I&I Responses: 1 - Is I&I Inconsistent with the Reformed Faith?
Criticism: I&I is inconsistent with the Reformed faith in that it is inconsistent with past articulations of that faith. Most importantly, it is inconsistent with the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
On the last point (WCF), I have already expressed myself on this website. I won’t repeat my earlier comments here, other than stressing that a Protestant confessional commitment cannot allow that confessional commitment to have the final word—ever. A tradition with a healthy confessional commitment is one that is not only open to but seeks self-correction through the collective study of Scripture. To do otherwise is to deny functionally the Scriptural basis on which a confession rests.
As for the former, I wish to make a similar point.
Let me first clear away a misunderstanding. It is my opinion that if, say B. B. Warfield or someone of that era, were to be handed in copy of I&I in their time and place, they would not pat me on the back and say job well done. My appeals to the Old Princeton and Dutch Reformed traditions have never been a strained attempt at justifying my own thinking. Rather, it is to show, by being in conversation with my tradition, that some of the intellectual inclinations of these men can provide a dynamic trajectory for handling issues in biblical scholarship that were either not front-and-center then or were wholly unknown.