(gr., anti, against, and nomos, law). A theological term not found in the Scriptures; refers to the view that the OT moral law does not apply to believers who are under grace. Paul found that this type of heresy had crept into the church (1 Corinthians 5-6). Some individuals or groups have tried to combine spiritual life with moral license, but the Scriptures make it clear that new life in Christ means death to old fleshly desires (Gal 5:24).
Source: Hispanic World Bible Dictionary
(From the Greek anti meaning against, and nomos meaning law.)
Term used in theological studies. It stems from Martin Luther’s controversy with Johann Agricola, in which the former used that word to describe the rejection of the moral law as a fundamental part of the Christian experience. Some Christians maintain that after the time of the Mosaic Law, believers are above moral precepts.
The presence of this heresy, whatever name is used, can be traced back to the time of Paul’s writings. Actually, antinomianism was already present among the Gnostics and other groups of antiquity, but it has been supported more recently by small sectors within Christian groups considered almost always as orthodox.
Source: Dictionary of Religions Denominations and Sects
Term from the Greek (anti nomos / anti-law) with which those who want to free themselves from the law in the name of the gospel are called. Rom 3,8 is appealed to, but in a certain way it is in contradiction with Gál 5,1.13. Antinomianism appeared in the first and second centuries, and then sporadically. It is generally associated with Gnostic sects and, apparently, is also present in New Age neo-Gnosticism (>Non-Christian movements and New Age)1.
GRADES:
1 Cf G. CANOBBIO, Small dictionary of theology, Follow me, Salamanca 1992, 28.
Christopher O´Donell – Salvador Pié-Ninot, Dictionary of Ecclesiology, San Pablo, Madrid 1987
Source: Dictionary of Ecclesiology
The word comes from the Greek anti“against”, and nomos, “law”, meaning then opposition to the law. It refers to the doctrine that the moral law is not binding on Christians as a rule of life. In a broad sense it applies to the ideas of fanatics who refuse to acknowledge any kind of law other than their own subjective ideas which they usually claim to have received from the Holy Spirit.
Antinomianism was named after Luther, when his old friend John Agricola (1492–1566) taught that Christians are totally free from the law, that is, from the moral law as established by Moses. He said that the believer is not required to keep the Ten Commandments. He took the basis of it for fear of justification by works, mistakenly thinking that “justification by faith alone” demanded this. The teaching of the Reformation was this: “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works” (Patrick Hamilton).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
HERE; SHERK.
Alexander M Renwick
HERE Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics
SHERK The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge
Harrison, EF, Bromiley, GW, & Henry, CFH (2006). Dictionary of Theology (37). Grand Rapids, MI: Challenge Books.
Source: Dictionary of Theology
(anti, against, and nomos, law)
Heretical doctrine by which Christians are exempt from the obligations of the moral law.
The term was first used in the Protestant Reformation, when it was used by Martin Luther to designate the teaching of John Agricola and his sectarians, who, carrying an erroneous and perverse interpretation of the reformers’ doctrine of justification by faith alone To an extreme, but logical, conclusion, they assured that, just as good works do not produce salvation, neither do bad ones make it difficult; and, as all Christians are, necessarily, sanctified by their calling and profession, as well as justified Christians, they are incapable of losing their spiritual holiness, justification, and final salvation by any act of disobedience, or even by any direct violation of the law. of God.
This theory – for it was not, and is not necessarily, anything more than a purely theoretical doctrine, and many professors of antinomianism, in fact, led, and lead, their lives just as morally as those of their opponents – was not just an offshoot more or less natural to the distinctive Protestant principle of justification by faith, but probably also the result of an erroneous view of the relationship between Jewish and Christian dispositions and the writings of the Old and New Testaments. No doubt a confused understanding of the Mosaic ceremonial precepts and fundamental moral law embodied in the Mosaic code was of no little influence in allowing the concept of true Christian freedom to grow beyond all reasonable limits, and take the form of a theoretical doctrine of unlimited licentiousness.
Although the term identifying this error came into use only in the 16th century, the doctrine itself can be traced back to the teachings of the earliest heresies. Some of the Gnostic sect—possibly, for example, Marcion and his followers, in their antithesis between the Old and New Testaments, or the Carpocratians, in their doctrine of indifference to good works and their contempt for all human laws— they held antinomian or near-antinomian views. In any case, it is generally understood that antinomianism was professed by more than one of the Gnostic schools. Various passages from the writings of the New Testament are cited as support in the discussion that in times as early as the apostolic ones it was necessary to point out and combat this heresy both in its theoretical or dogmatic form and in its coarsest and most practical form.
The indignant words of Saint Paul in his Epistles to the Romans and to the Ephesians (Romans 3, 8-31; 6, 1; Ephesians 5, 69), as well as those of Saint Peter, Second Epistle (2 Peter, 2, 18- 19) seem to leave direct evidence for this view.
Forced into rather dubious relief by the “slanderers” against which the Apostles found it necessary to warn believers, appearing sporadically in various Gnostic theories, and possibly coloring some Albigensian principle, antinomianism definitely reappeared, as a variant of the Protestant doctrine on faith, early in the history of the German Reformation. At this point it is interesting to note the sharp (or “dry”; translator’s note) controversy that he provoked between the head of the reform movement in Germany and his disciple and fellow citizen, Juan Agricola. Schnitter, or Schneider, also known as Master Islebius, was born in Eisleben in 1492, nine years after Luther’s birth. He studied and later taught at Wittenberg, whence, in 1525, he went to Frankfort with the intention of teaching and establishing the Protestant religion there. But soon after, he returned to his native town, where he remained until 1536, teaching at St. Andrew’s School, attracting to himself considerable attention as a preacher of the new religion in the series of sermons he delivered at the School. Nicholas. In 1536 he was recalled to Wittenberg and given a chair at the University. Then the antinomian controversy, which had really begun some ten years before, resurfaced as new with renewed vigor and resentment. Agricola, who was undoubtedly anxious to defend and justify his chief’s new doctrine of grace and justification, and who wished to separate more clearly and distinctly the new Protestant thesis from the old Catholic doctrine of faith and good works, taught that only the unregenerate were under the obligations of the law, while regenerate Christians were entirely absolved and in all things free from such obligations. Although it is highly probable that he held Agricola responsible for views the latter had never held, Luther vigorously attacked him in six lectures, showing that “the law gives man the conscience of sin, and that the fear of the law is both healthy and necessary.” to preserve morality as a divine and human institution”; and on several occasions Agricola was forced to retract or modify his antinomian teachings.
In 1540, Agricola, forced to this point by Luther, who had secured for this purpose the aid of the Elector of Brandenburg, definitively abjured. But it was not long before the tedious controversy was reopened by Poach of Erfurt (1556). Ultimately, this led, on the Lutheran side, to a full and energetic exposition of the teaching on this subject, to the leading German Protestants, in the fifth and sixth articles of the “Formula Concordiae”. St. Alphonsus Liguori points out that after the death of Luther Agricola he went to Berlin, he began again to teach his blasphemies, and died there, at the age of seventy-four, without any sign of repentance; also that Florinundo calls the antinomianists “Atheists who do not believe in God or the devil.” All this in the origin and growth of the antinomianist heresy in the Lutheran body.
Among the higher Calvinists this doctrine may also be found in the teaching that the elect do not sin by committing acts which, in themselves, are contrary to the precepts of the moral law, which the Anabaptists of Munster have no compunction about putting into question. practice these theories. Antinomianism soon reached England, where it was publicly taught, and in some cases carried out by many of the sectarians during Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate.
The state of religion in England, as well as in the Colonies, immediately before and during this troubled period of history was extraordinary, and when the separatists achieved their goal there was no limit to the eccentricities of doctrines, imported or invented, which found a pleasant soil in which to root and spread. Many of the religious controversies that then arose naturally revolved around the doctrines of faith, grace, and justification, which figured prominently in contemporary thought, and antinomianism frequently figured in these controversies. A great number of works, treatises, and sermons existed in this period, in which the virulent and intolerant doctrines of the sectarians appear, but thinly veiled under copious quotations from Scripture, which gave a peculiar effect to their general style.
In the early part of the seventeenth century, Dr. Tobias Crisp, Rector of Brinkwater (b. 1600) was accused, along with others, of holding and teaching such views. His most notable work is “Only Christ Exalted” (1643). His views were discussed with some skill by Dr. Daniel Williams, the founder of the Dissenters’ Library. Certainly, to such an extent were the doctrines defended…