Dr. Peter Williamson

Dr. Peter S. Williamson, Senior Fellow the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, is Assistant Professor of Sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan. He received his M.A. in Theology from Sacred Heart Seminary and his S.T.B., S.T.L. and S.T.D. in Biblical Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University. He is the author of Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture: A Study of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” (Loyola/Biblical Institute, 2001) and co-editor of John Paul II and the New Evangelization (Ignatius, 1995). Besides his seminary teaching Dr. Williamson coordinates mission work in Lithuania and Kazakhstan for Renewal Ministries, a Catholic organization that promotes renewal and evangelization. Dr. Williamson grew up as the son of an evangelical Presbyterian pastor and the grandson of Pentecostal missionaries to China. While a freshman at the University of Michigan in 1969 his relationship with Christ was powerfully transformed when he was prayed over to be baptized in the Spirit at a charismatic prayer group that met at the Catholic student chapel. Eventually, despite the extraordinary richness of his evangelical heritage, he became convinced that the doctrine of sola Scriptura was inadequate and that the claims of the Catholic Church were true. He was received in to the Catholic Church in 1972. From 1970 to 1990 Williamson served as a coordinator of The Word of God, an ecumenical charismatic community in Ann Arbor, Michigan. During that time he also helped to found Pastoral Renewal (later Faith and Renewal), a practical journal for Christian leaders, and served as President of the Center for Faith and Renewal, which sponsored publications and conferences on the relationship between Christianity and modernity. In 1990 Williamson began his formal theological studies; he completed his S.T.D. in Biblical Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 2000. Dr. Williamson and his wife, Dr. Marsha Daigle-Williamson, live in Ypsilanti, Michigan.