Enloe's foot-in-mouth disease

Like time and tide, you can always count, without fail, on Tim Enloe sticking his foot in his mouth. And like solar eclipses, you can predict the conjunction with mathematical precision.

It occurs whenever Enloe is attempting to worm his way into the bosom of Rome by spitting on former friends and mentors—like one of those gangland rites of initiation in which you prove your loyalty to the homeboys by offing your own brother.

The latest exchange is the umpteenth rehash of his trademark lies about the grammatico-historical method, based not on any direct knowledge of the subject, but on his pomo hand-me-downs. No matter how often or by whom he’s corrected on this score, he continues to peddle the same falsehoods. The boy is a chronic liar.

It’s not that he has to take our word for it. Several individuals have pointed him to the relevant literature.

Then there’s this vintage specimen of Enloe’s third-hand historical extrapolations:

***QUOTE***

This is why it's so important to temper one's claims to "exegesis" of the "plain" Scriptures with some kind of intelligible and responsible understanding of the historical progression of ideas. Hodge's Common Sense Realism is not really all that far removed from Humean skepticism before it and 20th century positivism after it. That's a problem, John. It's a problem that Hodge didn't see, but that we can, and it is thus our responsibility not to follow him down that road, how ever much we respect him otherwise.

http://p090.ezboard.com/fgregsdiscussionboardgodtalk.showMessage?topicID=4029.topic

***END-QUOTE***

So what’s wrong with this statement? Three things:

i) One would very much like to see how, in some stepwise fashion, Enloe can show that Scottish Realism is an intellectual and historical antecedent to logical positivism.

ii) Scottish Realism doesn’t go back to Hume, but to Thomas Reid, who was a foe of Hume. Reid directly challenged the sense datum theory of perception which lay at the basis of Hume’s epistemology.

iii) Far from Charles Hodge being behind the curve, Hodge was ahead of the curve while young Mr. Enloe is way behind—for Thomas Reid has made a roaring comeback into the field of contemporary epistemology, viz. Alston, Chisholm De Bary, Lehrer, Pappas, Plantinga, Rowe, Wolsterstorff.

BTW, the PP is on a roll these days. Check it out:

http://pedanticprotestant.blogspot.com/