Antinomianism
Antinomianism (Ancient Greek: ἀντί [anti] "against" and νόμος [nomos] "law") is any view which rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so.[1] The term has both religious and secular meanings.
In some Christian belief systems, an antinomian is one who takes the principle of salvation by faith and divine grace to the point of asserting that the saved are not bound to follow the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments.[2][3] Antinomians believe that faith alone guarantees eternal security in heaven, regardless of one's actions.[4]
The distinction between antinomian and other Christian views on moral law is that antinomians believe that obedience to the law is motivated by an internal principle flowing from belief rather than from any external compulsion.[5] Antinomianism has been considered to teach that believers have a "license to sin"[6] and that future sins do not require repentance.[7] Johannes Agricola, to whom Antinomianism was first attributed,[8] stated "If you sin, be happy, it should have no consequence."[9]
Examples of antinomians being confronted by the religious establishment include Martin Luther's critique of antinomianism and the Antinomian Controversy of the seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay Colony. The charge of antinomianism has been levelled at Reformed, Baptist and some Nondenominational churches.[10][11][12]
By extension, the word "antinomian" is used to describe views in religions other than Christianity:
Nonreligious antinomianism[edit]
George Orwell was a frequent user of "antinomian" in a secular (and always approving) sense. In his 1940 essay on Henry Miller, "Inside the Whale", the word appears several times, including one in which he calls A. E. Housman a writer in "a blasphemous, antinomian, 'cynical' strain", meaning defiant of arbitrary societal rules.
The psychologist Nathan Adler defined the "antinomian personality type" as "manifested by one whose frame of reference is threatened or has been disrupted. He suffers from a breakdown in the balance of his control and release mechanisms and from the permeability of his body boundaries."[83]
In his study of late-20th-century western society the historian Eric Hobsbawm[84] used the term in a sociological sense.