se. Kindred to this latter view was the
position of sundry sects of English fanatics during the Commonwealth,
who denied that an elect person sinned, even when committing acts in
themselves gross and evil. Different from either of these was the
Antinomianism charged by Luther against Agricola. Its starting-point was
a dispute with Melanchthon in 1527 as to the relation between repentance
and faith. Melanchthon urged that repentance must precede faith, and
that knowledge of the moral law is needed to produce repentance.
Agricola gave the initial place to faith, maintaining that repentance is
the work, not of law, but of the gospel-given knowledge of the love of
God. The resulting Antinomian controversy (the only one within the
Lutheran body in Luther's lifetime) is not remarkable for the precision
or the moderation of the combatants on either side. Agricola was
apparently satisfied in conference with Luther and Melanchthon at
Torgau, December 1527. His eighteen _Positiones_ of 1537 revived the
controversy and made it acute. Random as are some of his statements, he
was consistent in two objects: (1) in the interest of solifidian
doctrine, to place the rejection of the Catholic doctrine of good works
on a sure ground; (2) in the interest of the New Testament, to find all
needful guidance for Christian duty in its principles, if not in its
precepts. From the latter part of the 17th century charges of
Antinomianism have frequently been directed against Calvinists, on the
ground of their disparagement of "deadly doing" and of "legal
preaching." The virulent controversy between Arminian and Calvinistic
Methodists produced as its ablest outcome Fletcher's _Checks to
Antinomianism_ (1771-1775).

See G. Kawerau, in A. Hauck's _Realencyklopadie_ (1896); Riess, in I.
Goschler's _Dict. Encyclop. de la theol. cath._ (1858); J.H. Blunt
_Dict. of Doct. and Hist. Theol._ (1872); J.C.L. Gieseler, _Ch. Hist._
(New York ed. 1868, vol. iv.).

ANTINOMY (Gr. [Greek: anti], against, [Greek: nomos], law), literally,
the mutual incompatibility, real or apparent, of two laws. The term
acquired a special significance in the philosophy of Kant, who used it
to describe the contradictory results of applying to the universe of
pure thought the categories or criteria proper to the universe of
sensible perception (phenomena). These antinomies are four--two
mathematical, two dynamical--connected with (1) the limitation of the
universe in