Soul... Knowing God, Day 1 -- Preface (1973)

"Knowing God", by J.I. Packer (copyright 1973 by J.I. Packer, published in the U.S.A. by InterVarsity Press, Americanized and retypeset in 1993) is not the best book that I've read after the Bible. It is the second -- Packer's "Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God" was the best for me, in terms of thoughtfulness on the part of the author and impact on my life. However, "Knowing God" has a much greater breadth and scope, in that it examines (respectfully and worshipfully!) many of the characteristics and aspects of God Himself, along with practical advice for the means to know Him.

As I study "Knowing God" for the third time (this time for an "accelerated" 8-week study at church), I found it helpful to highlight certain portions of this collection of amazing and helpful insights, and so I want to start including them here.


Reading the "preface" to books seems to be mostly a matter of habit for many readers -- I know several readers who do not feel they've read a book completely until they've read it cover to cover, including the preface, while many others normally skip it. Packer's preface from 1973 is not to be missed, for in it he shares his reasons behind writing "Knowing God".

On page 12, Packer states that "The conviction behind the book is that ignorance of God -- ignorance both of His ways and of the practice of communion with Him -- lies at the root of much of the church's weakness today", and he goes on to identify two "unhappy trends" which "seem to have produced this state of affairs."

The first trend that Packer identifies is "that Christian minds have been conformed to the modern spirit: the spirit, that is, that spawns great thoughts of man and leaves room for only small thoughts of God" (my emphasis added in bold text). Part of the effects of this trend is that "churchmen who look at God, so to speak, through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing Him to pygmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pygmy Christians...".

Why do we not yearn for more, or at least fervently plead (as David did) for God's grace in making us yearn after Him? This is a futile question, I'm afraid, and a disappointing line of thought, for those who do not hunger and thirst after that which is truly good will have no desire to ask to hunger and thirst!

The second trend, Packer says, "is that Christian minds have been confused by the modern skepticism. For more than three centuries the naturalistic leaven in the Renaissance outlook has been working like a cancer in Western thought. Seventeenth-century Arminians and deists, like sixteeth-century Socinians, came to deny, as against Reformation theology, that God's control of His world was either direct or complete, and theology, philosophy, and science have for the most part combined to maintain that denial ever since" (page 13; my emphasis added in bold text).

This second trend strikes me as being similar to, or perhaps even the cause of, the pervasive "evolutionary" world-view which so many people (sadly, including many who might be Christians) now profess and even defend. Once we make God remote, or better yet, dependent on and "internal" to each individual, then we have little trouble pleasing ourselves -- after all, if God is relative and His works are easily explained (and if He is gentle, meek, and mild, "patiently waiting" for me to "invite Him to come in") then I have little trouble justifying any sort of compromise or even godlessness that seems right (or best suited for my purposes) to me at the time!

Enough said until Day 2...