Euangelion: J.I. Packer the “failure”?.
My first instinct was to say what I think about Trueman, but I’ll let that pass.
History always seems inevitable, like a series of falling dominos. But you never know what might happen if a dominoe is taken out of the series. Are the two on either side close enough to keep the chain going?
Certain kinds of dominoes look essential. Book-writing dominoes. John Calvin was relatively unknown until he sold a short (six chapters) book on the Christian life. It became a best-seller and made him a celebrity. It got him enough clout to be taken seriously–too seriously since he was expected to reform Geneva rather than go to Strassbourg where he wanted to be.
Not wanting to tamper with a good thing, and following the marketing plan since used by the college textbook industry, Calvin kept expanding on his book, until it became a huge four-book, magnum opus.
And that plan has more or less settled in the minds of men as the way forward, the way to be an essential domino in the series. Write a big book.
But what about someone like Martin Bucer? He wrote some books but they are not remembered now. Was he a failure?
He used to not get as much attention, but now people realize his influence on John Calvin and many others means that he was a leading figure. History isn’t exactly like dominos. When you take one domino out of line, another doesn’t grow thicker or higher, but remove Calvin and his book and who is to say another wouldn’t have been written or was was written but would have sold better? It is impossible to know now, but it may be that Bucer was more important to the Reformation than Calvin.
I’m not writhing this to make us choose between the two, but only to get it in our minds that book writing is not the only way one succeeds. And the fact of the matter is that we have no idea yet, and maybe never will, at how much J. I. Packer has changed the world. One student, one disciple, may make all the difference. One boy or girl who read one of those pop-level books may change the planet.