Johannes Agricola

Some people think that Luther was an antinomian, but, uh, he wrote a book against this concept.

Uh, one of his students, Johann Agricola, I think is how you say his name, but this is one of Luther's former students and, uh, actually recording secretary, taking down a lot of his notes, and started to teach this and, and basically say the Ten Commandments don't belong in the pulpit, they belong in the courthouse, that really the only thing that we need to preach is grace.

And that is at, at its course, a perversion of grace, uh, because I love how Luther's response to this is, how can you say you need grace if you throw out the law? The law becomes the necessity for grace because the law shows you that you are lacking in something, and therefore, no law, there's no sin, and if there's no sin, [laughs] then what is it exactly that grace is doing for us? It's a very important book and, and really, uh, uh, I would ...

It's a series of theses and dispositions that he wrote, I think it was, like between 1537 through 1540, something like that, uh, written, called Against the Antinomians.

You'd call it the capital R Reformed branch of the Reformation.

Um, they didn't see eye to eye with, on, on certain things with the, the Lutheran side, and attendees from the Lutheran side who attended were, of course, Martin Luther, uh, Eustace Jonas, Philip Melanchthon, Andreas Sociander, and Stefan Agricola, who's different from the Johann Agricola, which we'll cover in a, soon an episode in this, uh, later Luther series, as well as, uh, John Brents.

Um, so it was, uh, I don't know, 10, that's, I think I named about 10 individuals.

There might have been other observers there, I'm not sure.

So, um, here's some examples of antinomianism.

Johannes Agricola and the Protestant Reformation.

During the 16th century, German reformer Johannes Agricola argued that the moral law had no place in Christian life after conversion, claiming that repentance comes from hearing the gospel rather than the law.

Martin Luther opposed this view in his 1959- nine... or, sorry, 1539 work against the Antinomians.

So we're seeing that this, um, this kind of hyper-grace has been around a long time, and it's what the Bible, what Jesus tells Thyatira to repent of this.