James Innell Packer (22 July 192617 July 2020) was an English-born Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, known for his best-selling book, Knowing God, written in 1973, as well as his work as an editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He was one of the high-profile signers on the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a member on the advisory board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and also was involved in the ecumenical book Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994. His last teaching position was as the board of governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, in which he served from 1996 until his retirement in 2016 due to failing eyesight. Life and career Packer was born on 22 July 1926 in Twyning, Gloucestershire, England to James and Dorothy Packer. His sister, Margaret, was born in 1929. His father was a clerk for the Great Western Railway and his lower-middle-class family was only nominally Anglican, attending the local St. Catherine's Church. When he was seven, Packer suffered a severe head injury in a collision with a bread van, which precluded him from playing sports, so he became interested in reading and writing. At 11 years of age, Packer was gifted with an old Oliver typewriter. He went on to cherish typewriters for the rest of his life. In 1937, Packer went to The Crypt School, where he specialized in the classics. At age 14 he was confirmed at St. Catherine's church. He won a scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he was educated at Corpus Christi College, obtaining his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948. In a 1944 meeting of the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU), Packer committed his life to Christian service. It was during this time that Packer became exposed to the Puritans through OICCU's library, which were an influence he carried for the rest of his life. He also first heard lectures from C. S. Lewis at Oxford, whose teachings would (though he never knew Lewis personally) become a major influence in his life. After college, he spent a brief time teaching Greek and Latin at Oak Hill College in London. During this 1949–1950 school year, he sat under the teaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel,