Book Review: Rediscovering Holiness by J.I. Packer

Pages: 282
Pub­lisher: Regal
Year: 1992 (2009)
Author: J.I. Packer

Liv­ing a life which is pleas­ing to God is a dif­fi­cult task for many Chris­tians, who find them­selves liv­ing in a world which teaches the supremacy of desire, and the exal­ta­tion of self. It’s extremely unfor­tu­nate that many in the church have been so open to accept­ing and adopt­ing many of the teach­ings of their (rel­a­tive) soci­ety, inte­grat­ing them into the church–a mis­di­rected attempt at mak­ing the church more effec­tive within a par­tic­u­lar cul­ture, per­haps? The fact remains, how­ever, that moder­nity presents a set of chal­lenges to the Chris­t­ian that is unseen in his­tory, and these chal­lenges will prob­a­bly only get “worse,” so long as Chris­tians live in ambivalence.

Mod­ern­iza­tion is per­ceived self-sufficiency–medical break­throughs, greatly length­ened life spans, tech­no­log­i­cal feats which would have been unheard of just one hun­dred years ago. Chris­tians have become com­pla­cent as the need to “lean” on God seems less and less a Chris­t­ian prac­tice (at least in the West). As one author said, when Amer­i­can Chris­tian­ity met Amer­i­can cul­ture, Amer­i­can cul­ture won. Those to be sure, the prob­lem of “lost holi­ness” is not solely an Amer­i­can problem.

As Os Guin­ness writes:

New envi­ron­ments have chal­lenged the Chris­t­ian faith before, but it has never faced as mas­sive a threat as it faces from mod­ern­iza­tion now. No age, no cul­ture, no civ­i­liza­tion has ever rep­re­sented such immea­sur­able and unman­age­able real­i­ties or car­ried such an unpar­al­leled capac­ity to shape the lives of its mem­bers¹

Redis­cov­er­ing Holi­ness is J.I. Packer’s attempt — a much needed one, at that — to bring back an aware­ness of holi­ness in the life of the Chris­t­ian. The open­ing chap­ters of Redis­cov­er­ing Holi­ness (the first three) are used by Packer to prop­erly explain what holi­ness is, why it mat­ters, and why it’s nec­es­sary. From this foun­da­tion he moves  into an under­stand­ing of what role sal­va­tion has in holi­ness (both explor­ing sal­va­tion, and appre­ci­at­ing sal­va­tion, as the chap­ters are titled). The rest of Redis­cov­er­ing Holi­ness — which is the bulk of the book; the remain­ing 5 chap­ters — is spent exam­in­ing the many dif­fer­ent facets of holi­ness, from many dif­fer­ent sources; Protes­tant, Catholic and Ortho­dox sources are exam­ined; The Puri­tans (who are con­stantly ref­er­enced) Luther, Calvin, the Jesuits, Mother Teresa (in the 2009 re-printing) and Saint Teresa of Avila, among a great many oth­ers. Chap­ter 4 is enti­tled “Holi­ness: The Panoramic View”, and this is exactly what Packer has pre­sented. It is such a panoramic view, in fact, that I find it dif­fi­cult choos­ing what to focus on and what not to focus on. Much focus is placed on humil­ity (“Grow­ing Down­ward to Grow Up: The Life of Repen­tance”), and what I espe­cially liked was Packer’s focus on repen­tance, espe­cially on the Puri­tan James Brad­ford (who is the uncon­firmed source of the phrase, “there but for the grace of God goes John Brad­ford”, which is often short­ened to “there but for the grace of God”). The clos­ing chap­ters of Redis­cov­er­ing Holi­ness deal with spir­i­tual well­ness, espe­cially hav­ing a proper view of holi­ness. Liv­ing an empow­ered Chris­t­ian life, and know­ing the role of and deal­ing with dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances in life, i.e. suf­fer­ing. The new After­word, which is a case-study of Mother Teresa and the recent rev­e­la­tions of her “spir­i­tual dark­ness”, is much more inter­est­ing than I would have thought. What I really liked was Pack­ers response to other’s views on the rea­sons for Mother Teresa’s “dark­ness” (i.e. dark night of the soul, as it’s been sug­gested by some), and this por­tion of the book should not be over­looked. Lastly, the book con­tains a study guide for those who wish to fur­ther learn and med­i­tate on what’s been said.

What I really like about Redis­cov­er­ing Holi­ness (and this is usu­ally what deter­mines whether or not I will like a par­tic­u­lar book) is that Packer writes within the con­text of a larger his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive, rather than sim­ply draw­ing from his own views and expe­ri­ences (and where the for­mer is con­cerned, a view is prob­a­bly not all that unique, so there is no rea­son not to rein­force it through oth­ers). Whether it’s Luther, Calvin or James Brad­ford, it’s this draw­ing upon Chris­t­ian his­tory and tra­di­tion that gives a greater wit­ness to Packer’s words (I would imag­ine that, like Kreeft, Packer would acknowl­edge that he is only repeat­ing what oth­ers have said before).

If there is any­thing neg­a­tive to be said about Redis­cov­er­ing Holi­ness (and there isn’t, though a par­tic­u­lar cri­tique has been lev­eled against Packer as writ­ing a book under Covenant theology–quite odd indeed), it’s that this book is eas­ier said than done, even if not the eas­i­est words ever writ­ten. I won­der how many peo­ple would read a book like this because it sounds nice, per­haps try to “live it” off a brief high, and then put the book to the side. Not only is this unfor­tu­nate, but it’s also very destruc­tive. A rec­om­mended read for everyone.

Many thanks to the peo­ple at Regal Pub­lish­ers for pro­vid­ing a copy of this book for review pur­poses.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Liv­ing As A Chris­t­ian by A.W. Tozer
2. Book Review: Doing Phi­los­o­phy as a Christian
3. Book Review: The Last Chris­t­ian on Earth by Os Guinness
4. Book Review: Doubt­ing by Alis­ter McGrath
5. Book Review: The Naked Gospel by Andrew Farley