What Christians Need No Longer Defend: The Political Stakes of Considering Antinomianism as Central to the Practice and History of Theology

Abstract

Through a brief history of antinomian thought within the modern period, and the inspection of two contemporary responses to the 'antinomian impulse', I refocus the antinomian debate as being, not necessarily a heretical endeavor, but rather a dialectic between history and memory, structure and experience. Rather than portray antinomianism as a threat to the system which needs to be removed, perhaps we can learn to perceive it as a 'weak messianic force' moving through all constituted (religious) identities, not, then, as the end of 'Christianity' as an organized religion, but its original proclamation, ever in need of greater reformation.