You honestly can't tell this book grew out of four separate conference sermons! The book is cohesive and seamless in its treatment of holiness. According to the preface, the book 'grew' out of four conference talks from the year before-1991. It has gone through several editions the most recent edition being published in July 2021 by Crossway. Rediscovering Holiness was first published in 1992. Our clock was going before the great Christian theologian John Wesley stopped going, if I may put it so. Scratched on one of its lead weights is the date 1789-the year of the French Revolution and George Washington’s first term as President. Packer’s clear and lucid teaching, and our faculty, staff and students celebrate the international recognition he rightly receives as a leading Christian thinker and teacher.įirst sentence: Our grandfather clock, which tells us not only the hours, minutes and seconds but also the days of the week, the months of the year, and the phases of the moon, is something of a veteran. Packer almost ten years ago, American theologian Mark Noll wrote in Christianity Today that, “Packer’s ability to address immensely important subjects in crisp, succinct sentences is one of the reasons why, both as an author and speaker, he has played such an important role among American evangelicals for four decades.”įor over 25 years Regent College students have been privileged to study under Dr. Packer’s seminal 1973 work, was lauded as a book which articulated shared beliefs for members of diverse denominations the TIME profile quotes Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington as saying, “conservative Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists could all look to and say, ‘This sums it all up for us.’” “Mediating debates on everything from a particular Bible translation to the acceptability of free-flowing Pentecostal spirituality, Packer helps unify a community that could easily fall victim to its internal tensions.” Packer, the Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology at Regent College, was hailed by TIME as “a doctrinal Solomon” among Protestants. Packer, Billy Graham and Richard John Neuhaus have in common? Each was recently named by TIME magazine as among the 25 most influential evangelicals in America.ĭr. This is a question I was always curious about, having grown up under only Arminian preaching, and the answer warmed my affections to an unexpected degree.What do J.

I've heard these arguments before, but he states them in a way that makes them memorable and practically important to everyday life rather than what I tend to think of them as, which is as an abstruse debate for 'theology buffs.' In reading this, not only was I further convinced of and encouraged in Reformed theology, but I was also treated to a great section on how Calvinism affects evangelistic preaching. Packer has become beloved to me for being able to clearly, cogently unpack the implications of 'heady theology,' and this intro cemented that reputation.

I was initially surprised to discover that it is an articulation of the differences between Arminianism and Calvinism, coming down firmly on the side of Calvinism. I didn't know what to expect from this introduction other than that 'The Death of Death in the Death of Christ' sounds like an awesome summary of the Gospel, which commended it to me as an Eastertide read. Packer’s clear and lucid teaching, and our faculty, staff and students celebrate the international recognition he rightly receives as a leading Christian thinker and teacher.

Growing in christ ji packer