Robert Keay's comments

Regarding his interaction with Wes Williams on Colossians 1:15

Dear Robert,

The interaction with Wes Williams was a bit of a surprise to me. Several years ago Norm Geisler solicited an article from me on the OT background of firstborn in Colossians for his net journal.  It was not only intended to offer a critique of the Watchtower teaching, but I also intended to offer a slightly different interpretation.  Whereas it is often (rightly) said that 'firstborn' points to pre-eminence, I sought to specify a (possible) type of pre-eminence, that is, Messianic pre-eminence (aka Davidic kingship).  I tried to trace the development of this concept throught the OT, focusing on the covenantal contextualisation of the concept.  Some time later I received a letter (via snail mail--from someone I did not know) containing a copy of Wes Williams' response to my article.  I found the response to be nearly pointless and would not have written a rejoinder except that the letter writer persuaded me.  So I wrote a response and sent it back to the letter writer, who apparently put it on the internet. I did not really want to respond because (as I recall) Williams' completely missed the point of my article--the messianic connotations of firstborn--and ignored the covenantal contextualisation of the concept and instead argued for a position that I had already answered in the article itself (re: the interp of firstborn as first in time).  So there was really no point in engaging him any further.  I later obtained and read Rolf Furuli's book on translation--Furuli is apparently (to some degree) Williams' (and Stafford's) 'scholarly' resource.  The book was not impressive.

Cheers,

Robert