# What is Neonomianism?
Neonomianism is a view about the role and relationship between God’s grace and the moral law that emerged within Protestant theology in the 17th century. The term “neonomian” comes from the Greek words neos meaning “new” and nomos meaning “law”. Neonomianism stands in contrast to antinomianism, which emphasizes salvation by grace alone and downplays the continuing relevance of God’s moral law for Christians.
At its core, neonomianism teaches that repentance and sincere obedience are necessary prerequisites for receiving God’s grace and forgiveness. While salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, neonomians argue that God gifts this saving grace only to those who demonstrate their repentance and aim to obey God’s moral laws.
Some key teachings of neonomianism include:
– God’s moral law continues to be relevant for Christians as a guide for conduct. The moral law was not abolished or replaced by grace.
– While humans cannot achieve justification through perfect law-keeping, obedience to God’s moral law is a prerequisite for salvation. God will only grant saving grace to those making sincere efforts to repent and obey.
– The atonement of Christ makes salvation possible for repentant sinners, but humans must meet the antecedent condition of repentance and obedience to receive saving grace.
– Justification involves both the pardon of sin and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. God declares repentant believers to be legally righteous because of Christ’s righteousness.
– Believers must continue to repent of sins and strive for obedience to retain a justified status before God. Justification is not merely a one-time legal declaration.
– God rewards believers’ acts of obedience. While works do not earn salvation, God promises to bless those who sincerely strive to obey his commands.
Neonomianism emerged within 17th century English Puritanism. Key proponents included Richard Baxter and John Owen. They reacted against tendencies toward antinomianism within the Puritan movement and sought to articulate a middle path between antinomianism and legalism.
The neonomians agreed with antinomians that salvation cannot be earned by good works or law-keeping. No one merits saving grace. But against the antinomians, they argued that grace and obedience to God’s moral law are not mutually exclusive. Sincere obedience simply demonstrates repentance and qualifies individuals to receive God’s unmerited forgiveness through Christ. The moral law still has an important function in the Christian life.
Critics like Isaac Chauncy charged neonomianism with compromising salvation by grace alone. They argued that making repentance and obedience prerequisites for receiving God’s grace amounts to a new form of works-righteousness. Neonomianism essentially replaces perfect law-keeping as the grounds for justification with sincere and imperfect law-keeping. It makes forgiveness conditional on human effort and performance.
Later Reformed theologians analyzed the weaknesses in neonomian theology. They affirmed that while Christians must repent of sins and cultivate obedience, these behaviors must be understood as fruits and evidence of having already received God’s grace. Obedience is not a prerequisite that earns grace but rather a result of having been graciously forgiven and transformed by God. Sanctification follows from justification.
Several factors help explain the emergence of neonomianism:
1. Reaction against antinomian tendencies: Neonomianism developed partly in response to antinomian influences within Reformed Protestantism that so emphasized salvation by grace that the relevance of God’s moral law was diminished. Neonomians wanted to recover the abiding significance of the moral law for Christian conduct.
2. Protecting the necessity of virtue: Neonomians were concerned that antinomian emphases on grace alone compromised calls to Christian obedience, repentance, and personal holiness. Their system upheld moral virtue as integral to the Christian life.
3. Misunderstanding of grace and works: Neonomians did not adequately understand the gratuitous nature of saving grace and how repentance and obedience are gifts flowing from grace, not prerequisites to earning grace. This led to formulations that made obedience instrumental in obtaining grace.
4. Role confusion between justification and sanctification: Neonomians blurred the distinction between justification as a one-time legal declaration and sanctification as the ongoing process of becoming holy. Obedience fits into the latter, not the former.
5. Reaction against perceived cheap grace: Neonomians worried that antinomian theology encouraged immorality by making grace a ‘licence to sin.’ Their system tried to stress moral responsibility.
6. Influence of Arminian theology: There are similarities between neonomianism and Arminianism’s emphasis on the human role in salvation. This likely reflects Arminian influence on English Protestantism in the 17th century.
The lasting legacy of neonomianism is its erroneous view of the relationship between grace and law. Its teachings must be rejected to maintain the gratuity of justification and preserve salvation by grace alone. Nevertheless, neonomians were not wrong in emphasizing obedience and holiness as intrinsic to Christian living. Their mistake was confounding justification and sanctification.
Sanctification is where good works and moral obedience come into play – as the fruits and evidence of a justified status, not the grounds for earning it. God’s saving grace in Christ takes center stage in justification. But the moral law remains vital for guiding Christian conduct in grateful response to God’s forgiveness. So while neonomian theology must be rejected, its positive emphases can be affirmed and retained with proper distinctions maintained between justification and sanctification.
In summary, neonomianism teaches that justification is granted to those demonstrating repentance and obedience to God’s moral law. This view compromises the Reformation principle of salvation by grace alone through inserting human works as a prerequisite for receiving God’s grace. While properly emphasizing moral virtue in the Christian life, neonomians erroneously made obedience instrumental in obtaining, rather than responding to, God’s forgiveness. Their teachings reflect a blurring of justification and sanctification. Nevertheless, neonomianism helpfully reasserted the abiding relevance of God’s moral law for shaping Christian conduct in contrast to antinomian tendencies that saw grace and law as incompatible. The lessons of neonomianism remind us to uphold salvation by grace even as we stress that grace is never a license to sin but rather empowers growth in holiness.