Antinomianism

[Nonson]

Antinomianism
(anti, against, and nomos, law)

The heretical doctrine that Christians are exempt from the obligations of moral law. The term first came into use at the Protestant Reformation, when it was employed by Martin Luther to designate the teachings of Johannes Agricola and his secretaries, who, pushing a mistaken and perverted interpretation of the Reformer's doctrine of justification by faith alone to a far-reaching but logical conclusion, asserted that, as good works do not promote salvation, so neither do evil works hinder it; and, as all Christians are necessarily sanctified by their very vocation and profession, so as justified Christians, they are incapable of losing their spiritual holiness, justification, and final salvation by any act of disobedience to, 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, as a matter of fact, led, and lead, lives quite as moral as those of their opponents ≈ was not only a more or less natural outgrowth from the distinctively Protestant principle of justification by faith, but probably also the result of an erroneous view taken with regard to the relation between the Jewish and Christian dispensations and the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Doubtless a confused understanding of the Mosaic ceremonial precepts and the fundamental moral law embodied in the Mosaic code was to no small extent operative in allowing the conception of true Christian liberty to grow beyond all reasonable bounds, and to take the form of a theoretical doctrine of unlimited licentiousness.

Although the term designating this error came into use only in the sixteenth century, the doctrine itself can be traced in the teaching of the earlier heresies. Certain of the Gnostic sect ≈ possibly, for example, Marcion and his followers, in their antithesis of the Old and New Testament, or the Carpoeratians, in their doctrine of the indifference of good works and their contempt for all human laws ≈ held Antinomian or quasi-Antinomian views. In any case, it is generally understood that Antinomianism was professed by more than one of the Gnostic schools. Several passages of the New Testament writings are quoted in support of the contention that even as early as Apostolic times it was found necessary to single out and combat this heresy in its theoretical or dogmatic as well as in its grosser and practical form. The indignant words of St. Paul in his Epistles to the Romans and to the Ephesians (Rom., iii, 8, 31, vi, 1; Eph, v. 6), as well as those of St. Peter, the Second Epistle (II Pet, ii, 18, 19), seem to lend direct evidence in favour of this view. Forced into a somewhat doubtful prominence by the "slanderers" against whom the Apostle found it necessary to warn the faithful, persisting spasmodically in several of the Gnostic bodies, and possibly also colouring some of the tenets of the Abigenses, Antinomianism reappeared definitely, as a variant of the Protestant doctrine of faith, early in the history of the German Reformation. At this point it is of interest to note the sharp controversy that it provoked between the leader of the reforming movement in Germany and his disciple and fellow townsman, Johannes Agricola. Scnitter, or Schneider, sometimes known as the Magister Islebius, was born at Eisleben in 1492, nine years after the birth of Luther. He studied and afterwards, taught, at Wittenberg, whence, in 1525, he went to Frankfort with the intention of teaching and establishing the Protestant religion there. But shortly afterwards, he returned to his native town, where he remained until 1536, teaching in the school of St. Andrew, and drawing considerable attention to himself as a preacher of the new religion by the courses of sermons that he delivered in the Nicolai Church. 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 previously, broke out afresh, with renewed vigour and bitterness. Agricola, who was undoubtedly anxious to defend and justify the novel doctrine of his leader upon the subject of grace and justification, and who wished to separate the new Protestant view more clearly and distinctly from the old Catholic doctrine of faith and good works, taught that only the unregenerate were under the obligation of the law, whereas regenerate Christians were entirely absolved and altogether free from any such obligation. Though it is highly probable that he made Agricola responsible for opinions which the latter never really held, Luther attacked him vigorously is six dissertations, showing that "the law gives man the consciousness of sin, and that the fear of the law is both wholesome and necessary for the preservation of morality and of divine, as well as human, institutions"; and on several occasions Agricola found himself obliged to retract or modify his Antinomian teaching. In 1540 Agricola, forced to this step by Luther, who had secured to this end the assistance of the Elector of Brandenburg, definitely recanted. But it was not long before the wearisome controversy was reopened by Poach of Erfurt (1556). This led ultimately to an authoritative and complete statement, on the part of the Lutheran, of the teaching upon the subject by the German Protestant leaders, in the fifth and sixth articles of the "Formula Concordiae". St. Alphonsus Liguori states that after Luther's death Agricola went to Berlin, commenced teaching his blasphemies again, and died there, at the age of seventy-four, without any sign of repentance; also, that Florinundus calls the Antinomians "Atheists who believe in neither God nor the devil." So much for the origin and growth of the Antinomian heresy in the Lutheran body. Among the high Calvinists also the doctrine was to be found in the teaching that the elect do not sin by the commission of actions that in themselves are contrary to the precepts of the moral law, which the Anabaptists of Munster had no scruple in putting these theories into actual practice.