We live in an age of antinomianism, and Donald Trump is its avatar.
I realize that for most of you, the preceding sentence may be incoherent. This is because I have studied antinomianism on and off for nearly thirty years now, and have on occasion used the word in conversation, forgetting that almost no one knows what it means, or can even pronounce it.
Then a strange thing happened. At Harvard Law School last semester, I taught a quirky seminar on the subject, worried that few students would sign up. But it filled up, and nearly every source we read, from Anne Hutchinson to Charles Reich, Jacob Frank to Justice Potter Stewart, seemed to be presaging the second Trump administration. It was eerie. I had assigned texts about left-hand Tantra and William Blake, but they seemed to be describing the oval office.
So here is what I mean.
1.
“Antinomianism” is a term coined by Martin Luther in 1537. In its original, narrow usage, Luther used it to describe reformers more radical than he was who taught that Christians were fully released by grace from obeying Biblical law. Even the notion of ‘obedience to the law’ was seen as overly legalistic; rather, the antinomians taught, if one truly aligned oneself with the Holy Spirit, one would automatically do the right thing.
Arguably, some version of this view is already present in the New Testament (“the letter kills, but the spirit gives life,” preaches Paul) as well as in Luther’s own writings. And few antinomians really have no room for law whatsoever; often the term is more of an accusation. But the concept stuck: the bad kind of religion — Judaism, Catholicism, even insufficiently radical Puritanism — deals in laws, bodies, and obligations. The good kind inspires people with love and spirit.
What’s most interesting about antinomianism is that it exists outside of religion as well – or, to be more precise, in secular realms that are understood theologically. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a wave of right-wing American antinomianism. A litigation explosion was destroying America, we were told, causing people to sue one another rather than work out problems. There was a death of common sense, killed by regulations and fine print. Bill Clinton’s lawyerly evasions (“it depends on what the meaning of is is”) were undermining the rule of law — how quaint that seems today. Lawyers were so widely reviled that in the film The Devil’s Advocate, Keanu Reeves played a young lawyer whose boss, played by Al Pacino, turned out to be Ol’ Nick himself. “The law puts us in everything!” he crowed.
Those are mostly conservative examples, but antinomianism is found on the left as well as the right. When Dr. King wrote his letter from a Birmingham jail, arguing that one is obligated to defy an unjust law, that, too, is antinomianism. Same with Thoreau a century earlier. And Occupy a half-century later.
Antinomianism says: the written law says one thing, but often the conscience, the soul, the spirit says something else. And to honor that calling is, itself, the sacred act. Breaking the law can be holy.
Antinomianism is not merely a theological or philosophical position; it is a prophetic experience. The transgression of the law can convey an ontological shock; the nomic world collapses, and with it, one’s prior sense of oneself. This is why antinomianism is often found in apocalyptic movements or ‘cults.’ When a ritual, ethical, or sexual more is transgressed, a new society – a new human being – is born out of that rejection of previously held norms. We are shocked into a new reality, for better (Burning Man, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Hasidic ecstatic prayer, Occupy) or for worse (Heaven’s Gate, DOGE).
The act in question need not even be that dramatic. For a pious Jew, it can be eating a bite of pork, or even praying at the non-appointed time, or bowing to a statue of the Buddha. For a conservative white American, it can be uttering the N-word, boldly transgressing a norm one believes to be unjust and repressive.
Which brings us, of course, to Trump.
2.
MAGA, as a movement, revels in the transgression of norms. At Trump rallies, and now at official events like his ludicrous Trump Kennedy Center Awards last week, the vulgarity is the point – or rather, the frisson of transgression. What is powerful is that I can honor KISS at my arts center, and no one can stop me. I can call Somali immigrants “garbage.” And my followers know in their hearts that I’m right, as Barry Goldwater’s ads once put it. Decency is the enemy; transgression, vulgarity, grievance, and rage define this movement of anti-elite, anti-norm upheaval.
(Of course, the anti-elitism is selective: Trump rails against educational, media, and cultural elites but lavishly rewards the richest members of our society, the tech moguls now in his inner circle, and overseas dealmakers. But the rhetoric remains.)
This transgression is quintessentially antinomian. By defying the rule of law, Trump saves America. By defying rules of discourse, Trump tells the truth that elites had forbidden us to express. The letter kills, the spirit gives life.
Jeff Sharlet has written brilliantly about this transgressive aspect lying at the core of fascism, though at this point the word ‘fascism’ – like the words genocide, terrorism, diversity, and racism – has now been reduced to a marker of ideology devoid of analytical usefulness. So, call it what you will: demagoguery, national conservatism, right-wing populism, whatever. We know it when we see it: the dark spiritual power of authoritarian strongmen like Trump, Mussolini, Orban, Franco, Putin, Pinochet, and You Know Who. Antinomianism is of its essence.
Seen through the lens of antinomianism, Trump’s outrageous acts (antinomians like Jacob Frank or Chogyam Trungpa might call them “strange acts”) begin to look less like aberrations and more like a pattern of transgression that is at once instinctual and ideological. For example:
Bulldozing the East Wing of the White House after saying he wouldn’t
Bombing Venezuelan fishing boats in clear violation of the laws of war (which the Defense Secretary has said should be disobeyed)
Unleashing masked ICE militias on American citizens, channeling the anti-immigrant rage into wildly illegal, crowd-pleasing acts of vengeance
Flagrantly pardoning cronies and criminals at a rate never before seen in presidential history
Using language that, prior to Trump, would have been unheard-of among presidential utterances (at least in public)
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico by fiat
Dismantling congressionally-mandated departments
Saying ‘I Hate my Enemies’ at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk
Boldly defying laws on corruption, shamelessly cashing in to enrich crypto and real estate holdings
Not only unilaterally destroying USAID (and causing, so far, 600,000 deaths) in violation of federal law but physically destroying its offices and prying its signs off the face of buildings
And, of course, the January 6 insurrection, perhaps the greatest single antinomian act in recent American history.
As Robert Cover wrote forty years ago, “to inhabit a nomos” — a normative world constructed by law — “is to know how to live in it.” Now, the American nomos that has been in place since the end of the Civil War is in ruins. We have returned to a nationalist self-conception of a race defined by blood and soil. We are led by a strongman who governs by fiat. Anyone who opposes him is bad; anyone who supports him is good.
Thus, perhaps paradoxically, antinomianism often coexists with hypernomianism. At the same time as the Trump regime, citing the need for law and order, sends masked militias and the National Guard into peaceful American cities, the same regime deconstructs the norms of American politics to break what they perceive to be a broken system and replace it with something new. The hypernomian rhetoric of Trump’s manifestly idiotic underlings – Patel, Hegseth, et al – sits alongside their antinomian defiance of international law or the protocols of the FBI. Even the rule of law is subject to the chaotic nihilism of Putinesque post-meaningfulness. Even in enforcing the law, the authoritarian breaks it. As Hannah Arendt said:
If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
3.
Now, it has been well observed of late that only a minority of Americans support Trumpian antinomianism. Trump won the 2024 election not because of his ideological program but because swing voters believed he would help their economic woes. This has obviously not come to pass, and those voters have abandoned the GOP, especially the ones who are also aware of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’s tax cuts for billionaires and health insurance premium increases for everyone else. Moreover, Trump’s own base has fractured over the Epstein Files and other issues.
My fear, though – other than concerns about how fair the 2026 elections will be – is that the chaos of antinomianism is often hard to wind back. In the most optimistic scenario, after Trump passes from the scene, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” as Omar El-Akkad wrote of the bombardment of Gaza. But that seems extremely unlikely. There is a global shift toward traditionalism, populism, and nationalism, a reaction to globalization, migration, economic insecurity, changes in social norms, and anger at ‘elites’ of any type. Capital has figured this out, and has bet on the Right. Ultra-rich billionaires and corporations control increasing shares of media and technology platforms. Christian nationalists are emboldened and entrenched in all three branches of government. It’s hard to see America turning back the clock.
Most of all, norms, once unraveled, can be extremely hard to sew back together. Antinomian eruptions in Christian history permanently weakened the power of the Catholic church. Smaller ones in Jewish history permanently weakened the power of the rabbinic elite. The messianic, pneumatic power of the antinomian rupture is, by its nature, more destructive than constructive. Like Nietzsche’s lion, it slays the dragon but does not build anything durable in its place.
Then again, who knows.
Thanks for supporting Both/And. This past week I published my longest-yet exploration of psychedelics and spirituality over at Arc magazine. Folks interested in that side of my work, I hope you’ll take a look.
Meanwhile, here’s some of what I’ve enjoyed on Substack this week:
Rob Brezsny published a superb “Prayer to the Algorithms” on his Free Will Astrology newsletter. I still don’t know why we’ve accepted these for-profit algorithms’ invincibility as they immiserate our society. Rob nails it more poetically and tragicomically than I can.
Will CNN become the next right-wing disinformation system? Popular Information did a great investigation into how Jared Kushner is trying to make it happen.
Robert Reich suggests we tax corporations with outrageous CEO pay packages.
Jeff Tiedrich lifts a Tom Cotton interview out of absurdity and into infamy, where it belons.
Also, the latest video from the Harvard conference on psychedelics and religion that I co-hosted last spring has just been published. It’s a remarkable hourlong conversation with Jewish psychedelic practitioners:
And finally, if you like to make plans at the last minute, consider joining me at the Adamah Meditation retreat starting in less than two weeks:
The sexual revolution replaced rules about sex with feelings ("if it feels good, do it", and "the only things that matters is if you love each other").
From the idols (midrash, but still...) to Moses to Mordecai, not to mention actual historical events, it can be argued that Judaism is founded on antinomianism.