The current issue of Ordained Servant includes a response to my December contribution, "The Church-Integrated Family." G.I. Williamson and several other signatories take exception not to my essay's central argument, but to one of its building blocks: the contention that child-bearing is not a requirement Biblically imposed on every marriage. As I note in my response to the response, I think our disagreement is centered more precisely on eschatology; that is, the extent to which the present age is conditioned by what will be, and has already been inaugurated through the Cross and Resurrection, in the age to come.
While I wish G.I. Williamson would more thoroughly appropriate the insights of Geerhardus Vos into his Biblical theology (this is not a new disagreement between the two of us), I would never note a disagreement with him without also clearly stating my steadfast admiration for his profound Biblicism. I cannot think of another man whose public persona is so closely associated with the confessions of the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches. Nonetheless, he has always been prepared to critique those standards wherever he finds them inadequately representing the Scriptures, to the point of suggesting they be amended (something anathema to most of the confessional reformed establishment in our time); his turn to paedocommunion is only one instance of this. I'm sure G.I. Williamson and I will disagree on any number of particular questions until we are both ushered into glory, but I hope I might imitate him in submission to God's Word until that time.
While I wish G.I. Williamson would more thoroughly appropriate the insights of Geerhardus Vos into his Biblical theology (this is not a new disagreement between the two of us), I would never note a disagreement with him without also clearly stating my steadfast admiration for his profound Biblicism. I cannot think of another man whose public persona is so closely associated with the confessions of the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches. Nonetheless, he has always been prepared to critique those standards wherever he finds them inadequately representing the Scriptures, to the point of suggesting they be amended (something anathema to most of the confessional reformed establishment in our time); his turn to paedocommunion is only one instance of this. I'm sure G.I. Williamson and I will disagree on any number of particular questions until we are both ushered into glory, but I hope I might imitate him in submission to God's Word until that time.
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