British-born
conservative evangelical theologian, whose works include Fundamentalism and the Word of God (1958), Keep in step with the Spirit (1984) and most famously Knowing God (1973) All of these books I
read dutifully, and learned from them, but they did not significantly impact on
my life. By the end of Knowing God,
while I knew more facts about God, I
can’t say I had any greater sense of personal connectedness to God.
I only met Dr Packer
once. It was when I was working with a Scripture Union summer mission team at
St Andrews in the 1970s. Jim Packer was staying with a family in the town who
were very supportive of the mission. One day the afternoon beach service was to
include a simple dramatization of the Bible story of St Philip’s encounter with
the Ethiopian official who was described as being a ‘eunuch’. It fell to me to
play the part of this emasculated gentleman, and I attired myself in a red-and-white
striped dressing gown, and blackened my face with some coal which I got my
hands on in the coal bunker at the house where the eminent theologian was
living.
That day, Dr Packer decided
to come down to the East Sands to watch the service, and I happened to meet him
while I was standing on the path above the beach awaiting my cue. Just in case
he had any doubts about the matter, I explained why I was wearing a
red-and-white striped towelling dressing gown and why my cheeks were smudged
with coal dust on my cheeks. He looked me up and down, and then said gnomically
‘You are the most convincing Ethiopian Eunuch I have ever seen.’
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