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Knowing God

Best Christian Books of All Time Review Series: Knowing God Pt. III

A Recent Portrait of J.I. Packer

Several weeks ago I left you with the second installment of my review of J.I. Packer’s Knowing God, one of the works that made it onto ESN’s March Madness bracket, The Best Christian Books of All Time. As I said then, this book has greatly impacted the way I see and live in the present world. I’m far from being able to say that I’ve got this life under wraps (and I hope I never think I do), but Packer’s words have led me to question and wrestle with many “wrapped” beliefs that I would’ve probably left inside that worn, crinkly paper of assumption and expectation.

Today I’m going to work through a few of the several remaining Chapters of Parts II and III, pausing only when I think the main point of the Chapter might bring up some questions for us — we who are so easily ensnared by the worrying pursuit of academic success (if you’re anything like me).

Wrath and Judgment

Chapters 14-17 of Part II and the whole of Part III, Chapters 18-22, have as their foundation the biblical concept of propitiation, which is centered upon the age-old problem of the just and loving God of Christianity. Packer confronts God’s righteous anger and his judgment head-on.

[Read more…] about Best Christian Books of All Time Review Series: Knowing God Pt. III

Best Christian Books of All Time Reviews: Knowing God, Pt. II

A Recent Portrait of J.I. Packer

Last week I wrote the first part of what will be a several-part review of J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. 

This week I’m going to take a look at the remaining chapters of Part I before moving on and moving through a bit of Part II.

Knowledge and Idolatry

Chapter 3, “Knowing and Being Known,” deals more directly with the distinction between knowledge about and knowledge of (which I highlighted in last Thursday’s post).  I like to call the former “factual” and the latter “intimate.”  Concerning the latter, Packer writes that we know a person “according to how much, or how little, they have opened up to us” (35).  It is in the person of Jesus, Packer notes, that God has completely opened himself up to us. What’s more, “to know Jesus is to be saved by Jesus, here and hereafter, from sin, and guilt, and death” (38).  Packer closes Chapter 3 by emphasizing that although our knowing God is crucial, the fact that he knows us is of the utmost importance.  “There is tremendous relief in knowing that [God’s] love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion him about myself, and quench his determination to bless me” (42).  Tremendous indeed. [Read more…] about Best Christian Books of All Time Reviews: Knowing God, Pt. II

Best Christian Books of All Time Reviews: Knowing God, Pt. I

Knowing God, J.I. Packer

During the month of March, here at InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Blog, we offered a distraction away from the tomfoolery of the NCAA and held a little tournament of our own. “What are the best Christian books of all time?” we asked. And you answered. We had hundreds of nominations for works of poetry, fiction, romance. You name it. Some of the books that made it to the bracket surprised me, but what really caught my attention were some of the outcomes of the early rounds. Several of the first round losers were my favorites. Over the next few weeks I’ll write reviews of a few of the early losers in hopes of bringing some of you into the marvelous light of Christian literature, J.I. Packer and N.T. Wright.

Today’s review features Knowing God by J.I. Packer. Now I must point out that this classic of lay theology–although having sold over one million copies–was ousted by Blaise Pascal’s Pensees. Really? I find it very difficult to imagine that more of our Facebook voters have read Pensees than Packer’s Knowing God. Maybe the French title was just more intriguing for those who hadn’t read either one. Who knows.

But I do know this: Some of the wisdom in J.I. Packer’s Knowing God has profoundly impacted me. Not only the ways in which I think about God in the abstract sense, as the title might suggest, but my daily life; and the book has even had a hand in altering the outcomes of some of my major life decisions. My decision about which grad school to attend, for example. [Read more…] about Best Christian Books of All Time Reviews: Knowing God, Pt. I