See also:ANTINOMIANS (Gr. avri, against, v6 tos, See also:law)
, a See also:term apparently coined by See also:Luther to stigmatize Johannes See also:Agricola (q.v.) and his following, indicating an See also:- INTERPRETATION (from Lat. interpretari, to expound, explain, inter pres, an agent, go-between, interpreter; inter, between, and the root pret-, possibly connected with that seen either in Greek 4 p4'ew, to speak, or irpa-rrecv, to do)
interpretation of the See also:anti-thesis between See also:law and See also:gospel, recurrent from the earliest times
.
Christians being released, in important particulars, from conformity to the Old Testament polity as a whole, a real difficulty attended the See also:settlement of the limits and the immediate authority of the See also:remainder, known vaguely as the moral law
.
Indications are not wanting that St See also:Paul's See also:doctrine of See also:justification by faith was, in his own See also:day, mistaken or perverted in the interests of immoral See also:licence
.
Gnostic sects approached the question in two ways
.
Marcionites, named by See also:Clement of See also:Alexandria Antitactae (revolters against theDemiurge) held the Old Testament See also: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 See also:action of See also:matter, regarded carnal sins as being, at worst, forms of bodily disease
.
Kindred to this latter view was the position of sundry sects of See also:English fanatics during the See also:Commonwealth, who denied that an elect See also:person sinned, even when committing acts in themselves See also:gross and evil
.
Different from either of these was the Antinomianism charged by Luther against Agricola
.
Its starting-point was a dispute with See also: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 See also:place to faith, maintaining that repentance is the See also:work, not of law, but of the gospel-given knowledge of the love of See also:God
.
The resulting Antinomian controversy (the only one within the Lutheran See also:body in Luther's lifetime) is not remarkable for the precision or the moderation of the combatants on either See also:side
.
Agricola was apparently satisfied in See also:conference with Luther and Melanchthon at See also:Torgau, See also:December 1527
.
His eighteen Positiones of 1537 revived the
II
controversy and made it acute
.
See also:Random as are some of his statements, he was consistent in two See also:objects: (I) in the See also:interest of solifidian doctrine, to place the rejection of the See also:Catholic doctrine of See also:good See also:works on a sure ground; (2) in the interest of the New Testament, to find all needful guidance for See also:Christian See also:duty in its principles, if not in its precepts
.
From the latter See also:part of the 17th See also:century charges of Antinomianism have frequently been directed against Calvinists, on the ground of their disparagement of " deadly doing " and of " legal See also:preaching." The virulent controversy between Arminian and Calvinistic Methodists produced as its ablest outcome See also:Fletcher's Checks to Antinomianism (1771–1975)
.
See G
.
Kawerau, in A
.
Hauck's Realencyklopadie (1896); Riess, in I
.
Goschler's Dict
.
Encydop. de la theol. cath
.
(1858); J
.
H
.
See also:Blunt
.
Dict. of Doct. and Hist
.
Theol
.
(1872); J
.
C
.
L
.
See also:Gieseler, Ch
.
Hist
.
(New See also:York ed
.
1868, vol. iv.)
.
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