The opposition to Erasmus' Novum Instrumentum was manifold. While Erasmus himself tried to present the debate about his work as an antagonism between humanism and scholasticism, the real reactions did not blend in such a simple scheme. Taking as an example the two theologians Maarten van Dorp and John Mair who were working at the universities of Louvain and Paris and who criticized Erasmus' work from very different perspectives, this article illustrates the complexity of the (sometimes even humanist) motifs that stimulated their criticisms and reactions to Erasmus' work.