been blessed by his writing and his instance. Few individuals I’ve recognized throughout my life have been extra extensively appreciated throughout the church, and I reward God for his work in Dr. Packer’s life, and thru him within the lives of numerous others.
