J.I. Packer wird demnächst 90 Jahre alt. Eine Augenkrankheit hindert ihn daran, zu lesen und zu schreiben. Er wird sich deshalb aus der Öffentlichkeit weitgehend zurückziehen.
Unglücklich ist er aber nicht. Er erfreut sich an der Gemeinschaft mit Gott und er freut sich, dass diese Gemeinschaft bald noch intensiver werden wird.
In einem Interview, dass er vor einigen Tagen gegeben hat, sprach er noch einmal über die bedeutsame Stellung der Puritaner in der der Kirchengeschichte:
Going back to the centrality of the church, I suppose the Puritans are instrumental in bringing back our attention to the church.
The Puritans were churchly to their finger tips. They were intensely individuals. They made as much of Christian individuality as any community of believer have ever done, I think. But they were churchly. It was all for the building up the church as the body of Christ and as the goal of all of God’s purposes of grace. I still think we need to learn—learn it for the first time, perhaps.
The great thing, which the Puritans saw as central, is communion with God, which they understood as communion with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They weren’t marked by the imbalance that you so often see even among Puritans supporters in these days—I mean people focusing on Christ to the exclusion of the Spirit, or on the Spirit to the exclusion of Christ. The Puritans, I think, were wonderfully balanced. Their published work expresses it and is very maturing. There is the same relation to the goal of godliness as proper coaching and physical training is to producing a player for role that he is called to play.
Hier das vollständige Interview: www.thegospelcoalition.org.
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