Heterodoxy Hall of Shame
(From Outside the Camp Vol. 3, No. 1)
"Here, as everywhere else, there is essential truth on both sides of every controversy, and the real truth is
the whole truth, its entire catholic body. Arminianism in the abstract as an historical scheme is a heresy,
holding half the truth. Calvinism is an historical scheme which in its best representatives comprehends the
whole truth with considerable completeness. But the case is essentially different when we come to consider
the great co-existing bodies of Christian people calling themselves respectively Calvinists and Arminians.
Each of these parties holds all essential truth, and therefore they hold actually very much the same truth.
The Arminians think and speak very much like Calvinists when they come to talk with God in either the
confession of sin or the supplication for grace. They both alike in that attitude recognize the sovereignty of
God and the guilt and helplessness of men. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? What room is there for
anything other than essential Calvinism on one's knees? On the other hand, the Calvinist thinks and
speaks like the better class of Arminians when he addresses the consciences of men, and pleads with them,
as free, responsible agents, to repent and believe in Christ. The difference between the best of either class
is one of emphasis rather than of essential principle. Each is the complement of the other. Each is
necessary to restrain, correct, and supply the one-sided strain of the other. They together give origin to
the blended strain from which issues the perfect music which utters the perfect truth."
-- A.A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology, pp. 136-137, quoted in David B. Calhoun, Princeton Seminary, Vol. 2:
The Majestic Testimony, p. 73 (In the chapter ironically entitled "Thy Word is Truth").
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Heterodoxy Hall of Shame