The antinomian-nomistic modern age

This is basically the same point as he makes in a quotation I have previously posted but it is better put so I'll post this quotation as well.

In its universalizing of the gospel, the modern age is antinomian, but at the same time it is increasingly nomistic.

By its very name, which is crafted to characterize its self-understanding, the modern age distinguishes itself as having an "evangelical" character. It conceptualizes itself as a new age that cannot be outdone, standing under the banner of freedom. It is assumed thereby that the law has in principle been vanquished already: the human being is by nature free, good, and spontaneous. In this sense the modern age is antinomian.

But whatever the new human being of the modern age is, that is what he or she must first become. The gospel of freedom, which is universally said to exist, puts the human being under the pressure to redeem himself at the very same time, and calls for him to achieve the potential that is by very nature his already. But if freedom is not promised and imparted, if instead it is characteristic of me from the outset, if I define myself in relation to it, then I am weighted down, in my individual and collective subjectivity, with having to fulfill the promise of what has been provided for me - not freed for freedom but at the same time " to freedom condemned" (Satre). It is not that I am able to be free, but that I have to free myself. Thus the reverse side of antinomism is nomism.

(italics original, pp.65-66, Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation)

I know that I feel the contradiction in the modern age that Bayer describes, and know other people who feel this, particularly in relationship to careers. It is not just non-Christians that are part of this culture.

The pre-modern age was characterised by a lack of freedom, a constraint by a 'law', of being born to do the job your father did. 80 years ago women felt constrained by an expectation that they would not have a career, but would instead be a housewife. The present age promises freedom to be whatever we want to be. But while promising this freedom we are then thrown back on ourselves to embrace this freedom and achieve the maximum possible. What is good news also condemns and oppresses us.