Tim Enloe's Ongoing Policy of Hiding and Deleting the Absurdities and Outrageousness of His Past Comments, Rather Than Openly Retracting Them

". . . go right ahead . . . pointing to all the rhetorical excesses I have ever engaged in on any forum whatsoever." -- Tim Enloe, 6-10-09

Note that in moving his website to a different address today (6-27-09): Tim Enloe removed the post that I critiqued just last night, as well as his entire series on Catholic converts, save one (where he pulled himself together for a change and tried his hardest to write non-polemically: which is sort of like a zebra willing that he has no stripes). I recently criticized that series in great depth, in the following papers:

Tim Enloe: "Vast Majority" of Catholic Conversion Stories Are "Essentially Snake-Oil" (+ Discussion)

Presbyterian Polemicist Tim Enloe's Pathetic Elitism and Snobbishness Over Against Laymen and Apologetics and Non-Academic Study is Revealed Yet Again (+ Discussion)

Tim Enloe: "Many" Catholic Converts Are "Very Insecure People" and Suffer From a "Deep Immaturity" -- and Apologists Are "Arrogant, Foolish People" (+ Discussion)

St. Augustine's Confessions as the Prototype of Today's Widely Disseminated Catholic Conversion Stories (+ Tim Enloe's Odd Inconsistencies) (+ Discussion)

My Criticisms of Tim Enloe's Modus Operandi and Excoriation of Catholic Converts Discussed At Length on His Blog, While I Am Banned (+ Discussion)

This is absolutely classic Enlovian tactics, and demonstrates precisely why I recently put back up all my old exchanges with him (that had been removed in a good faith effort at reconciliation; not because I renounced my reasoning or positions therein). He routinely, regularly, cyclically, renounces his old writings without retracting anything in particular. He would rather run, and hide things, than admit he is wrong in a specific contemporary instance (and above all, to admit that I was ever right, where he was wrong).

But, as I have wondered aloud for years: if Tim condemns all of his writings prior to three months before any given time (okay, I exaggerate, but it is almost true!), then why would we trust anything he writes now? If it is all worthless garbage after so much time passes by (as if writings were perishable, like eggs or lunch meat), and he does this again and again, then there is no reason to believe his present rantings and ravings are safe from the same destiny! For example, he wrote on 6-8-09 in one of his hit pieces on Catholic converts:

I was raised in a confusingly hybrid mixture of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, and I came to accept the Reformed view of Christianity through a deep personal crisis of what Protestants call “assurance of faith.” But you need to understand that I do not exempt my conversion story from the criticisms I am making here. I was an incredibly immature Christian prior to accepting the Reformed view, and for about my first 5-7 years of being Reformed I was incredibly immature about being Reformed.

Again, on 6-11-09, he repeated that he suffered from the same thing he is now blasting others about:

It’s all just part of the game, and shows the deep and abiding instability and immaturity of many converts. (And again, yes, I’ve been there myself).

As far as I know, Tim became Reformed around 1999, when I first encountered him. That means that -- by his own self-report -- he was still "incredibly immature" as late as approximately 2006: just three short years ago. Logically, then, his papers up to that time reflect this "incredibly immature" mentality. Is it any wonder, then, that he is absolutely opposed to my posting of our old debates (the most complete listing appears in his entry on my Anti-Catholicism index page)? He wants to make out that they are worthless and contain no content. And so he wrote on an anti-Catholic blog about these old papers:

Once more, I don't care a bit about any of the stuff by or about me that DA has been posting. I haven't looked, won't look, and don't care. My friends who have looked tell me it's "junk drawer" type stuff, and ten years of experience with him inclines me fully to believe it.

(6-22-09)

And a week before on his own blog:

Friends of mine who have looked at what he's presently doing characterize it as cleaning out his junk drawer, posting all manner of old things one right after the other, as if neither he nor I have moved an inch since 1999, or 2000, or 2001, or 2002, or whatever year the things are from. I don't care a whit about any of that. No one who has kept up with me at all for the last 3 years or so can honestly say that my focus and my grasp of various issues has not changed, or that I have not moved beyond the banality of pop-apologetics Internet wars. . . . I won't return to the bad old days of excessive rhetorical and polemical zeal such as I used to exhibit on Steve Ray's or Greg Krehbiel's old boards, . . .

(6-15-09)

Astute readers know full well why he doesn't want them up. It's so obvious that I need not even state the reason. But they were not worthless. They are (Tim's false premises and relentless polemics aside) full of provocative content on both sides. Since Tim has removed his papers from even last month, obviously he is embarrassed about exchanges with me dating back all the way to the year 2000.

I believe that a man ought to be accountable for his words and not try to hide them and pretend he never believed some absurd thing that was criticized or refuted by someone else. They were written publicly (and in his case, invariably blasting others without mercy or -- usually -- reason), and therefore ought to be retracted publicly. This is what serious thinkers (as Tim fancies himself) and self-respecting intellectuals do.

That's why I retain all of my papers, and also all of my opponents' words in dialogues and debates (certainly more than 500 posted; I no longer keep track). I don't undergo (like Tim does) a huge sea change every ten months, while always remaining dogmatic (and obnoxious) about what I am saying today. He has recently undergone yet another amazing transformation , from pseudo-ecumenical, so-called "Reformed Catholic" to now again a quasi-anti-Catholic (which is, of course, merely a milder version of John Calvin's own position, so it is no surprise that Tim has at length discovered the anti-Catholic riches of his own theological tradition):

I don't know what most of you guys think of me these days, but let me just say that thanks to some good, solid Reformed friends of mine and some "showing their true colors" behavior of certain Catholics I took to be more reasonable than the average lot of petty pop apologists, I have come back around (after a few years of being overly optimistic) to the position that there can be no compromise with militant Catholic defenders. I may have seemed somewhat "squishy" for a while in my overall approach to Catholics, but that is over and done with.

(6-15-09 on an anti-Catholic blog, so as to again curry favor with those folks)

In cases where I have changed my mind, I am completely upfront about it (e.g., in the development of my views on Luther) and state it publicly (including personal or broad apologies, if necessary), rather than pretend nothing has changed (i.e., excepting when Tim goes over into the anti-Catholic realm to proclaim that he is again One of Them insofar as he is perfectly willing to lie about and caricature Rome, "papalists" and everything "Romish").

Tim ignores and/or mocks present criticisms, then later removes his papers without retraction, when no one is looking (i.e., except annoying folks like me). Thus, when I critiqued his ludicrous conversion series, he responded in the following (entirely typical, for him) knee-jerk, head-in-the-sand fashion:

I would like to say something about the criticisms of my ongoing series on Catholic conversion stories. Some critiques I care not one whit about, have not even looked at, and will not look at, as their authors are people who rarely, if ever anymore, say anything that even remotely interests me.

(6-4-09)

Now I’ve already gotten apologists and apologist-followers making all sorts of not-to-the-point comments on my posts, pretending this is all much ado about nothing, or reveals some sort of angry or hypocritical motives on my part, or a desire to goofily “psychoanalyze” others, etc. Not so.

(6-8-09)

Dave: I see that you have decided I am once again worthy of your eminent attention, but I will tell you this absolutely and unequivocally: I have no interest in anything that you have to say. No interest, whatsoever. I have not so much as peeked at your blog since you kicked me off last year, and I am happy to keep that state going. I will not delete your comments here unless, from the comments of others whom you may be engaging, I see that you are behaving inappropriately, but I will not personally engage you on any level. We’re done, my friend, DONE. Don’t waste your time addressing me, because I will not reciprocate. Good day to you.

(6-8-09)

I am not accountable for my academic work to Some Guy With A Blog who has no relevant training in the subjects I speak of, does not know the original language(s) used in the research, and thinks that God called him to “be an apologist” and to act like his little blog is the equivalent of a peer-reviewed journal and that if someone doesn’t respond to his uninformed, sloppy critiques of matters that he himself doesn’t bother to look deeply into, it is because they are “afraid” to be accountable. I am accountable to men who actually KNOW the fields that I write about, men who have paid their dues to the professional guild that makes such subjects its lifelong, loving concern. Rest assured, the men who evaluate my research do not let me get away with saying stupid or insupportable things, and it is of exactly zero significance what said Some Guy With A Blog, who is literally on the outside looking in regarding these matters, has to say about any of it.

(6-9-09)

Having actually read your comments, it seems you are pulling out all the stops to get me to engage you. Well, I said you and I are DONE, and I mean it. I have no interest in your activities or your work, and will spend no more time interacting with anything that you write.

(6-9-09)

Dave, please stay away. No one is interested in your “psychoanalysis” (ironic, since you charge me with that) of their alleged fear of your allegedly brilliant counter-arguments. Regardless of what your many fans think of you, and evidently what you think of yourself, no one is obligated to think of you as a serious force to be reckoned with. Anyone is conversely allowed to think of you as someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about on any number of issues. You yourself think various opponents of yours have little to no idea what they are talking about on a range of issues, yet you complain bitterly when someone rejects you as an authority on some issue or another. This is one reason I have no wish to engage you: you do not follow your own rules of discourse. Try policing yourself as to Internet ethics for once instead of others.

(6-10-09; I was banned from his site shortly thereafter)

Although it may seem wearying and counterproductive to wade into the world of blustery “apologists,” we need to remember that our brothers and sisters live in that world every day of their lives and are often harangued and disturbed by these unstable, arrogant, foolish people.

(6-11-09)

Well, I am not going to say anything else about Dave Armstrong or his work, and I will not be goaded into doing so by others. . . . I have read Dave’s arguments (and similar ones by other Catholics), have interacted with them at some length in the past, and that I find them wanting for a number of reasons which I have clearly spelled out many times.

(6-11-09)

[and I am the only one of us that is willing to let readers see these arguments of Tim's, and my replies, and let them make up their own minds, whereas Tim wants to delete his arguments against me along with my critiques. Curious, isn't it? So Tim wants to take credit for supposedly refuting me, and justifies his refusal to interact at the present time, while simultaneously being ashamed of his own past writing. Can't have it both ways . . .]

I just wrote a short series (incomplete as yet) on problems with Catholic convert-apologists, and, amazingly, people acted like I was just making stuff up and exaggerating and being overly polemical, etc. . . . These guys really do think that cursory familiarity with encyclopedia articles and uncritically read, and often outdated, secondary sources constitute substantive engagement with persons and issues. Unbelievable.

(6-13-09)

Since you mentioned it, let me just say that I've done my last dance with DA. Period. Our last attempt at a peace treaty was nothing more than a personal ceasefire. It was by no means an ideological rapprochement. Like previous versions of it, it fell apart pretty quickly. Well, to borrow his words, I've at last realized that "ten years of the same crap is enough."

(6-15-09)

The recent mudslinging fest he tried to start, which I have not entered and will not enter, came about only because I wrote some posts to help a Baptist friend of mine figure out how to navigate the numerous ignorant and foolish claims that a lot of Catholic converts make about the Reformation. These posts threaten men like DA because they hit at their business and their personal reputations as "apologists."

(6-22-09)

All of this is now, of course, removed from Tim's blog, and when he made what purports to be his final put-down and farewell to all discourse with me, he conveniently did it on the anti-Catholic blog of a crony of his, so he wouldn't pollute his own pseudo-academic blog with it. But I am here to preserve his sublime utterances, so that people (since Tim wishes to continue smearing my name and my work) have a record of what actually occurred, rather than hearing warmed-over, jaded, cynical, hyper-polemicized reports from Tim as to what occurred. The actual record of events is a wonderfully illuminating thing.

Or, when he is reprimanded for asinine dogmatic and polemical rantings, as in the case of the Catholic convert series, rather than honestly admitting he blew it and issuing retractions, he chooses (in addition to quick deletions) to appeal to lack of time (the old standby) and to do a half-hearted, insipid general apology, like the one he issued today:

. . . the nature of blogging itself seems to amplify the traditional “publish or perish” concern to the point where a serious blogger starts to feel like if he doesn’t publish two or three new posts every couple of days, his “impact” will start to diminish, and maybe even disappear. . . . This sort of pressure leads to sloppy posting, and honestly, some of my posts here over the last few weeks have been sloppy by comparison with the high academic standards I have set for myself in 99% of my posts over the last 3 years. I’ve tried hard to set the bar high over these last few years, because I don’t have any desire to be just one more blog-ranter with a following that avidly awaits my next great controversy-inspiring post. What a non-life that would be!

(6-27-09)

I’ve increasingly realized that I am going to be working under such enormous time limitations once the school year starts that I seriously doubt I’ll be able to write anything at all for Internet consumption.

(6-27-09)

Another time-honored Enlovian tactic . . . I've heard this for over five years too, at least. But it's highly unlikely Tim will ever stop blogging or having some sort of website, because he loves lecturing the peasants far too much to do that.

Tim Enloe needs to be accountable for his words, if he expects to be taken seriously as a thinker. If his friends are too intimidated by him to point this out and urge him to act accordingly, then I am happy to do so (and I coincidentally I happen to be in the group that Tim despises and blasts in his writing the most). If he wants to attack the Catholic Church with insufficient and often ridiculous, hackneyed, ultra-tendentious arguments, then he should expect that we will defend Holy Mother Church and point out deficiencies in his own method and reasoning. If you cna't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen . . .

If Tim insists on insulting and excoriating Catholic converts and apologists (and I am a proud member of both classes), then we will defend ourselves against his ludicrous caricatured stereotyping and point out facts, over against his self-serving myths, and also note when he exhibits such cowardice as to remove his many papers without retraction or any notice at all. If he had done all this in private, with his adoring fan club, then no one would know about it, but since it was presented in public, here I am with a perfect right (that Tim himself acknowledges) to express my contrary opinion, too. If Tim doesn't like that, he can lump it. If he wants to ignore it; fine, let him. I couldn't care less, as long as both sides are heard. No skin off my back . . .

But in any event this is what conscientious and serious thinkers (and it is patently obvious that Tim wants with every fiber of his being to be regarded as that) do. They interact with ideas, challenge what they believe to be falsehoods, and accept challenges to their own opinions, with the willingness to modify them as necessary, with further input, in a cordial, open-minded spirit, not the equivalent of a juvenile paranoid mud pie fight or saloon brawl that Tim immediately turns every serious critique of his opinions into.

And on occasion they identify and condemn moral and intellectual hypocrisy, just as our Lord Jesus and St. Paul did.

* * * * *

UPDATE: 6 July 2009

Tim has now decided to start a second blog, where he restored the converts series:

I’ve started a secondary blog, Reformation Education, to house “non-scholarly” posts about various matters of our Reformation heritage and posts about engaging with the popular Catholic apologetics movement. The posts from a few weeks back about Catholic convert stories are up on the new site, but I have edited and expanded them somewhat, so if that topic interests you you may wish to re-read them.

(6 July 2009)

Though some might say this action refutes my contentions above, that is not the case. Tim still decided to remove them from view. Now that they are back, they are separated onto a polemical blog, so that he can keep them away from his "scholarly" writings. In effect, this proves my point. He wants to make this stuff more obscure, because he has mixed feelings about it. He knows it creates controversy because of the outrageous claims he makes, and he doesn't want that, but on the other hand he wants so badly to be able to continue to express the controversial stuff and to rant and rave. It's far too much a part of his psyche to stop now. He loves being the Great Defender of the True Reformation and Basher of Rome.

Moreover, note that the revived pieces are "edited and expanded." We don't know what he has changed; what he has deleted, etc. Whatever was changed was done so "under cover" and not openly. Few people will take the trouble to go through the original pieces (preserved only on my site) and compare and contrast. If he has removed the more astounding false claims, then that bolsters my opinion, expressed in the title of this post, that Tim likes to do such things secretly and not out in the open (let alone making retractions and apologies for falsehoods). So it isn't any different from the former state of affairs.

Thirdly, all the comments of the previous controversy (including much criticism of his viewpoints: from several Protestants as well as Catholics) are wiped out. One can only get to them on my site. Tim didn't want them preserved.

Fourth, note that the new blog allows no comments:

At the present time, no comments are allowed on this blog. This is due to the very simple fact that I am a full-time husband and father, a full-time teacher at a Christian school, and a full-time student and researcher of many issues of Church history and Christian theology. Since I essentially have three full time jobs, I do not have any time remaining to engage in discussion about the contents of this blog.

If you do not like what you read here and really wish you could tell me about it, you can start your own blog so that you can get your objections off your chest.

("Commenting Policy")

How convenient. This is consistent with Tim's propensity for wanting to rant and rave and sanctimoniously lecture, while reserving the right to allow no criticism or feedback to "obstruct" his purpose.

Fifth: who knows? Maybe my posts about his work, including this one, have played a part in causing him to bring back these posts. If I hadn't made a stink about it, perhaps they would still be removed from view on any of his sites. There is no way to know, but that is surely a possibility.

Nothing essentially, therefore, has changed. This doesn't prove any increased willingness to engage criticism (as real professed "scholars" do). If anything, it reinforces the same old objectionable tendencies here critiqued. It's the same old Tim. Nor does it show that he is attempting to cease all polemics, as he claimed just three days previously:

My days as an Internet apologist / polemicist are over.

(3 July 2009)

Here are some of his most polemical pieces, brought back, but on a separate blog. So he has ceased being a polemicist, but he is. He ain't and he is. Huh? Take your pick.

* * * * *

UPDATE: 9 July 2009

Now the situation has changed yet again:

For the last month or so, things have been pretty chaotic here. It started when I wrote some posts about Catholic convert stories to help a friend out, and like a dummy allowed free commenting on them – which immediately sparked a controversy. I took the posts down because my purpose is not to be an Internet controversialist, and also I thought the posts needed some touch up work. Then I moved the whole blog over here to this free site and wrote a few more posts “off the cuff” that I later decided did not need to have been written, and took them down. Then I started a secondary blog to house Protestant answers to Catholic apologetics propaganda. Got all of about 12 people interested in that one on the first day, and the latest count is 4, so now that blog is down, too.

I’m sorry for the “up down, up down” thing. To be perfectly honest, as I’ve moved deeper into the world of classical Christian education over the last few years, I have become very unsure where I fit in anymore on the blogosphere – if anywhere. I actually get sick and tired of blogging about twice a year, and in the almost 6 years this blog has been around, I believe I’ve completely shut it down at least 4 times. I’m surprised some readers have stuck around as long as they have. . . .

Now I know that numbers aren’t equivalent to truth. It would be better to have 5 readers who were actually learning something and helping me to learn things, too, than 5,000 who were only stopping by to see if I was going to say something really rhetorically outrageous that they could pop off a few dozen words in reply to while on their coffee break at work. But this blog has over the years required a great deal of time to maintain, and because of the role I want to play in the Christian world – educator, not facilitator of pop-theology, pop-history, and pop-apologetics – it’s likely that 99% of what I would post here would continue to be for those I thought I wanted to reach out to – the ordinary guy in the pew – of the “That makes me sleepy; let’s go watch the knock-down drag-out foodfight on the Apologetics Message Board” character. I want no part of that, and “the market” has made it clear what it thinks of that.

So anyway, sorry for the late craziness. I’m trying to figure out, I guess, what my place on the Internet is. Please bear with me.

(9 July 2009)

These phases never last for long. Polemicist Tim will, in all likelihood, be back in a week; two at the most. We'll continue to observe his meanderings and rhetorical blustering. If Tim wants to keep bashing the Catholic Church, and converts and apologists and orthodox Catholics who believe in the papacy, etc., etc., he will be called on it and kept accountable, despite his insistence that he will never again respond to me, and that he doesn't even read my blog.

If he leaves the Internet and finally stops his uncontrollable raving, after ten years, I think that would be good for him. In all charity, he is fit to be a lecturer, not an open-minded dialoguer or Public Defender of Causes. That can work in the private classroom, where his obvious gifts and talents and limitless zeal would be, in my opinion, best utilized. Once he sets foot in a public realm, and the arena of exchange of ideas, on the other hand, he needs to learn to exercise some minimum of self-control, and actually try to interact with others, minus the ubiquitous insults and sweeping straw man polemics. Neither quality has, sadly, been much in evidence.

***