Word: antinomianism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
SOME historians, remarked Arnold Toynbee, hold the view that history "is just one damned thing after another." Himself a believer in orderly historical patterns, Toynbee disapproved of such an outlook. But 1968 seems bent on supporting what he called the "antinomian"* view...
...pitfalls of other approaches to morality. In both the natural-law morality of Roman Catholics and the scriptural law of Protestantism, he argues, principles become inflexible and "obedience to prefabricated 'rules of conduct' is more important than freedom to make responsible decisions." On the other hand, the antinomian, or nonprincipled, approach of the existentialists leads to anarchy and to moral decisions that are "random, unpredictable, erratic, quite anomalous...
Walt Kelly is usually preaching a sermon, and that--aside from his wonderful drawings--is a secret of his charm. The sermon is a kind of good-tempered antinomian tract, expressing a universal and perfectly justified skepticism about mostly everything. And there is entirely too much tolerance for the skepticism to ever become bitter. The most biting sketch in The Black Book is a caricature of a red-neck super-patriot Wildcat--"It's people like me what come from old stock that knows a Real American from a Phony--that's where the government breaks down--they...
Much more relevant to this century is the antinomian facet of Gordon's thought, which Leifer rejects as being alien to the Jewish tradition. Maybe that's why I like it (some of my best friends work for Mosaic, don't forget.) The antinomian (existentialist is the current word, I suppose) bias of thinkers like Gordon and Buber clearly do clash with law-centered traditional Judaism. But the absence of an absolute ground for morality in these two writers is not, as Leifer says, evidence that Judaism today lacks vigor. Rather, it is a token that Gordon and Buber...