Antinomianism

Antinomianism (Koine Greek αντι, against, νομος, law), or lawlessness (ανομια), in theology is the idea that members of a particular religious group are under no obligation to obey the laws of ethics or morality as presented by religious authorities. Antinomianism is the polar opposite of legalism, the notion that obedience to a code of religious law is necessary for salvation.

The term has become a point of contention among opposed religious authorities. Few groups or sects explicitly call themselves antinomian, but the charge is often levelled by some sects against competing sects.

Antinomianism in the Jewish Bible

Throughout the Jewish Bible, different covenants are described; two of them are the Davidic and the Mosaic. The Davidic adds an emphasis of God's unconditional commitment to the Mosaic's apparent emphasis on God's demands; however, both Moses and David describe the same covenant, a covenant that was further expounded by Elijah, Isaiah, and the other prophets, who have to repeatedly remind followers of God's demands. For example, Daniel 7:25:

"He shall speak words against the Most High, shall wear out the holy ones of the Most High, and shall attempt to change the sacred seasons and the law; and they shall be given into his power for a time, two times, and half a time." (NRSV)

Antinomianism in the New Testament

Paul of Tarsus, in his Letters, claims several times that believers are saved by the unearned grace of God, not by our own good works, "lest anyone should boast", and placed emphasis on orthodoxy (right belief) rather than orthopraxy (right practice). It should be noted that the soteriology of Paul's statements in this matter has always been a matter of dispute; the ancient gnostics interpreted Paul to be referring to the manner in which embarking on a path to enlightenment ultimately leads to enlightenment, which was their idea of what constituted salvation. In what has become the modern mainstream Christian orthodoxy, however, this is interpreted as a reference to salvation simply by believing that Christianity is valid. See also New Perspective on Paul.

Paul used the term freedom in Christ, for example, Galatians 2:4, and it is clear that some understood this to mean lawlessness (i.e not obeying Jewish religious law). For example, Acts of the Apostles 21:21 records James the Just explaining his situation to Paul:

"They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs." (NRSV)

The early history of Christianity records conflict between Pauline Christianity and the Jerusalem Church led by James the Just, Simon Peter, and John the Apostle, the so-called "Jewish Christians" although in many places Paul writes that he was an observant Jew, and that Christians should "uphold the Law" (Romans 3:31). In Galatians 2:14, part of the "Incident at Antioch", Paul publicly accused Peter of judaizing. He invariably goes on to say that sins remain sins, and condemns by several examples the kind of behaviour that the church should not tolerate. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7:10–16 he cites Jesus' teaching on divorce ("not I but the Lord") and does not reject it, but goes on to proclaim his own teaching which is different, as he acknowledges ("I say — I and not the Lord"). This confusion is most likely the cause of the statement in 2 Peter 3:16 that some of Paul's Letters are hard to understand and have led many astray.

The Epistle of James, in contrast, states that our good works justify before men our faith after salvation and we are to obey the Law of God, that faith without works is death (2:14–26). Historically, the presence of this statement has been difficult for Protestants to rectify with their belief in salvation by faith alone, and Martin Luther even suggested that because it contradicted his own theology the Epistle must be a forgery, and relegated it to an appendix in his Bible.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is described as having picked grain for food during a sabbath, an act which the Priestly code within the Torah instructs should be punished with the death penalty. Mark goes on to state that when the Pharisees challenged Jesus over this, he replied that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Seemingly, Mark here portrays Jesus as rejecting complete adherance to the Torah, but a minority of scholars, such as E. P. Sanders, claim that this does not constitute rejection of the law, just that it should be obeyed in moderation.

In the Gospel of Matthew, however, Jesus is sometimes portrayed as referring to people he sees as wicked with the term ergazomenoi ten anomian (Template:Polytonic) - e.g. Matthew 7:21–23, Matthew 13:40–43. Due to this negative context the term has almost always been translated as evildoers, though it literally means workers of lawlessness^[1]. In other words, Matthew appears to present Jesus as equating wickedness with encouraging antinomianism. Scholars view Matthew as having been written with a Jewish audience in mind, and several scholars have argued that Matthew artificially lessened a claimed rejection of Jewish law so as not to alienate Matthew's intended audience. See also Hyperdispensationalism.

1 John 3:4 NRSV states: "Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness."

Antinomianism among Christians

In the case of Christianity, the controversy arises out of the doctrine of grace, the forgiveness of sins and atonement by faith in Jesus Christ; Christians being released, in important particulars, from conformity to the Old Testament polity as a whole, a real difficulty attended the settlement of the limits and the immediate authority of the remainder, known vaguely as the moral law, see Cafeteria Christianity. If God forgives sins, what exactly is the disadvantage in sinning, or the reward of obedience?

There are several issues that are addressed by the charge of antinomianism. The charge may represent the fear that a given theological position does not lead to the edification of the believer or assist him in leading a regenerate life. Doctrines that tend to erode the authority of the church and its right to prescribe religious practices for the faithful are often condemned as antinomian. The charge is also brought against those whose teachings are perceived as hostile to government and established authority.

Indications are not wanting that St Paul's doctrine of justification by faith was, in his own day, mistaken or perverted in the interests of immoral licence. The first people accused of antinomianism were found, apparently, in Gnosticism; various aberrant and licentious acts were ascribed to these by their orthodox enemies. In the Book of Revelation 2:6–15, the New Testament speaks of Nicolaitanes, who are traditionally identified with a Gnostic sect, in terms that suggest the charge of antinomianism might be appropriate. In the Apostolic Constitutions, verse 6.19[1], Simon Magus is accused of antinomianism, though traditionally he is accused of Simony. We have few independent records of actual Gnostic teachings, but they seem to have approached the question in two ways: Marcionites, named by Clement of Alexandria Antitactae (revolters against the Demiurge), held the Old Testament economy to be throughout tainted by its source; but they are not accused of licentiousness. Manichaeans, again, holding their spiritual being to be unaffected by the action of matter, regarded carnal sins as being, at worst, forms of bodily disease. Kindred to this latter view was the position of sundry sects of English fanatics during the Commonwealth, who denied that an elect person sinned, even when committing acts in themselves gross and evil.

Roman Catholicism tends to charge Protestantism with antinomianism, based in part on the distinctively Protestant doctrine of sola fide, salvation by faith alone, (cf. James 2:24), and the typical Protestant rejection of the elaborate sacramental liturgy of the Roman church and its body of Canon law. Within Roman Catholicism itself, Blaise Pascal accused the Jesuits of antinomianism in his Lettres provinciales, charging that Jesuit casuistry undermined moral principles.

Different from either of these was the antinomianism charged by Martin Luther against Johannes Agricola. Its starting-point was a dispute with Melanchthon in 1527 as to the relation between repentance and faith. Melanchthon urged that repentance must precede faith, and that knowledge of the moral law is needed to produce repentance. Agricola gave the initial place to faith, maintaining that repentance is the work, not of law, but of the gospel-given knowledge of the love of God. The resulting Antinomian controversy (the only one within the Lutheran body in Luther's lifetime) is not remarkable for the precision or the moderation of the combatants on either side. Agricola was apparently satisfied in conference with Luther and Melanchthon at Torgau, December 1527. His eighteen Positiones of 1537 revived the controversy and made it acute. Random as are some of his statements, he was consistent in two objects:

In the interest of solifidian doctrine, to place the rejection of the Catholic doctrine of good works on a sure ground;
In the interest of the New Testament, to find all needful guidance for Christian duty in its principles, if not in its precepts.

From the latter part of the 17th century, charges of antinomianism have frequently been directed against Calvinists, on the ground of their disparagement of "deadly doing" and of "legal preaching." The virulent controversy between Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists produced as its ablest outcome Fletcher's Checks to Antinomianism (1771–75). Other Protestant groups that have been so accused include the Anabaptists and Mennonites. In the history of American Puritanism, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were accused of antinomian teachings by the Puritan leadership of New England.

Theological charges of antinomianism typically imply that the opponent's doctrine leads to various sorts of licentiousness, and imply that the antinomian chooses his theology in order to further a career of dissipation. The conspicuous austerity of life among surviving groups of Anabaptists or Calvinists suggests that these accusations are mostly for rhetorical effect.

Quakers believed in an extreme form of Antinomianism. They felt that educated ministry was not needed, backed by the idea that anyone can take their own interpretation from The Bible. These ideas supported by the Quaker group fuelled a conflict in England (because of the radical nature).

Footnotes

^ A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature Bauer, Gingrich, Danker; Young's Literal Translation: "ye who are working lawlessness"; NASB: "YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS"

External links

References

Badenas, Robert. Christ the End of the Law, Romans 10.4 in Pauline Perspective 1985 ISBN 0905774930 argues that telos is correctly translated as goal, not end, so that Christ is the goal of the Law, end of the law would be antinomianism
Dunn, James D.G. Jesus, Paul and the Law 1990 ISBN 0664250955
Hall, Robert W., Anchor Bible Dictionary, Antinomianism ISBN 0385193531
G. Kawerau, in A. Hauck's Realencyklopadie (1896)
Riess, in I. Goschler's Dict. Encyclop. de la théol. cath. (1858)
J. H. Blunt Dict. of Doct. and Hist. Theol. (1872)
J. C. L. Gieseler, Ch. Hist. (New York ed. 1868, vol. iv.)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

[1] A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature Bauer, Gingrich, Danker; Young's Literal Translation: "ye who are working lawlessness"; NASB: "YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS"

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