James Innell Packer (1926-2020), English-born Canadian Anglican theologian. Educated at Oxford under C. S. Lewis and others; taught at Tyndale Hall, Trinity College Bristol, Regent College Vancouver. Known universally as "Jim." His 1973 book Knowing God — compiled from articles originally in the magazine His — has sold over three million copies and is widely regarded as the finest modern introduction to the doctrine of God for ordinary readers.
Packer's gift was combining rigorous Reformed Puritan theology with accessible, winsome prose. Four major contributions. (1) Knowing God. The book's thesis — that knowledge of God is not merely propositional but experiential, relational, transforming — reshaped how a generation approached theology. Chapters on God's wrath, majesty, jealousy, and love are classics. (2) Fundamentalism and the Word of God (1958) — a defense of biblical inerrancy written as a young man that established him among evangelicals. (3) Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (1961) — a short book that reconciles what many regard as incompatible: genuine evangelistic urgency with full-throated Calvinistic sovereignty. Still assigned in seminaries. (4) Theological leadership. Packer was one of the architects of the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, an enduring touchstone for evangelical conviction about Scripture. He was a steady presence at the intersection of Puritan retrieval, modern evangelicalism, and Anglican communion politics for six decades. The Puritans were his teachers — Owen, Baxter, Sibbes — and he translated their piety into contemporary language without losing their depth.