A contemplation of all things church... and a desire for an increasingly pure church reformed by the word of God.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Trueman on Packer
Jim Packer and Martin Lloyd-Jones were the first two Christian authors I read as a new Christian. Packer's Knowing God and Lloyd-Jones' Great Doctrines of the Bible were formative right out of the gate. Recently, I finished Murray's two-volume biography on Lloyd-Jones and learned quite a bit more about these two men, their friendship, and their parting over the future of British evangelicalism.
So I really appreciated Carl Trueman's summary of Packer's legacy as he sees it. (HT: Westminster Bookstore)
Yikes! Some pretty bold comments by Carl Trueman regarding J.I. Packer:
ReplyDelete"Packer is, in a sense, a failure" at the 3:30 mark: [???]
1)"He (Packer) never wrote the great systematic theology he was capable of."
2) "His failure to come out in 1966 and challenge the authority of Martyn Lloyd-Jones as the leader of British Non-Conformist Evangelicalism."
Truemann 'redeems' himself in complementing Packer's model of humility at the 4:30 mark.
Overall, I think Truemann is quite gutsy in his summary of James Packer. Some, will most certainly, have a hard time swallowing Trueman's comments.