Knowing God

What Knowing God is

Knowing God is a book-length argument that the goal of the Christian life is to know God himself — not just to know correct things about him — and that the way you get there is by slowly, carefully, prayerfully thinking through who he actually is. It is structured as 22 short essays, most originally published in Evangelical Magazine in the 1960s, grouped into three parts: “Know the Lord,” “Behold Your God,” and “If God Be For Us.”

Packer was an English theologian (1926–2020), ordained in the Church of England and later teaching at Regent College in Vancouver. He wrote from a broadly evangelical, Reformed-leaning Anglican position, and that vantage point shapes the book — most visibly in the chapters on election, propitiation, and adoption. The book’s subject is theology proper, the doctrine of God, but its tone is pastoral throughout.

Why pastors keep handing this book out

The single biggest practical difference between Knowing God and most other popular theology books is that Packer refuses to flatten the subject. He will spend a whole chapter on a single attribute — God’s majesty, God’s wisdom, God’s jealousy — and treat it as worth thinking about for its own sake, not as a setup for a life application bullet at the end. The reader is expected to slow down. Most modern Christian books bring the doctrine to the reader; Packer asks the reader to come up to the doctrine.

This sounds like a small thing. In practice it is transformative. Readers who finish Knowing God consistently report that what changed was not the amount of information they now have — it is that they have spent twenty-two weeks thinking carefully about who God is, one attribute at a time, and that habit of attention seems to carry over. That is the book’s actual product: not facts, but a cultivated way of paying attention to God.

The 22-essay structure: one doctrine at a time, in order

Knowing God is built as 22 short chapters, most between ten and twenty pages, arranged in three movements. Part one (“Know the Lord”) sets the table — the difference between knowing God and knowing about God, what it means to study God, the incomprehensibility of God, the problem of idolatry, God as Trinity, God’s unchanging character. Part two (“Behold Your God”) walks the attributes — majesty, wisdom, truthfulness, love, grace, judgment, wrath, goodness, jealousy. Part three (“If God Be For Us”) lands on what those attributes mean for the believer — the heart of the gospel, propitiation, the sons of God, the adequacy of God, and the closing chapter on the adequacy of God in suffering.

The architecture is the feature. You can read one chapter a week for half a year and feel the cumulative weight build. The Trinity chapter is short on purpose; the wrath chapter is long on purpose. Packer is not writing a systematic theology textbook — he is writing 22 sermons-as-essays that, taken together, give a lay reader the closest thing to a real doctrine-of-God education they are likely to get outside of seminary. Most small groups that adopt the book run it at one chapter per meeting, which is the pace it was clearly designed for.

Packer’s prose: Anglican-formal, but never showing off

Packer’s prose is the second thing readers tend to mention. It is recognizably mid-century Anglican — long-ish sentences, semicolons, a willingness to use a word like “propitiation” without apology — but it is not academic in the bad sense. He defines his terms. He repeats key points. He uses metaphors that stick (the most famous, from chapter two, is the picture of Christians as “high on biblical doctrine” but “dwarfs at the feet of God”). The result is theology that reads like a thoughtful pastor talking to an adult.

For modern readers raised on punchier Christian publishing, the register can take a chapter or two to settle into. After that it tends to become the point — the slowness of the prose is what gives the doctrine room to land. Packer is not trying to keep your attention with cliffhangers. He is trying to keep your attention by being worth listening to. The book’s longevity is largely owed to the fact that this style does not date the way trend-chasing prose does.

Knowing God vs. knowing about God: the framing the book is famous for

The most-quoted thing in the book is in chapter two: the distinction between knowing God and knowing about God. Packer’s argument is that it is entirely possible — in fact common — to accumulate accurate theological information without ever meeting the God that information describes, and that this is a spiritual problem the book is trying to address. He frames the rest of the chapters as an attempt to bridge that gap: not less doctrine, but doctrine pursued as a means of actual acquaintance with God himself.

This framing is what makes Knowing God durable across traditions. Readers from Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Latter-day Saint backgrounds all tend to recognize the diagnosis — that there is a real difference between studying God and knowing God — even when they would describe the remedy somewhat differently. Packer’s answer is recognizably Reformed Anglican; the question he’s asking is broader than any one tradition. That gap between the question and his particular answer is part of why so many readers across the spectrum still find the book worth reading.

Pricing

Where Knowing God falls behind

No built-in study guide in the standard edition. The base paperback gives you the essays and nothing else — no discussion questions, no leader’s notes, no recommended reading schedule. The Anniversary Edition fixes this but most copies in circulation do not have it.

No accommodation for readers who want to skip the harder doctrines. Packer treats wrath, propitiation, and election as load-bearing chapters, not optional ones. Readers who want a book that softens those topics will find it less than they bargained for.

Distinctly Reformed Anglican accent in places. The chapters on election (chapter 11) and propitiation (chapter 18) are written from a Reformed evangelical position. Readers from Catholic, Orthodox, Wesleyan, Anabaptist, or Latter-day Saint backgrounds may want to read those chapters alongside their own tradition’s commentary rather than as the final word.

Not a Bible exposition. If you want a book that walks Genesis to Revelation, this is not it — Knowing God cites Scripture constantly but it is organized topically around the doctrine of God, not around books of the Bible.

No real updating for the cultural questions of the last fifty years. Packer wrote in 1973 and the book does not address contemporary debates that have emerged since. That is part of why it has aged well, but it does mean you will not find Packer on, say, deconstruction or modern apologetic flashpoints.

Knowing God vs. Mere Christianity vs. The Pursuit of God

Different books, different goals. Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis, 1952) is apologetics — it is trying to argue someone toward Christianity from the outside. Knowing God (Packer, 1973) is doctrine — it assumes you are already in and tries to deepen what you know about God. The Pursuit of God (A.W. Tozer, 1948) is devotional — it is shorter, more lyrical, and aimed at the affections more than the intellect.

If you have never read any of the three, most pastors would tell you to start with Mere Christianity for the apologetic foundation, move to Knowing God for the doctrinal depth, and read Tozer alongside or after for the devotional warmth. Packer is the longest and densest of the three. Tozer is the shortest and most prayerful. Lewis is the most readable and the most quotable.

Mere Christianity is better at arguing for the faith. Tozer is better at warming a cold heart. Knowing God is broader and deeper than either on the actual content of who God is — it is the book to read when the question is “What is God like?” rather than “Why should I believe?” or “How do I want him more?”

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