6 Reasons Christians Worldwide Thank God for J. I. Packer

As a Global South theologian, I see how Packer brought credibility and renewal to churches in Sri Lanka and other nations.

Often when the church in the West commemorates the giants it produced, it forgets the contribution these leaders made to the church in the Global South, and the part they played in the renewal our churches are experiencing today.

We have just seen the passing away of another of those giants: J. I. Packer. This is a personal reflection on his impact on my life, and I believe on the lives of many Christians in the majority world:

1) Demonstrating the Intellectual Credibility of Evangelical Theology

My first encounter with Packer was when he visited Sri Lanka around 1970. I was a university student and he stayed in my parents’ home. The church in Sri Lanka at that time was in a situation of retreat. Numbers were going down. There were only a very few small, openly evangelical denominations. Christians were suffering from “post-colonial blues” with the accompanying embarrassment of being the religion of those who had ruled us. Liberal theology was the dominant position of most of the church’s hierarchy. We were made to feel that we had committed intellectual suicide because of our belief in the trustworthiness of scripture including miracles, eternal hell, and the absolute uniqueness of Christ.

During this critical time in our history, three Western evangelical scholars visited Sri Lanka: John Stott, Carl F. H. Henry, and Packer. Listening to them, we realized that there were brilliant scholars who still believed fully in the scriptures. We were encouraged in our resolve to remain committed to orthodox theology. Fifty years later, I still remember Packer’s talk on the inspiration of Scripture using a passage from Jeremiah.

2) Defending the Inerrancy of Scripture

I went for theological studies to the US ...

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