Q. 1. What can you tell me about the heresy of Antinomianism?

A. 1. The heresy of Antinomianism has been a point of doctrinal contention in the history of Christianity, especially in Protestantism.

Antinomianism is any view which maintains that Christians are freed by grace from obligations of any moral law. In Romans 3:8, we see that St Paul condemned this belief.

An Antinomian is "a person who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation".

Some gnostics (e.g. the Ophites and the Nicolaitans) taught that since matter was opposed to the spirit, the body was unimportant. Similar views were found among some Anabaptists in the sixteenth century as a consequence of justification by faith and later among some sects in the seventeenth century in England.

When Council of Trent convened in Trento, Italy, then the capital of the Prince-Bishopric of Trent of the Holy Roman Empire, between 13 December 1545, and 4 December 1563 in twenty-five sessions for three periods, it condemned what was defined as Protestant heresies at the time of the Reformation and defined Church teachings in the areas of Scripture and Tradition, Original Sin, Justification, Sacraments, the Eucharist in Holy Mass and the veneration of saints.