Antinomianism as the Revolutionary Impulse of Christianity

Abstract Since the Reformation, Christianity has struggled more or less openly with its inner, antinomian impulses, those revolutionary desires, or desires for a ‘permanent revolution’, that threaten to overturn the rule of all law. From Martin Luther to the Puritans of New England to today’s Evangelical ‘culture warriors’, the desire to restrain antinomian sentiments that endlessly challenge institutional orthodoxy, or even the rule of law itself, nevertheless mainly refuses to take seriously how a desire to live apart from all law remains at the core of Christianity’s most fundamental impulses and defines its diverse historical and cultural forms. By looking at how the concept of the sacred is understood in relation to sovereignty, I explicate the antinomian core of Christianity vis-à-vis its own Jewish heritage (for example, Mosaic Law) and what the unending dynamic exchange means for the future of Christian institutional forms.