ANTINOMIANS

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 20, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 16.

The following is published by request from the Religious Encyclopedia:—

“These derive their name from two Greek words, signifying against law; their favorite text being, that the law is not a rule of life to believers under the gospel. The appellation is also generally given to those who carry the doctrine of justification by faith without works to such an extreme as to separate practical holiness from true believing, and injure, if not wholly destroy, every obligation to moral obedience.

“Antinomianism may be traced to the period of the Reformation. Its founder was John Agricola, at first a disciple of Luther, but afterward an opponent both to him and Melancthon. While Luther was eagerly employed in censuring and refuting the popish doctors, who mixed the law and the gospel together, and represented eternal life as the fruit of legal obedience, John Agricola went into another extreme, and took occasion to advance sentiments which Luther deemed Antinomian. He is said to have taught that the law ought not to be proposed as a rule of life, or used in the church as a means of instruction; and, of course, that repentance is not to be preached from the decalogue, but from the gospel only; that the gospel alone is to be inculcated and explained, and that good works do not promote our salvation, nor evil works hinder it.

“In the seventeenth century, some of his followers in England are said to have expressly maintained that, as the elect cannot fall from grace, nor forfeit the divine favor; so neither are the evil actions they commit really sinful, or to be considered as violations of the divine law; and that, consequently, they have no occasion to confess their sins, or to seek renewed forgiveness. The Antinomian does things wrong in themselves, but they are not wrong when he does them, because he is a believer; so that were he to steal, the crime commonly called theft would in him lose all its criminality, and cease to be a breach of the eighth commandment.

“It does not appear that any set of professed Christians ever called themselves Antinomians; it is rather a term of reproach, which one party has too freely applied to another, and which therefore requires to be received with caution. The unguarded expressions which some persons have used, the bold positions they have advanced, and the construction to which their language is liable, have led others to charge them with Antinomian principles, when in reality they meant not so. As when they have spoken lightly of good works, or asserted that believers have nothing to do with the law of God, without fully explaining what they mean; when they assert that God is not angry with his people for their sins, nor in any sense punishes them on that account, without at all distinguishing between fatherly correction and vindictive wrath;—these and similar expressions, whatever be the private sentiments of those who advance them, have a direct tendency to injure the minds and morals of mankind, though it be under a pretense of enhancing the riches and freeness of divine grace.

“Properly speaking, those only are Antinomians who are avowedly hostile to the law of God; who neither preach nor profess to embrace it, but term those legalists who do. With them, preaching the law is an abomination; and they will have nothing to do with it, except to vilify and condemn. Others of a similar description, but who are not aware of the tendency of their own statements, have embraced a system, which, by perverting the doctrine of divine decrees and efficacious grace, sets aside all moral obligation, and destroys the accountability of man. Justification by such a species of faith as is not necessarily productive of good works, and righteousness imputed to it, are the doctrines by which this class of professors are distinguished.—Jones's Dict. of Relig. Opin.; Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. vii.; Hornbeck's Sum. Controv. 800; Bellamy's Dialogues, Letters and Essays; Mosheim's Church History, vol. v.; Works of A. Fuller; Works of R. Hall.”