antinomianism

antinomianism [Gr.,=against the law], the belief that Christians are not bound by the moral law, particularly that of the Old Testament. The idea was strong among the Gnostics, especially Marcion . Certain heretical sects in the Middle Ages practiced sexual license as an expression of Christian freedom. In the Protestant Reformation theoretical antinomian views were maintained by the Anabaptists and Johann Agricola, and in the 17th cent. Anne Hutchinson was persecuted for supposed antinomianism. Rom. 6 is the usual refutation for antinomianism.

antinomianism. A general name for the view that Christians are by grace set free from the need to observe any moral law. Various Gnostic sects held that, as matter was sharply opposed to spirit, bodily actions were indifferent and therefore licentiousness was admissible. At the Reformation antinomian teaching was revived, e.g. by the Anabaptists, as following from the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith.

antinomianism The belief that one's religious commitments or faith exempt one from the legal or moral codes of the wider society (hence ‘anti-norms’). Antinomianism has been a characteristic of particular sects throughout the history of Christianity. Most notably, certain radical Protestant sectarians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries extended the Calvinist doctrine of predestination in this way, arguing that those who possessed an inner certainty of their own election were no longer capable of sin and therefore freed from the restrictions of conventional conduct. More recent examples include the Oneida Community, in the nineteenth century, and the Children of God in the present day. Antinomianism is usually associated with unorthodox sexual or marital practices, such as plural marriage (the Oneida Community) or sexual activity outside marriage (the Children of God), the latter being justified on the grounds that it brings others to salvation.