… who emphasise that the just shall live by faith. The most famous Christian to be accused of Antinomianism in this sense was the Apostle Paul who maintained in Romans 3 “that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” Those Christian Pharisees who taught that the Christian, Jew or gentile should keep all requirements of the Mosaic law, including circumcision, as a necessary basis for faith (Acts 15:5) were quick to accuse Paul of making the law void. Paul, knowing …
Posts Tagged Antinomianism
… Interview with George M. Ella
Q. The 18th century controversy regarding Hyper-Calvinism and Antinomianism seems to have emerged again in recent years and, although your book William Huntington: Pastor of Providence has been welcomed by many, a few voices maintain that you have opened old wounds and should have let sleeping dogs lie.
A. Wounds caused by cries of Hyper-Calvinism have long been open and much salt has been rubbed in them in recent years. The once sleeping dogs of …
… fear of William Huntington
Oliver calls Huntington an Antinomian, defining Doctrinal Antinomianism as the belief that the law plays no part in the believer’s life and Practical Antinomianism as the belief that Christians are freed from all codes of conduct. However, Huntington stresses using the law lawfully and argues that the book of the law will be opened at the Day of Judgement as the deciding test of those who are under the law to the Devil or under the law in Christ. …
… Calvinist as John Ryland Junior, in his defence of Gill, Brine and Toplady against accusations of Antinomianism, named Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion especially as being tinged with the error. Furthermore, the long controversy with the Huntingtonians is only mentioned in a footnote in which Huntington is called a Hyper-Calvinist although he was a Sublapsarian who wrote widely against Antinomianism and was a Free Offer man in the Marrow Men style. Furthermore, one misses comment on the great …
… Naylor regards those whom he takes to be Hyper-Calvinists-cum-High-Calvinists as being suspect of Antinomianism because he believes they incline “to the view that repentance is not necessary for salvation; sin does not have to be given up.” He argues that they see man’s incapacity to repent as a natural limitation rather than as “a culpable evil arising from a perverted and sinful heart”. Naylor admits that there is no strong proof of his inkling that High-Calvinists were …
… spiritual, evangelical and experimental works, a school master to bring the soul to ‘theoretical Antinomianism’, he ‘rested upon a basis of sovereign mercy’ and could only be understood by the intelligent etc. etc.. My own personal opinion is that the one who is guilty of such libel opens himself to the charge of practical Antinomianism. As you see, resting on God’s sovereignty is a red rag to some theological bullies. I could go on through dozens of the saints who are all rapidly …
… honoured outside Baptist circles. Oliver sees Booth as following Gill’s leadership in combating Antinomianism and devotes a large section to the controversy between Fuller and Booth which ended in the latter calling Fuller ‘lost’. Booth spoke of a true imputation in the sense that the elect’s guilt was transferred to Christ. Fuller denied any transfer, viewing substitutionary imputation as a figure of speech to describe an ‘as if’ state. Oliver quotes Fuller’s letter to Carey in …
… are to come as their ‘eschatological transcendence’ programme develops. Thus NCT moves from Antinomianism to Neonomianism. Zaspel argues cryptically that there is no form of Old Law any longer but merely what he calls its new effects which he equates with his unspecified New Law.
Thus, NCT might justly stand for Old Covenant Theology as they reject the New Covenant doctrines of grace propagated since the Fall for a belief in law only. Rather than being mature adults …
… How not to do it
Curt Daniel deals in Chapter Seven with John Gill and Calvinistic Antinomianism. Much of the chapter is way off the subject and exhibits an appalling lack of theological acumen for one introduced in a recent brochure as America’s number one expert on Gill. Daniel links up Antinomianism with Supralapsarianism and the Five Points of Dort. As the findings of Dort are Sublapsarian to the core and one could hardly think of such delegates as Bogerman and Davenant, …
