antinomianism

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Related to Antinomian controversy: antinomianism, Anne Hutchinson

antinomianism

(ăntĭnō`mēənĭzəm) [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 MarcionMarcion
, c.85–c.160, early Christian bishop, founder of the Marcionites, one of the first great Christian heresies to rival Catholic Christianity. He was born in Sinope. He taught in Asia Minor, then went (c.135) to Rome, where he perfected his theory.
..... Click the link for more information. . 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

the beliefs held, e.g. by the members of some Protestant sects in the 16th and 17th centuries, that, as members of ‘God's elect’, they could no longer be guilty of sin. As WEBER (1922) put it, such persons felt themselves ‘certain of salvation’, and ‘no longer bound by any conventional rule of conduct’. This belief was interpreted by some believers as permitting them to engage in unorthodox marital practices, including plural marriages, as well as in sexual activity outside marriage, which they justified as bringing others to salvation. Weber's view was that antinomianism is a generally occurring phenomenon, and that the more systematically the ‘practical psychological character’ of a religious faith develops, the greater is the tendency for antinomianism to be the outcome.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

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(90) See, for example, errors numbered 1, 2, 15, 43 in Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 219-220, 223, 231.

(99) See, for example, Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 49-51, 80, 91-100, 105, 141, 147, 189, 202, 223, 230, 232, 238, 263-264, 337; Cotton, Covenant of Grace, 19-21, 37-38, 61, 66, 133, 179-180, 190-191.

Redeeming free grace: Thomas Hooker and the contested language of salvation

Hall, The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History, 2nd ed.

Considering possession in The Scarlet Letter

Du Bois's proximity to Hawthorne's home, his extensive reading and intellectual breadth, Hawthorne's prominence in American letters at the turn of the nineteenth century - all suggest that The Scarlet Letter (1850) may be a pre-text for The Silver Fleece, a claim strengthened by Du Bois's allusions to Cotton, because Hawthorne created Hester Prynne with Anne Hutchinson as a model.(7) Zora, in turn, follows Hester s footsteps, and though (like most) Du Bois may lack Hawthorne's allegorical zeal, he does refashion the Antinomian Controversy and the politics of The Scarlet Letter.

Du Bois the Novelist: White Influence, Black Spirit, and The Quest of the Silver Fleece

Hall, "Assurance, Community, and the Puritan Self in the Antinomian Controversy, 1636-38"; and Stephen Woolsey, "Staging a Puritan Saint: Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana."

Books received

Breen reveals that these differences played a role in most of the troubling crises that plagued Massachusetts from the antinomian controversy to the Salem witch trials.

Transgressing the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises Among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630-1692

Bozeman, that London's antinomian controversy occurred within the "fractured landscape" of puritanism.

Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England

After an adeptly argued introductory chapter on gender, liberal theory, and the literary public sphere, Dillon moves to a consideration of how the antinomian controversy, which has long been seen as repressing women, actually involved an intricate and extended negotiation of women's political power.

The Gender of Freedom: Fictions of Liberalism and the Literary Public Sphere

The antinomian controversy is important for her argument because it led to a particularly rigid and well-defined statement of the official position.

Transgressing the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630-1692

The story of this "American Jesabel'" (188) has long dominated accounts of what scholars since the nineteenth century have usually called the "antinomian controversy" in early Massachusetts.

Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641

Covering the antinomian controversy of the 1630s to Jonathan Edwards' classic Freedom of the Will in 1754, Jon Pahl shows how religious ideas about free will directly influenced Americans' thinking about liberty.

Paradox Lost: Free Will and Political Liberty in American Culture, 1630-1760

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