(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").