SOURCE: Booty, John E. “Richard Hooker.” In The Spirit of Anglicanism: Hooker, Maurice, Temple, edited by William J. Wolf, pp. 1-45. Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse-Barlow Co., Inc., 1979.

[In the following essay, Booty considers the influences on Hooker's writing career and the critical reaction to his works.]

Richard Hooker's importance for our day is suggested not so much by the work of modern Anglican theologians as by that of others who have contributed to a growing number of Hooker studies. Scholars of various nationalities, including a French Roman Catholic and a Swedish Lutheran, and various disciplines, including philosophers, historians and professors of English literature, have given years of their lives to study and write about Hooker and his thought.¹ Furthermore, a new, critical edition of his Works—sponsored by the prestigious Folger Shakespeare Library and financed by the American government's National Endowment for the Humanities—is in the process of being published.²

Why is there such interest in this sixteenth-century theologian now? H. R. Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, suggests that Hooker's importance is based on his provision of a philosophical foundation for the sixteenth-century Church of England, a foundation dealing with profound issues in a large and ecumenical spirit. It is his profundity, breadth and depth which draw people to Hooker today, whether they are Anglicans or not. “Like Hooker,” says Professor Trevor-Roper, “we wish to look past doctrinal controversies to the profounder issues which they so often concealed; and we may find ourselves in agreement with that uncomfortably isolated Roman Catholic scholar of the nineteenth century, Lord Acton. ‘In the sixteenth century,’ wrote Acton, ‘as a serious quest for a set of principles which should hold good alike under all changes of religion, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity stands almost alone.’”³

Hooker's profundity is related to a habit of mind or theological method to which Samuel Taylor Coleridge referred when he said that Hooker's mind was forever flying from the particular “to the General.”⁴ That is to say that, when Hooker was confronted by particular controversial issues involved in the struggle between Puritans and Anglicans, he dug beneath them to their philosophical and theological roots.⁵ He did this over and over again, searching for roots and ends, questing to understand the purposes involved in the particular issues. Although this habit was frustrating to the Puritans, and even to some of his friends, it was not one which he could break for it was an intimate part of that personality which identified Richard Hooker.

For instance, Hooker confronted the major issues underlying all of the theological controversies of the sixteenth century: On what authority is anything positive and pleasing to God done? Suspicious of human nature, Puritans relied on Scripture as interpreted by the Holy Spirit in the individual. Scripture provided the only adequate authority for doing that which is meritorious in God's sight. For Hooker this position was too narrow and too dependent upon individuals who are inclined to confuse “private fancies” with the promptings of the Holy Spirit (Pref.3.10).⁶ God's ways are many and various (III.11.8), working through a universal hierarchy of laws, a complex structure of relationships fundamentally harmonious but often marred by human sin. An important element in the complex structure is reason⁷ which possesses authority not only in the sciences, as the Puritans allowed, but in things divine (II.7.3-4). Scripture presupposes that God works through reason in determining its authority and interpreting its meaning. Therefore, although under the conditions of human existence they are in tension, yet Scripture and reason (or nature) require one another. “Nature and Scripture do serve in such full sort, that they both jointly and not severally either of them, be so complete, that unto everlasting felicity we need not the knowledge of any thing more than these two, may easily furnish our mindes with on all sides” (I.14.5).

The breadth of Hooker's thought is impressive, as was that of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, both of whom influenced him. Moreover, for several reasons this breadth is partially responsible for the interest now shown in him. First, his teaching is broad enough to take account of non-Christians with whom God communicates through nature. Second, Hooker's teaching emphasizes the dignity of human nature. Finally, there is humility expressed in his prose indicative of the spirit of one who not only writes about but worships God. Time and again this finds expression in writings which are not intentionally devotional.⁸

In a time when there is growing interest in spirituality, Hooker appeals not only because he wrote on prayer (V.20f.), but because there is spiritual depth in all of his writings. His spirituality is not, however, introverted or individualistic. His writings are rooted in tradition and grow out of his social views. In a time when there is concern for the fate of tradition and its values, Hooker provides an example of one steeped in tradition who nevertheless seeks to evaluate that tradition, discerning between that which is essential to salvation and must be retained and that which is of indifference and need not (indeed at times should not) be retained. In discerning this difference, Hooker assesses that which is received from the past in terms of purposes and ends, but also in relation to changing times and circumstances. On the one hand we find in Hooker devotion and humility, on the other evaluation and advice concerning things to be defended and things to be changed. In an era of rapid social and religious change, Hooker can be of help, as those who read him well know.

HOOKER'S LIFE: A BRIEF SKETCH

Richard Hooker was born in 1554 at Heavitree in Exeter of prominent but not wealthy parents. Educated at the Exeter Latin School, where he demonstrated scholarly aptitudes, Hooker was early destined for a university education. John Hooker, his uncle and Chamberlain of Exeter, presented the boy to John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, who became his patron at Oxford. In 1568 Hooker became a clerk in the company of Corpus Christi College, where he fared well under the guidance of the Puritan John Rainoldes. A fellow of Corpus in 1577, Hooker lectured on logic and, two years later, began giving the Hebrew lecture in the university.

In 1580 Hooker was involved in a dispute as to who should be president of the college—his former tutor Rainoldes or one Barfoot, vice president and chaplain to the powerful Earl of Warwick. Hooker campaigned for Rainoldes, was expelled for contentiousness, but was restored when Rainoldes assumed the presidency. In this campaign Hooker was supporting a man who would be a leader of the Puritans at Hampton Court in 1604 and a lifelong friend.

In 1581 Hooker was a priest of the Church of England and preached at Paul's Cross, the preaching station outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, London. There, where great throngs gathered, including the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, as well as members of the Queen's Court, Hooker began that controversial work which was to occupy him for the rest of his life. Izaak Walton, his first biographer, reported Hooker as saying that “In God there were two wills; an antecedent, and a consequent will: his first will, that all mankind should be saved; but his second will was, that those only should be saved, that did live answerable to that degree of grace which he had offered, or afforded him.”⁹ Hooker was not allowed to forget this early sermon. Its teaching was like that of Peter Baro who said that “‘God, who is in his nature good, created man for what is good, that is, for a life of blessedness.’ God ‘every day truly calls and invites all men, without any limit, to repentance, faith, and salvation.’”¹⁰ The Calvinist Puritans, who believed that “God eternallie predestinateth by a constant decree,”¹¹ and that therefore since some are damned God does not will that all be saved, regarded such teaching as Baro's and Hooker's as dangerous, not only because it was false, but because it was popish. The fact that Hooker laboriously explained and qualified his early teaching and that he was defending the doctrine of predestination as he understood it was to no avail.

While in London in 1581, Hooker was introduced to the Churchman family and was befriended by its head, John Churchman, a distinguished London merchant. In 1584 Hooker left Oxford to make his residence in London. He had been presented to the living of Drayton-Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire but probably never lived there. In fact he seems to have joined the Churchman family, with which he lived off and on until 1595, marrying Joan Churchman in 1588, and being assisted in his literary activities by Benjamin Pullen, a Churchman family servant. Contrary to Walton's testimony, Hooker seems to have been well treated and considerably assisted by John Churchman and his wife.¹²

In 1585 Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple by the Queen. He thus became “vicar” to the legal profession centered in the Inns of Court. He was not the first choice for the Temple. The favored candidate was Walter Travers, the Puritan, who was then Reader of the Temple, a position subservient to the Master. Travers had the support of lawyers and of the Lord Treasurer of England, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh. John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury and scourge of the Puritans, preferred Nicholas Bond, a chaplain to the Queen but otherwise not remarkable. The great men struggled and Hooker emerged as the victorious alternative.¹³

At once another struggle began, now between Travers and Hooker. The former tried to win the latter over to his presbyterian views. They discussed matters but firmly disagreed. Eventually their disagreement was made public in sermons preached at the Temple, Hooker on Sunday mornings, Travers in the afternoons. The Puritan reminded Hooker of his sermon at Paul's Cross in 1581, attacked his teachings on the assurance of God's Word (Hooker believed that the assurance “is not so certain, as that we perceive by sense”) and expressed his alarm at the way Hooker argued that some Roman Catholics had been saved.¹⁴ It was Hooker's attitude toward Rome which aroused the greatest opposition.¹⁵ The controversy progressed until, suddenly, in March 1586, the Archbishop silenced Travers. The Puritan appealed to the Privy Council for support but to no avail. He was at fault, it was said, for engaging in debate on religious matters, contrary to the statutes. Furthermore, his orders were defective, Travers having been ordained in a presbyterian ceremony in Antwerp.¹⁶

It was then, seemingly, that Hooker began to conceive his major work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in which his intent was to lay bare the falsity and danger of the Puritan cause in relation to the Church of England as reformed, with its Book of Common Prayer, its episcopal government and its intimate connection to the Tudor state, but also to the most fundamental philosophical and theological principles essential to Christianity everywhere and recognized as such by all reasonable people. He wrote a draft of the Laws while resident in London living at the Churchman house on Watling Street.

In 1591 Hooker left the Temple and, in order that he might devote his time to his writing, Whitgift presented him to the living of Boscombe in Wiltshire. There is no conclusive evidence that he was ever resident there, but there is some evidence that he spent a prescribed amount of time each year at Salisbury where he was subdean and canon of Netheravon.¹⁷ In all likelihood his principal residence was then in London, while he resided at the house provided for him in the Salisbury Close for a few weeks each year, working at the Cathedral Library and conferring with the dean, John Bridges, a noted enemy of the Puritans and author of a defense of the Church of England.¹⁸

It is also evident that Hooker had the advice of Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, his tutees at Oxford. The former was the son of the Archbishop of York, Hooker's patron after Jewel's death in 1571. The latter's father was a nephew of the famed Archbishop of Canterbury. Sandys was a lawyer, member of the Inns of Court and, in time, a member of the House of Commons. Cranmer was first secretary to William Davidson, secretary of state, and then to Sir Henry Killigrew on embassy to France. Both Sandys and Cranmer were anti-Puritan at a time when the government's pursuit of Puritans and Separatists was most intense. We believe that they read Hooker's drafts of the books of the Laws, criticizing them and urging Hooker to deal less with the high principles of philosophy and theology and more with the specifics of the Puritan bill of complaint, refuting their arguments point by point.¹⁹

In 1572 the Puritans produced an “Admonition to Parliament,” together with “A View of Popish Abuses,” attacking the three articles contained in the oath they were forced to take.²⁰ The “Admonition” was answered by Whitgift, who was in turn answered by the Puritan Thomas Cartwright. The literature of the Admonitions controversy contains the specifics which were to be debated for the rest of the century and beyond. The debate intensified during the 1580s as some Puritans sought to institute presbyterian government in England, as radical separatists such as Penry, Harrison, Browne and Greenwood openly defied the law, and as the church under Whitgift became increasingly concerned to put a stop to the subversion. With Sandys and Cranmer bringing pressure to bear, Hooker revised his early drafts to address the Puritans more directly. And yet he did not yield to such pressure to the extent that his main purposes were obscured.²¹

The first four books of the Laws, originally intended to be one half of the entire work, were published in 1593 with the printing subsidized by Sandys. A copy of the work was in the Lord Treasurer's hands by March, at a time when Parliament was enacting a statute that greatly damaged the Puritan movement.²² Some regarded Hooker's book as a strong weapon in the arsenal of weapons which the government was using to defeat the Puritans. Men such as Sandys and Cranmer were eager for the second volume to be published. Indeed, there is reason to believe that all of the eight books of the Laws were ready in the winter of 1592-93. Only the first four were published. Hooker seemingly delayed publication of the last four in order to revise them further.

In 1595 Hooker was presented to the living of Bishopsbourne in Kent and with his family retired into the country, near Canterbury, to continue his writing. The fifth book of the Laws was published in 1597 and was as long as the first four books together. In 1599 A Christian Letter of Certain English Protestants was issued attacking Hooker and all five books of the Laws then in print. A slender volume, published anonymously, it concentrated on Hooker's treatment of basic Christian doctrines, seeking to prove that he disagreed with the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the English Reformers and the Fathers of the Early Church.²³ When Hooker died in 1600 he was preparing an answer to the Letter, of which we possess but fragments and his own copy of the tract heavily annotated.²⁴

After Hooker's death there was a legal contest over his literary estate, in the course of which his wife and his in-laws were badly maligned.²⁵ The manuscripts on which he had been working were dispersed and appeared in print piece-meal, books six and eight in 1648, and book seven in 1662. There has been suspicion that these posthumously published books were tampered with and there have been those who have argued that book six is not properly a part of the Laws.²⁶ We may never be altogether certain of their authenticity, although there is no question that in them we possess material from Hooker's pen.

Hooker himself would have been amazed at his posthumous fame. His reputation was not great during his life-time. No publisher would venture to print his work without a subsidy. Nor was he an exciting person. The historian Fuller, writing in the seventeenth century, said that “his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all, standing stone-still in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, unmoveable in his opinions.” Furthermore, his “sermons followed the inclinations of his studies, and were for the most part on controversies and deep points of school divinity.”²⁷ Fuller is not altogether accurate. In his writings, published and unpublished, Hooker is at times vigorous, even passionate, capable of anger and of wit edged with sarcasm.

We turn now to his writings, not using them as a means of summarizing his thought, but taking note of them as the basis of that summary of his theology which constitutes the most substantial part of this chapter, a reconstruction of his theology in relation to his understanding of participation in Christ.

OF THE LAWS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY: A DESCRIPTION

Hooker's magnum opus was addressed to Puritans who attacked the Church of England in the name of a purer, more scriptural ecclesiastical settlement. In the process, so Hooker asserted in his preface of the Laws, they engaged in illegal and unreasonable activities. Granted that there were abuses which should be corrected, yet,

sith equitie and reason, the law of nature, God and man, do all favour that which is in being, till orderlie judgment of decision be given against it; it is but justice to exact of you [Puritans], and perversnes in you it should be to denie there-unto your willing obedience.

(Pref. 6.5)

Hooker was not concerned to argue about any specific law or laws objected to by the Puritans. His intent was to show that those laws which they disobey are part of a universal pattern of laws established by God and possessing ultimate authority.

It was in the light of this assertion that Hooker discussed the overall plan of the eight books. Since he was intent on convincing the Puritans that “equitie and reason, the law of nature, God and man do all favour that which is in being,” and that they commit grievous error who impugn the present order of things, he began with a discussion of law in general. He drew upon Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and others out of the past, along with those of his own age, in depicting the universe as composed of a hierarchy of laws designed to serve “fore-conceived” ends. Laws²⁸ are thus reasonable and of great variety, composed by God for the sake of creation. Hooker began with “the first eternall law” (I.3.1.). This is God's law by which he governs himself through his own voluntary act. All else is governed by the “second law eternall.” This law is divided into physical laws governing “naturall agents,” the “law Celestial” governing angels, “the law of Reason” governing rational creatures, the “Divine law” which is God's revelation through Scripture and “Human law,” or positive law, which humans devise on the basis of Reason and divine law. Basic to Hooker's understanding is the principle of “correspondence” (I.16.4), which teaches that inferior laws are derived from the supreme or highest law; positive human laws are good in that the eternal law “worketh in them.”

Hooker then turned from a general consideration of law to discuss specifics. First he dealt with the Puritan contention that “Scripture is the onely rule of all things which in this life may be done by men” (title, Book II). Against this, Hooker held that “God hath left sundry kindes of lawes unto men, and by all those lawes the actions of men are in some sort directed” (II.1.2.). He wrote:

Whatsoever either men on earth, or the Angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountaine of wisdom, which wisdom hath diversly imparted her treasures unto the world. As her waies are of sundry kinds, so her maner of teaching is not meerely one and the same. Some things she openeth by the sacred bookes of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature; with some things she inspireth them from above by spirituall influence, in some things she leadeth and trayneth them only by worldly experience and practice. We may not so in any one speciall kind admire her that we disgrace her in any other, but let all her wayes be according unto their place and degree adored.

(II.1.4)

It was in this context that Hooker asserted the rightful authority of human judgment, even in things divine (II.7.4-5).

In the third book Hooker sought to refute the Puritan contention that “in Scripture there must be of necessitie contained a forme of Church-politie the lawes whereof may in no wise be altered” (title, Book III). He began with a discussion of the church, the church mystical which is known to God alone and the church visible composed of those who confess Christ as Lord, profess the faith he delivered and are baptized. This visible society contains the faithful growing in holiness, but also those who are unfaithful and corrupt. Furthermore, the visible church is divided by local distinctions so that we speak of the Church of Corinth, of Rome and of England, each church having its own characteristics, functions and way of life. Each such church possesses a polity or form of government with orders of ministry and with rites and ceremonies. It is Hooker's contention that while each church is bound by certain general principles governed by Scripture, there are areas dependent on human judgment, such as Scripture presupposes (III.11.20). The authority of Scripture is thus limited, presupposing knowledge derived from reason, the operation of positive human laws made by human assemblies, and by human authority establishing the authority of God's Word in Scripture, and the activity of reason for the interpretation of Scripture. Hooker emphasizes the necessity of grace (III.8.10,17) and the necessity of reason's operation. And so he concluded:

We have endeavoured to make it appeare how in the nature of reason it selfe there is no impediment, but that the selfe same spirit, which revealed the things that god hath set down in his law, may also be thought to aid and direct me in finding out by the light of reason what lawes are expedient to be made for the building of his Church, over and besides them that are in scripture”.

(III.8.17)

The fourth book addressed the Puritan “assertion, that our forme of Church-politie is corrupted with popish orders rites and ceremonies banished out of certaine reformed Churches whose example therein we ought to have followed” (title, Book IV). Hooker began considering the purpose of ceremonies: “We are to note that in every graund or maine publique duty, which God requireth at the hand of his Church, there is, besides that matter and forme wherein the essence thereof consisteth, a certaine outward fashion whereby the same is in decent sort administered” (IV.1.2). Such outward fashions, both words and sensible actions, must edify, communicating that for which they are intended. Turning to the Puritan assertion, Hooker refuted the argument that the church in the sixteenth century must imitate the apostolic church. “The glorie of God and the good of His Church was the thing which the Apostles aymed at, and therefore ought to bee the marke whereat we also levell” (IV.2.3); therefore, given the changes of times and circumstances, the “outward fashions” will not always be the same. Hooker also denied that the Church of England must imitate continental reformed churches. Willful singularity must be avoided, but so must rigid uniformity amongst churches (IV.13.2-10). As to the charge that the ceremonies of the English church are popish, Hooker wrote:

We hold it better, that the friends and favourers of the Church of Rome should be in some kind of hope to have a corrupt religion restored, then both we and they conceive just feare, least under colour of rooting out Poperie, the most effectuall means to beare up the state of religion be remooved, and so a way made eyther for Paganisme, or for extreme barbaritie to enter.”

(IV.9.3)

The fifth book marks a transition from the general discussion of the law as applied to Puritan objections, to a detailed defense of the particular ceremonies under attack in the Book of Common Prayer, then to the issue of lay elders in Book VI (although this is not the subject of Book VI in the printed works),²⁹ then to a defense of the episcopal government of the Church of England in Book VII and, in Book VIII, to a defense of the English Crown and the exercise of “Ecclesiastical Dominion” by persons other than those ordained.

The outline of Book V coincides with the outline of the Prayer Book, but focuses attention on the sacraments. The sacraments are treated as means toward participation in Christ, which is salvation (V.50.1, 57.5). It is this end which Hooker has in mind throughout the book and shall provide the focus for our discussion of his theology.³⁰ Book VII addresses the Puritan assertion “that there ought not to be in the Church, bishops endued with such authority and honour as ours are” (title, Book VII). Hooker argued that episcopacy was instituted by Christ (VII.4.2-4), but he was otherwise of the opinion that the churches as politic societies had the right to establish their own forms of government. Episcopacy concerned positive human law. It followed that it could be abolished “by universal consent upon urgent cause” (VII.5.8). That the church retained episcopacy was a matter of its lawful authority to do so or not, and did not concern any immutable divine command.³¹ His argument satisfied neither Puritans nor those Anglicans in later times who believed episcopacy to be of the essence of the church without which the church ceased to be.

Book VIII is a defense of Royal Supremacy or the right of the civil magistrate to exercise power in the church. The Puritans could not directly attack the Queen, but they believed that church and state were two separate, although related, kinds of society, exercising power independently. Hooker, on the basis of his earlier books, argued that church and commonwealth (as the state was called) were distinct when, as in the early church, the state was non-Christian. The situation is different in England: “The Church and commonwealth … are in this case personally one society, which society being termed a commonwealth as it liveth under whatsoever form of secular law and regiment, a church as it hath the spiritual law of Jesus Christ” (VIII.1.4). Hooker was careful to limit the authority of any earthly governor, resisting the idea that the Queen was supreme over the church by an immutable divine command. “As for the supreme power in ecclesiastical affairs, the word of God doth no where appoint that all kings should have it; for which cause it seemeth to stand altogether by human right, that unto Christian kings there is no such dominion given” (VIII.2.5). Once more, Hooker pleased neither Puritans nor their enemies, the staunchest supporters of Royal Supremacy.³²

HOOKER'S OTHER WRITINGS

The lesser writings of Hooker are few in number but, nevertheless, important. They can be considered in three groups: works concerned with the controversy between Hooker and Travers at the Temple; works concerned with the preparation of the last books of the Laws and with Hooker's proposed reply to the Puritan Letter; and miscellaneous sermons.

Travers' Supplication, or appeal to the Privy Council, has already been mentioned.³³ In the course of his account of the dispute with Hooker, Travers refers to four sermons, one being that preached at Paul's Cross in 1581, of which we have an account in Walton's Life but no copy. In that sermon, says Travers, Hooker “taught certain things concerning predestination otherwise than the word of God doth.”³⁴ The other sermons were all on texts from Habakkuk and we do have copies of them. A Learned and Comfortable Sermon of Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect, concerns assurance. It aroused the ire of the Puritan who taught that “the assurance of faith [is] greater, which assured both of things above, and contrary to all sense and human understanding.”³⁵ Hooker's view contains an important epistemological principle:

The angels and spirits of the righteous in heaven have certainty most evident of things spiritual: but this they have by the light of glory. That which we see by the light of grace, though it be indeed more certain; yet is it not to us so evidently certain, as that which sense or the light of nature will not suffer a man to doubt of.³⁶

Hooker was concerned to define and defend the nature of faith by which the Christian understands the things of God “not only as true, but also as good.”³⁷

The second sermon on a text from Habakkuk is A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and How the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown. Travers accused Hooker of preaching doctrine favorable to the Church of Rome. In fact, Hooker sought to describe both the agreement and the disagreement of the churches of Rome and England on the doctrine of justification. His approach to the Roman Church was irenical, but it was also critical: “What is the fault of the church of Rome? Not that she requiereth works at their hands that will be saved: but that she attributeth unto works a power of satisfying God for sin; and a vertue to merit both grace here and in heaven glory.”³⁸ Hooker explained his understanding thusly:

Christ is the matter whereof the doctrine of the gospel treateth; and it treateth of Christ as of a Saviour. Salvation therefore by Christ is the foundation of Christianity: as for works, they are a thing subordinate, no otherwise necessary then because our sanctification cannot be accomplished without them.³⁹

Works, according to Hooker and sixteenth-century Anglican theology, do not cause justification. They are the necessary expression of thanksgiving on the part of a Christian for unmerited justification by a merciful God.⁴⁰

The third sermon on a text from Habakkuk is The Nature of Pride. It deals with pride, but also with a wide range of subjects including law, divine justice, salvation and the spiritual life. Domestic and public strife, heresy, schisms—pride is “the mother which brought them forth, and the only nurse that feedeth them. Give me the hearts of all men humbled; and what is there that can overthrow or disturb the peace of the world?”⁴¹

Travers aimed his attack at such sermons, seeking in his Supplication to prove that Hooker erred and was dangerous. Hooker's defense is called an “Answer to the Supplication.” In it, by the way, we find the beginnings of certain threads of thought leading to the Laws. For instance, Hooker defends the use of Reason:

Not meaning thereby mine own reason as now it is reported, but true, sound, divine reason; reason whereby those conclusions might be out of St. Paul demonstrated, and not probably discoursed only, reason proper to that science whereby the things of God are known; theological reason, which out of the principles in Scripture that are plain, soundly deduceth more doubtful inferences, in such sort that being heard they neither can be denied, nor any thing repugnant unto them received, but whatsoever was before otherwise by miscollecting gathered out of darker places, is thereby forced to yield itself, and the true consonant meaning of sentences not understood is brought to light.⁴²

The second grouping of lesser writings pertains to the Christian Letter and Hooker's response in notes on his copy of the tract,⁴³ in one leaf of a manuscript of rough notes recently discovered which deals with predestination,⁴⁴ and in certain “fragments” of an answer to the Letter, constituting a major theological treatise, its three sections giving us Hooker's most substantial treatment of grace and predestination.⁴⁵ Through his treatment of grace and free will, sacraments as a means of grace and predestination to grace, grace is at the center of Hooker's attention: “The grace of God hath aboundantlie sufficient for all. We are by it that wee are, and att the length by it wee shall bee that wee would.”⁴⁶

The third group of lesser writings—miscellaneous sermons—includes a funeral sermon called “A Remedy Against Sorrow and Fear.” It is the work of a pastor, counseling against excessive sorrow and fear, ending with a memorable statement: “For our direction, to avoid as much as may be both extremities, that we may know as a ship master by his card, how far we are wide, either on the one side or on the other, we must note that in a Christian man there is, first, Nature; secondly, Corruption, perverting Nature; thirdly, Grace correcting and amending Corruption.”⁴⁷ There are two sermons on the Epistle of Jude, the first noteworthy for its definition of the body of Christ and what constitutes separation from it.⁴⁸ The second sermon concerns edification, the church and the ministry. Hooker's argument for an ordained ministry distinct from the ministry of the laity is here based on the analogy of building, the distinction between laborers and the building: “They which are ministered unto, and they to whom the work of the ministry is committed; pastors, and the flock over whom the Holy Ghost hath made them overseers.”⁴⁹ A sermon on Matthew 7:7-8 is concerned with petitionary prayer, describing those conditions necessary to acceptable prayer and emphasizing God's love and mercy.⁵⁰

Finally, there are newly discovered fragments of three sermons attributed to Hooker.⁵¹ One is on Matthew 27:46 and is a fragment concerning the “dereliction of probation and reprobation.” Another is on Proverbs 3:9-10 and is concerned with the nature of divine providence. The third, seemingly more than a fragment, is on Hebrews 2:14-15 and was probably preached at Eastertide. It is a strong affirmation of the death of death by means of Christ's death and of the salvation which ensued. In it there is a characteristically Anglican warning against trying to discover why some are saved and some not: “Let not men … dig the clouds to find out secret impediments; let them not, according to the maner of infidels and heathens, stormingly impute their wretched estate unto destinie.”⁵²

PARTICIPATION: THE KEY TO HOOKER'S THEOLOGY

Hooker wrote in the midst of controversy. There is no doubt that Hooker's Laws is “thoroughly grounded in polemic and controversial advocacy.”⁵³ But it is also true that, in the Laws, Hooker presented his deepest thoughts and on occasion rose “above ecclesiastical bickering.” When this happens he may be using essays written earlier without reference to the Puritan attacks. An example is found in Book I with its majestic description of the hierarchy of laws. The central portion of Book V is another example. Here in chapters 51 through 56 he lays the foundation for a discussion of the sacraments without any mention of Cartwright or any other Puritan. This section, and especially chapter 56 which summarizes the whole, is at the heart of the Laws, revealing the true nature of Hooker's theological point of view and providing the key to its interpretation.

It is significant that this most theological section of the Laws occurs on the threshold of Hooker's discussion of the sacraments and in the midst of his defense of the Book of Common Prayer. The seriousness of Hooker's concern for liturgy and sacraments reflects a major Anglican concern. The Prayer Book provided for many, as it did for Hooker, the liturgical experience which often—quite unconsciously—formed the basis of their theological understanding in general.

Chapter 56 of Book V begins with the definition of a key word. The word participation was seemingly first brought to prominence for Hooker in connection with St. Paul's discussion of the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 10 and in that which he understood to be a liturgical statement in John 6. Hooker defines participation as being “that mutuall inward hold which Christ hath of us and wee of him, in such sort that ech possesseth other by waie of speciall interest propertie and inherent copulation” (V.56.1). In his use of the word, Hooker rejected two extremes represented by two of the six Greek words translated into English as participation. This is to say, he steered a course between participation as complete union or deification (theosis) and as mere kinship (sungeneia). In so doing, he probably had in mind, at one time or another, four other Greek words, all used in the New Testament. Of lesser importance are metousia (metechō), meaning to share or partake in (1 Cor. 9:10, 12; 10:17, 21, etc.), and metalambanō, meaning to partake of or share in (Acts 2:4, etc.). Those Greek words of greater importance to Hooker are koinonia and menō (menein). The former means fellowship, a two-sided relationship with emphasis on giving and receiving. As used in the New Testament, koinonia draws on the concern of primitive religion for the inward reception of divine power (mana) in eating and drinking. In this way the word was a logical one to use in connection with the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 10:16, 1 John 1:3, etc.). The latter word (menō) means to abide in or be in union with, as in John 6:54. In this sense it describes the “community of life between Father and Son” and also the disciples' sharing in Christ's life as they do his works. “This is what is meant by the expression, ‘I in you and you in me.’”⁵⁴ It is seemingly what Hooker had in mind when thinking of the verse as used by Cranmer in the Prayer Book Eucharist.⁵⁵

From the New Testament on, the various meanings of participation and the confluence of a variety of meanings loomed large in Christian thought. Hooker was aware of erroneous and dangerous definitions which tended toward the obliteration of personal identity in a mystical union or, quite the opposite, a casual, passing relationship. Thus in his Sermon on Pride, while discussing the manner in which Christ is in the Christian and the Christian in Christ, Hooker writes that some view this as a mystery while others have

expounded our conjunction with Christ to be a mutual participation whereby each is blended with the other, his flesh and blood with ours, and ours in like sort with his, even as really materially and naturally as wax melted and blended with wax into one lump; no other difference but that this mixture may be sensibly perceived, the other not.

Hooker contends that this way of thinking is irrational, for Christ and the Christian continue to be personally distinguishable. The way in which participation must be understood is in terms of “that intellectual comprehension which the mind is capable of. So that the difference between Christ on earth and Christ in us is no less than between a ship on the sea and in the mind of him that builded it; the one a sensible thing, the other a mere shape of a thing sensible.”⁵⁶ And yet Hooker does not wish to overemphasize the distinction. The union between Christ and the Christian is the vital fact. Thus, when discussing Christology, Hooker set forth this clarifying statement: “Sith God hath deified our nature, though not by turninge it into him selfe, yeat by makinge it his own inseparable habitation, wee cannot now conceive how God should without man either exercise divine power or receive the glorie of divine praise” (V.54.5).

Hooker has in mind the Trinity, involving a strong affirmation of the conciliar conclusions concerning both the Trinity and the relation of the divine and human in Christ. The four councils (Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon) and the four heresies they condemned (Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism) encompass all that need be said on the Trinity and Christology. The fact that these conciliar conclusions and the thinking behind them are rooted in the Greek understanding of substance has been a stumbling block for moderns. In 1938 the Anglican Commission on Doctrine wished to affirm “that which was affirmed in the language of its own time by the Council of Chalcedon. But we wish to assert that the Church is in no way bound to the metaphysic or psychology which lie behind the terms employed by the Council.”⁵⁷ A similar attitude can be taken toward Hooker's statements, emphasizing the aim and not the language or other details. Thus, in defining “participation” he explained:

The persons of the Godhead, by reason of the unitie of theire substance, doe as necessarilie remaine one within an other as they are of necessitie to be distinguished one from an other … the persons of the Trinitie are not three particular substances of whome one generall nature is common, but three that subsist by one substance which it selfe is particular, yeat they all three have it, and theire severall waies of havinge it are that which maketh their personall distinction.

(V.56.2)

Participation thus means both union and distinction in the Godhead and between Christ and the Christian. This becomes more apparent and convincing as Hooker moves from the level of substance to that of personal relationship, as he does in discussing Christ. The Son “which is in the father by eternall derivation of beinge and life from him must needes be in him through an eternal affection of love” (V.56.3). It is on the level of personal relationship that Hooker's definition of participation can be most useful to us now. In this regard Hooker's definition is not opposed to Paul Tillich's understanding of the ontological elements of individualization and participation: “When individualization reaches the perfect form which we call a ‘person,’ participation reaches the perfect form which we call ‘communion.’”⁵⁸ To be a person involves encounter and communion with other persons. Our being and our salvation depend upon participation in the Ultimate known in and through the Trinity and through participation in Christ.

PARTICIPATION AND THE LAWS OF NATURE

Having presented his definition of participation, Hooker set down two basic principles:

(1) “That everie originall cause imparteth it selfe unto those thinges which come of it, and

(2) “Whatsoever taketh beinge from anie other the same is after a sorte in that which giveth it beinge.”

(V.56.1)

These principles point to the all important Book I of the Laws where Hooker affirms that God is in whatsoever may be and “in all things an appetite or desire exists whereby they incline to something they may be” (I.5.1).

God, working in humanity, directs our actions toward the imitation of God, that is, toward those perfections “conteyned under the generall name of Goodnesse.” Hooker wrote:

Sith there can bee no goodnesse desired which proceedeth not from God himself, as from the supreme cause of all things; and every effect doth after a sort conteine, at least wise resemble the cause from which it proceedeth: all things in the worlde are saide in some sort to seeke the highest, and to covet more or lesse the participation of God himselfe.

(I.5.2)

This statement, found in a description of the universe of laws, is reminiscent of Gregory of Nyssa who presupposed a hierarchy of being, ranging from the Uncreated intelligible being to the created sensible beings devoid of life. Humanity is in the middle where the celestial and the terrestrial participate in one another's attributes. This participation, involving the mediation of the Incarnate Logos, is participation in the divine goodness and, thus, “the source and origin and supply of every good is found in the Uncreated Nature, and the whole creation inclined toward It, attaining to and partaking of (metechousa) the lofty nature through the communion (koinonias) of the First Good” (Contra Eunomium, I, 274).⁵⁹

Hooker does not, however, cite Gregory in this place, but rather Aristotle, a source common to both Gregory and Hooker. Aristotle affirmed that the human soul, by means of reproduction, is able to “partake in the eternal and divine. That is the goal towards which all things strive” (de Anima, II,iv; 415^b). And it is possible that Hooker had Thomas Aquinas in mind, particularly in this passage:

All things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself, inasmuch as the perfections of all things are so many similitudes of the divine being … And so of those beings which desire God, some know Him as He is in Himself, and this is proper to a rational creature; others know some participation (participationes) of His goodness, and this belongs also to sensible knowledge, as being directed to their end by a higher Knower.

(S.T., 1a 6.1,2)

Hooker's understanding of God working through the Second Law Eternal to arouse a desire for that Goodness which is divine, aiming at participation in the divine, shares much with and perhaps owes something to Thomas' argument.

In his Sermon on Pride, discussing divine justice, Hooker says:

God himself being the supreme cause which giveth being unto all things that are, and every effect so resembling the cause whereof it cometh, that such as the one is the other cannot choose but be also; it followeth that either men are not made righteous by him, or if they be, then surely God himself is much more that which he maketh us.⁶⁰

For Hooker the cause-effect nexus is self-evident. But this is so largely because of his conviction, derived from experience, that God is, that God created all that is and that God continues to work through that creation.

In chapter 56 Hooker explains that God is in all that is since all proceeds from him and yet, since his substance and created substance differ, communion with God and with one another are not the same as that communion which characterizes the Trinity or the relation of the divine and human in Christ. He then makes a statement which proceeds from faith informed by reason:

God hath his influence into the verie essence of all things, without which influence of deitie supportinge them theire utter annihilation could not choose but followe. Of him all thinges have both receaved theire first beinge and their continuance to be that which they are. All thinges are therefore pertakers of God, they are his offspringe, his influence is in them, and the personall wisdome of God is for that verie cause said to excell in nimbleness or agilitie, to pearce into all intellectual pure and subtile spirites, to go through all, and to reach unto everie thinge which is.

(V.56.5)

Furthermore, God's influence works by means of his goodness (the Father), which moves him to work by means of his wisdom (the Son), which orders his work, and which perfects his work by means of his power (the Holy Spirit). It is thus that “all thinges which God hath made are in that respect the offspringe of God, they are in him as effectes in their highest cause, he likewise actually is in them, the assistance and influence of his deitie is their life” (V.56.5).

Hooker constantly and emphatically asserted the importance of creation and its worth: “All things that are, are good” (I.5.1). All things are good because God is in all as all is in him. Hooker provides a positive view of all nature, as well as human nature, and thus provides the basis for a theology which is ecologically attuned. There is also a personal, inter-relational dimension to his thought here, as indicated by the use of personal terms such as love, assistance and influence, all concerned with personal mutuality. The way is open for the use of personal analogies concerning God's relationship to creation such as C. W. Emmet uses in writing of the influence of the gifted orchestral conductor or of the effective teacher.⁶¹ Affirmation of the goodness of creation and of the personal character of the Creator's relationship to the created order are important facets of the Anglican theological ethos.

Another facet of the Anglican ethos concerns morality and the moral character of God, the universe and humanity. The aim of all is that Goodness which is God. There are two degrees to that Goodness to which humans aspire. The first “is that generall perfection which all thinges doe seeke, in desiring the continuance of their being.” That is to say, all things seek to imitate God in his everlastingness and do so through propagation. On this foundation sex, marriage and the family as an institution of personal continuance are to be understood. The second “degree of goodness is that which each thing coveteth by affecting resemblaunce with God, in the constancie and excellencie of those operations which belong unto their kinde.” Constancy is defined as “working eyther alwaies or for the most part after one and the same manner.” Excellency of operations appropriate to any given kind or order of nature concerns the imitation of God's exactness “by tending unto that which is most requisite in every particular” (I.5.1). Out of such a foundation the Christian doctrine of work proceeds

These two degrees of Goodness pertain to people as they are in themselves. There are more external perfections, involving desires which reflect the goodness of God. Such are “proceeding in the knowledge of truth” and “growing in the exercise of vertue” (I.5.3). Hooker referred in this way not to detailed ethical issues and moral codes, but to basic principles from which Christian ethics and moral codes develop. Such basic principles as we have observed are implanted in and a part of the created order. “Goodnesse is seene with the eye of the understanding. And the light of that eye, is reason” (I.7.2). We know Goodness through knowledge of the causes whereby it exists or through “observation of those signes and tokens, which being annexed alwaies unto goodnes, argue that where they are found, there also goodnes is, although we know not the cause by force whereof it is there.” The chief of such signs is the general consent of all people that such and such are good (I.8.2). “The generall and perpetuall voyce of men is as the sentence of God him selfe” (I.8.3).⁶² The presupposition is that humanity, which excels the rest of nature in ability to reach unto spiritual things, can know the good, desires the good—the good as defined by the nature of the Godhead. We are now confronted by the question of whether or not humans can will and do the good.

PARTICIPATION AS SAVING EFFICACY

The fact is that humanity is fallen and therefore in itself incapable of the perfection for which it yearns. Humans make unreasonable and wrong choices. Hooker wrote:

There is in the will of man naturally that freedome whereby it is apt to take or refuse any particular object whatsoever being present unto it. Whereupon it followeth, that there is no particular object so good, but it may have the shew of some difficultie or unpleasant qualitie annexed to it; in respect whereof the will may shrinke or decline it: contrariwise (for so things are blended) there is no particular evill which hath not some appearance of goodness whereby to insinuate it selfe.

(I.7.6)

Hooker attributed the first sinful choice, and all subsequent sin, to sloth: “We suffer the gifts of God to rust, and but use our reason as an instrument of iniquity: our wits we lend not towards that which should do us good.”⁶³ Although the human will retains the “aptness” or potential to choose the good, it has lost its ability and, consequently, Hooker can say that reason has been darkened and covered “with the foggy damp of original corruption.”⁶⁴ The result is that, although humans yearn for God and Goodness, their reasons are so clouded and their wills so perverted that they cannot achieve their deepest desire.

In that central chapter of Book V which has been our key to Hooker's theology, sin and salvation are dealt with initially in terms of the first and second Adams. We are by nature the sons of the first Adam and are thus fallen. By grace we are the children of God, and thus we are saved. We have the necessary saving efficacy or grace through the second Adam from whom we are descended by “spiritual and heavenly birth.” To put it another way: God loves people because he loves the Son eternally. God is now viewed as Savior as well as Creator (V.56.6). Indeed, as was true of John Donne,⁶⁵ Hooker recognized God's essential nature as merciful and loving toward his creation and especially toward those spiritually descended from his Son. “It was the purpose of his savinge goodnes, his savinge wisdome, and his savinge power which inclined it selfe towards [us].”

Hooker indicated his basic understanding of the Atonement when he wrote:

[1] Adam is in us as an originall cause of our nature and of that corruption of nature which causeth death,

[2] Christ as the cause of originall restauration to life [Heb. 5:9];

[1] the person of Adam is not in us but his nature and the corruption of his nature derived into all men by propagation,

[2] Christ havinge Adams nature as wee have, but incorrupt, deriveth not nature but incorruption and that immediatlie from his owne person into all that belonge unto him.

[1] As therefore wee are reallie partakers of the bodie of synne and death receaved from Adam,

[2] so except wee be trulie partakers of Christ, and as reallie possessed of his Spirit, all wee speake of eternall life is but a dreame.

(V.56.7)⁶⁶

This makes it clear that salvation, which is participation in Christ, is the work of Christ's Spirit who has power to restore clarity to reason and ability to will. Hooker explained: “Seeinge … that Christ is in us as a quickeninge Spirit, the first degree of communion with Christ must needes consist in the participation of his spirit which Cyprian in that respect termeth germanissimam societatem, the highest and truest society that can be between man and him which is both God and man in one” (V.56.8). Once more the emphasis is on the interpersonal.

Hooker then dealt with two further points: First, that none should be misled to believe that the saving conjunction with Christ is solely spiritual, Hooker writes of the conjunction of Christ's body with our bodies. Christ's body is in our bodies as “a cause by removinge through the death and merit of his owne flesh that which hindered the life of ours” (V.56.9). He believes that the saving efficacy extends through all human nature and is not restricted to that which is “spiritual.” From Christ's flesh “our verie bodies doe receive that life which shall make them glorious … and for which they are allreadie accompted partes of his blessed body.”⁶⁷

Second, our participation in Christ is gradual, by degrees, because sin and death hinder the work of the Spirit. Hooker is rather obtuse here, but his understanding is still governed by his belief in the mercy of God. Thus he writes:

It pleaseth him in his mercy to account himself incomplete and maimed without us. But most assured we are that we all receive of his fulness, because he is in us as a moving and working cause; from which many blessed effects are really found to ensue, and that in sundry kinds and degrees, all tending to eternal happiness.

(V.56.10)

Hooker is realistic in recognizing that sin and death continue in the world, although defeated, that some participate in Christ as creator and governor of the world but not as Savior, and that not all Christians achieve the same degree of holiness.

Human beings are endowed with grace through participation, but the fruits of grace do not follow automatically. There is work yet to do: “Grace is not given to abandon labour, but labour required lest our sluggishness should make the grace of God unprofitable.”⁶⁸ Then, too, Christ works in various ways in those whom he indwells, making such effects as are derived from his human and divine natures the possession of those who participate in him. He works by imputation and infusion, imputing to us those things which he did and suffered for us, for the sake of righteousness. He infuses in us his Spirit.

Hooker is at pains to avoid novelty. Speaking in a language which he believes can be understood in his own time, he strives to preserve the theological tradition of the church. He was well-read in the Fathers of the early church, as were all theologians of his time, and in his writing cited them time and again to support his basic arguments. In this he reflected the conviction of the sixteenth-century Church of England that the church of the first five or six centuries was authoritative.⁶⁹ But he also read the theologians of his own day. He did not cite them as often as he cited the Fathers; they did not possess the same weight of authority. If he used their insights, he did not always acknowledge the fact; it was not customary to do so. Thus it is that we find many of those ideas which seem most typically Hooker's stated by others. For instance, Hooker's protest against arguing the mode of Christ's presence in the Eucharist is similar to statements made by Martin Bucer and John Calvin, but most strikingly like the teaching of the German Lutheran, Martin Chemnitz.⁷⁰

Concerning participation in Christ, Hooker is in agreement with Calvin, whose teaching Paul van Buren summarizes in this way:

The whole purpose of the mercy of God as Father and His influence upon us as Holy Spirit is to bring us to a participation in Christ (Inst. 4.1.3). The Spirit, therefore “has chosen His residence in Christ, that those heavenly riches which we so greatly need may flow out upon us from Him” (2.15.5). In a word, the Spirit is Christ reaching out to men to give them all that He has won. Calvin's way of saying this is that “the Holy Spirit is the cord by which Christ efficaciously binds us to Himself” (3.1.1). Note that Christ is the author of the union: “Christ, when He enlightens us with faith by the power of His Spirit, at the same time grafts us into His body, that we may be partakers of all His benefits.”

(3.2.35)⁷¹

Although he may be in general agreement with Calvin on this vital matter, Hooker is at odds with Calvin's followers in England concerning the way to salvation and specifically the relation of grace and free will. Hooker's opponents misunderstood his view of grace and free will. His concern was to limit free will, which he did by differentiating between the will's aptness and the will's ability to do good. The will may be apt, but it is not able. Grace is all important: “Seing all that wee of ourselves can doe, is not only nothing, butt naught, let him alone have abilitie and power of well doing.”⁷² And yet this does not mean that humanity is lost, far from it. The reason is clouded, not destroyed. Nor can Hooker endorse any full-blown doctrine of predestination which says that God predestines some to eternal damnation. He relies upon his understanding that there are two wills in God, the one a general will that all may be saved and the other occasioned by human perversity and involving divine prescience ruling to the contrary. In writing of the two wills in God, Hooker is influenced by theologians such as John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas. But his theological point of view is also influenced by his conviction, born and nurtured by experience, that God wills the salvation of all: “He desireth not the death, no not of the wicked, but rather that they might be converted and live. He longeth for nothing more than that all men might be saved.”⁷³ Some are damned because at times human maliciousness overreaches “the highest measure of divine grace.” Some are damned “not because God will not save them but because he cannot, though of course their obstinacy cannot be said to excel or defeat the eternal will of God nor call into question his power and goodness.”⁷⁴ In the end there is mystery, although Hooker is certain that whatever happens is in accord with God's general will.

In all of this Hooker is seeking to state the case of the Church of England as found in Articles 10 and 17 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, as well as in the so-called Lambeth Articles.⁷⁵ He is also interpreting the nascent Anglican tradition when he speaks of grace by degrees, for one characteristic of Anglicanism has been its emphasis on nurture in faith and works. In defending infant baptism and the interrogations put to infants, Hooker believed that the first foundation of faith is laid in baptism, a foundation to be built upon. “For that which there we professed without anie understandinge, when wee afterwardes come to acknowledg, doe wee any thinge els but onlie bringe unto ripenes the verie seed that was sowne before?” (V.64.2) The satisfying of the desire for Good, the achievement of that Wisdom which is “faith seeking understanding” and the strengthening of that Power needed to do the Good which reason and faith reveal—this is a lifelong task.

PARTICIPATION AND THE CHURCH

Salvation comes from God by the Son through the Spirit in the church. “But in God,” wrote Hooker, “we actuallie are no longer then onlie from the time of our actuall adoption into the bodie of his true Church, into the fellowship of his children.” He further emphasizes this:

Our beinge in Christ by eternall foreknowledge saveth us not without our actuall and real adoption into the fellowship of his Sainctes in this present world. For in him wee actuallie are by our actuall [2 Cor. 2:10] incorporation into that societie which hath him for theire head and doth make together with him one bodie (he and they in that respect havinge [1 Cor. 12:12] one name) for which cause by vertue of this mystical conjunction wee are of him and in him even [Eph. 5:30] as though our verie flesh and bones should be made continuate with his.

(V.56.7)⁷⁶

The church is formed by God “out of the verie flesh, the verie wounded and bleedinge side of the Sonne of man. His bodie crucified and his blood shed for the life of the world, are the true elements of that heavenlie beinge, which maketh us [1 Cor. 15:48] such as him selfe is of whom wee com” (V.56.7). The church so understood is indeed One, Holy, Catholic, worthy of respect and reverence.

The church is the place in which the Holy Spirit lives and works. And so, Hooker wrote of the people of God:

They which belonge to the mysticall bodie of our Savior Christ and be in number as the starres of heaven, devided successivelie by reason of their mortall condition into manie generations, are notwithstandinge coupled everie one to Christ theire head and all unto everie particular person amongst them selves, in as much as the same Spirit, which annointed the blessed soule of our Savior Christ, doth so formalize unite and actuate his whole race, as if both he and they were so many limmes compacted into one bodie, by beinge quickned all with one and the same soule.

(V.56.11)

This statement provides a basis for discussing Hooker's views of church and society, as shall be done presently, his understanding of the church and of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is sufficient for our purposes here to note that it is the church, a people united by the Holy Spirit, professing “one head, one Faith, and one Baptism” (III.1.3), a mixed lot of fallible human beings, which provides the context and the means for growing participation in Christ.

Prayer and preaching are among such means. For Hooker, preaching includes the public reading of Scripture or, in a more general sense, any means by which the Word of God is communicated to people. In a passage reflecting the medieval world view, Hooker wrote of the continuous coming and going of angels between God and his church on earth, descending with doctrine, returning with prayer, descending with “heavenly inspirations,” returning with “our holie desires” (V.23.1). The image suggests the dynamic movement of the daily offices, the faithful hearing God's Word, inspired thereby to pray. In such a way—which is central to Anglican spirituality—people grow in Christ.

What is that doctrine which inspires? It is the saving Word of God, rightly called “the word of life.” “The waie for all men to be saved is by the knowledge of that truth which the word hath taught. And sith eternall life is a thinge of it selfe communicable unto all, it behoveth that the word of God the necessarie meane thereunto be so likewise” (V.21.3). Such conviction accounts for the emphasis given in Anglicanism to the public reading of Scripture and to preaching.⁷⁷

What is prayer? Hooker's explanation is important and deserves close attention, especially at a time when there is so much sloppy, sentimental talk about prayer:

Mindes religiouslie affected are woont in everie thinge of waight and moment which they doe or see, to examine accordinge unto rules of pietie what dependencie it hath on God, what reference to them selves, what coherence with any of those duties whereunto all thinges in the world should leade, and accordinglie they frame the inwarde disposition of theire mindes sometyme to admire God, some tymes to blesse him and give him thankes, sometimes to exult in his love, sometime to implore his mercie. All which different elevations of spirit unto God are conteined in the name of prayer.

(V.48.2)

Fundamentally, “Everie good and holie desire though it lacke the forme, hath notwithstandinge the force of a prayer” (V.48.2).

Hooker, like John Donne, believed that personal prayer was difficult and could only achieve its desired ends when nourished by common prayer.⁷⁸ People, he wrote, are inclined to prefer common to private prayer because of the “vertue, force and efficacie” it possesses “to help that imbecillitie and weaknes in us, by meanes whereof we are otherwise of our selves the lesse apt to performe unto God so heavenlie a service, with such affection of harte, and disposition in the powers of our soules as is requisite” (V.25.1). He might have said that common prayer is necessary because through it the Word which inspires prayer is preached and the people are taught to pray in response to the Word.

Sacraments are means of participation in Christ. Hooker is most forceful here. Asking to what end sacraments are given, he answered that we may participate in Christ. Baptism is the sacrament by which we begin on the way to fuller participation. That is not to say that it is incomplete; it is complete in terms of the end for which it exists. In Baptism we receive Christ “once as the first beginner, in the Eucharist often as beinge by continuall degrees the finisher of our life” (V.57.6).⁷⁹

Much of what Hooker had to say about the Eucharist was written in protest against the quarrels of his day over the mode of Christ's presence in the sacrament. Looking at the end for which the sacrament was given—participation in Christ—it is enough to regard the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ in a symbolic fashion “because they are causes instrumental upon receipt whereof the participation of his body and blood ensueth” (V.67.5). Not transformation of bread and wine, but rather of persons is the aim. “The real presence of Christ's most blessed body and blood is not to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament” (V.67.6).

That Hooker's teaching did not testify to any depreciation of the sacrament's worth is made abundantly clear as he speaks of the way it makes us partakers of eternal life. He becomes most impassioned when he writes:

These mysteries doe as nailes fasten us to his verie crosse, that by them wee draw out, as touchinge efficacie force and vertue, even the blood of his goared side, in the woundes of our redeemer wee there dip our tongues, wee are died redd both within and without, our hunger is satisfied and our thirst for ever quenched … this bread hath in it more then the substance which our eyes behold, this cup hallowed with sollemme benediction availeth to the endles life and welfare both of soul and bodie, in that it serveth as well for a medicine to heale our infirmities and purge our sinnes as for a sacrifice of thanksgiving, which touching it sanctifieth, it enlightneth with beliefe, it trulie conformeth us unto the image of Jesus Christ.

(V.67.12)

Hooker's doctrine avoids the temptation to define Christ's presence in precise philosophical terms. He argues that the sacrament becomes that which it is meant to be in the use of it, as the faithful receive the body and blood of Christ, transforming them to participate ever more fully in Christ's life, death, resurrection and continuing work in the world.

Another means of participation is the ordained ministry. When treating the ministry in Book V Hooker goes to the roots of the matter, beginning with the importance of religion to the achievement of God-given ends in life (V.76.1-9). The ministry is created by God that human needs may be ministered to and the people of God participate more fully in Christ.

The power of the ministrie of God translateth out of darkness into glorie, it rayseth men from the earth and bringeth God himself down from heaven, by blessing visible elementes it maketh them invisible grace, it giveth dailie the holie Ghost, it hath to dispose of that flesh which was given for the life of the world and that blood which was poured out to redeeme soules, when it powreth malediction upon the heades of the wicked they perish, when it revoketh the same they revive.

(V.77.1)

Hooker thus held a very high view of the ordained ministry, but it must be emphasized that he valued the ministry not in and for itself alone. Its value consisted in its service toward that end for which it was created. It was to be the means of assistance by which the “Order of Laity” (as he called it) achieved fuller participation in Christ. His views did not encourage sacerdotalism; he preferred the title “presbyter” or fatherly guide to “priest.” Furthermore, he could be very critical of the ordained ministers of the church, including bishops, when they served their own selfish ends rather than that end for which they were appointed. But he was also concerned for the condition of the ministry, the poverty and ignorance of so many clergy, conditions for which the laity were often responsible to the great detriment of themselves and others. Hooker wished to see the ordained ministry respected and self-respecting, without idolatry or pride, but with strength and humility.⁸⁰

Hooker was not unique in his views; he avoided novelty. His understanding of the Eucharist is similar to that expressed by Calvin when he wrote:

Christ is by his boundless and wonderous powers united us unto the same life with himself, and not only applies the fruits of his passion to us, but becomes truly ours by communicating his passion to us, and accordingly joins us to himself (ideoque nos sibi coniungere), as head and members unite to form one body.⁸¹

And yet Hooker differs from others, generally speaking, in that which is typically Anglican. Participation is viewed in relationship to the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer. His exposition of the Prayer Book influenced generations of Anglicans. The emphasis on participation, the distinction between the essential and the indifferent, the protection of the essential and the adorning of it with ceremonies which enhance that for which it is intended, and the refusal to allow things indifferent to dominate either the church or the Christian life—these things, so carefully enunciated by Hooker, became integral to Anglican tradition.

PARTICIPATION AND THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH

On the social level, Hooker's aim was the realization of the Kingdom of God in the Kingdom of England, a goal similar to that which in large part motivated Thomas Cranmer as he produced and revised the Book of Common Prayer.⁸² The fifth book of the Laws is, as we have noted, devoted to explaining and defending the Prayer Book. It opens not with any direct reference to the Prayer Book, but with the assertion that true religion is the mother of all virtues and the “chief stay” of “all well-ordered commonweals” (V.1.5). The enemies of true religion, and thus the enemies of virtue and of the commonweal, are atheism and superstition. Hooker is concerned about the former,⁸³ but it is the latter that is at issue in the quarrel with the Puritans, who regard the Church of England as full of popish superstitions and out of tune with the Word of God. Hooker described the task he faced as being the examination of “the causes by you [Puritans] alleged, wherefore the public duties of religion, as our prayers, our Sacraments, and the rest, should not be ordered in such sort as with us they are” (Pref. 7.6). That is, Hooker was concerned to show that the laws governing the “public duties” toward God in England were such that true religion was publicly acknowledged and enforced by just laws to the benefit of church and commonwealth in the one society.

Hooker's understanding of the commonwealth at the beginning of Book V is linked to discussions in the first and eighth books. In Book I, following Aristotle, he described the genesis of government and its development from the family to the nation in terms of human necessity. In particular, government exists for protection against the wickedness and malice of others and for the promotion of human happiness (I.10.2-3). With Augustine, however, he believed that government is a result of the Fall, that human nature was “disabled,” and that people stand in need of that supernatural law which teaches not only supernatural duties but also “such natural duties as could not by the light of Nature easily have been known” (I.12.3). True religion is necessary if the ends of the commonwealth are to be fulfilled.

In Book VIII there is recognition that the end or purpose for which societies exist is “living well,” which involves putting spiritual things ahead of temporal, the chiefest of all spiritual things being “religion” (VIII.1.4). That which Hooker says here concerns all societies, but in that society where true religion is acknowledged and enforced the believers are the church, and where all persons are at one and the same time members of both church and commonwealth, then, while there remains a difference between them, they properly constitute one society and are not, as the Puritans argue, two distinct corporations (VIII.1.2).⁸⁴ Thus, in an argument drawing in part on Aristotle and political philosophy in general, in part on Augustine and the history of Christian doctrine and in part on Tudor political theory, Hooker asserts the necessary coinherence of true religion and “secular” society, church and commonwealth.

The Book of Common Prayer, according to this understanding, is a legal means whereby the commonwealth may more fully achieve its intended goal, “the happy life,” “the life well lived,” the life which is virtuous, realizing the Kingdom of God on earth. The Prayer Book, providing for the public devotions of the society, is approved because persons find in it the means “to help that imbecility and weakness in us” (V.25.1). The sacraments are moral instruments (V.57.4-5); they are causes instrumental for that participation in Christ whereby “such effects as being derived from both natures of Christ … are made our own,” conveying “a true actual influence of grace whereby the life which we live according to godliness is his, and from him we receive those perfections wherein our eternal happiness consisteth” (V.56.10). Those who participate in Christ not only attain to perfection and happiness, but they do so together, all being “coupled every one to Christ their Head and unto every particular person amongst themselves” (V.56.11). The Eucharist is not, then, individualistic. Its end is participation in Christ, which involves the perfection and happiness of society, of people existing in many complex relationships, dependent upon one another.

It is of great importance to realize that Hooker's social views grew out of his basic theological principles, and out of fundamental philosophical and psychological understandings. All three ways of looking at life and interpreting experience—theology, philosophy and psychology—are involved in the Sermon on Pride as Hooker said: “God hath created nothing simply for itself: but each thing in all things, and of every thing each part in other have such interest, that in the whole world nothing is found whereunto any thing created can say, ‘I need thee not.’”⁸⁵

Hooker's well-known exposition of church and state in Book VIII, which provides a powerful defense of Royal Supremacy, grows out of basic convictions concerning creation, nature and humanity. That exposition, which some view as fundamental to Anglicanism, can be dispensed with as it has been through the course of events in Europe and America; but the fundamental belief in interdependence, mutual participation and coinherence, of which the church-state theory is but one possible expression, remains and has persisted in Anglicanism to provide one of its most characteristic elements. The Book of Common Prayer is a book of corporate devotion designed, not only for personal growth in participation, but for the formation of happiness in society. In more modern terms this means, not only that Christians may, but that they must “interfere” in the working of society—although that society be professedly “secular” or even anti-Christian—striving for justice and peace and for that love which is the fruit of mutual participation in the created order and in that redemption which is participation in Christ.

CRITIQUE: PROS AND CONS

Hooker's theology was not without fault. He was prejudiced where Puritanism was concerned, too quickly categorizing Puritans of every shade with radicals and Separatists such as the notorious William Hacket (V.Ded.6) and the impatient Henry Barrow (V.12.1). Hooker did not seem to understand the difference between Thomas Cartwright and a Hacket or a Barrow or, if he did, he succeeded in convincing himself that the adoption of moderate Puritanism, such as that of Cartwright, led straight to the horror of Muntzer and the insanity of Hacket.⁸⁶ We know better than that now, although a political scientist of considerable repute has contended that Puritanism leads to modernism, to Hitler and Stalin, and the confusion of God with Man in the totalitarian state. For Eric Voegelin, Hooker is the champion of truth and goodness against the gnostic evil of Puritanism and modernism.⁸⁷

Another way of looking at Hooker suggests that he failed to understand the value of moderate agitation for change and had no sympathy for civil disobedience when such was justified.⁸⁸ And yet he was himself critical of rapacious patrons and negligent bishops. Hooker's rather rigid attitude toward his opponents, his inability to listen and hear what Cartwright was saying and doing at crucial moments, contributed to moments of oversimplification, rigidity and unreasonableness in his writing. An example concerns the way in which he seized upon a statement of Cartwright's uttered in the midst of literary combat and labeled it the opinion of the Puritans.⁸⁹ But the remarkable thing is that the circumstances of his opposition to Puritanism did not make him even more rigid and legalistic than it did. That it did not is largely attributable to the fact that Hooker's mind generally operated on the theological level rather than in the gutter of contemporary controversy. At this juncture our concern is for certain problems encountered on the theological level.

First of all, there is Hooker's cosmology or world view. Hooker accepted without qualm or question the Hellenic-Jewish-Christian cosmology dominant at the end of the Middle Ages. The universe was for him an authoritarian system, rational but constantly reliant upon the authority of pagan and biblical antiquity. The universe as he understood it was geocentric rather than heliocentric. It was also thoroughly anthropological. During Hooker's lifetime human perceptions of the universe, of earth and of humanity were changing. Copernicus, in 1543, and Tycho Brahe, in 1573, contributed to the growing difficulty involved in viewing the universe as geocentric. But, even before Copernicus, the explorations of Columbus, landing on San Salvador in 1492, and of Magellan, circumnavigating the world in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, cast doubt upon the old views and the authorities which sustained them.⁹⁰ This is not to say that the “new cosmology” is simply true and relies on no authority. Like the old, it is a rational construct involving faith in a mathematical structure beyond mere appearance. The authority supporting the dominant cosmology is now neither Plato's Timaeus nor the Holy Bible; it is scientific method, but it also involves faith in a mathematical structure beyond mere appearance. Moreover, our perceptions continue to change. Kepler, Galileo, Newton and many others have contributed insights which further undermine the old views. Darwin and Freud have altered our understanding further, in terms of biological and social development and in terms of human nature. But Darwin and Freud have had their critics as their views have been tested, modified and sometimes refuted. Einstein, the atomic bomb, space travel, a revolution in communications—all are landmarks along the ever-changing way.

When viewed from the vantage point of the present, Hooker is seen to belong to the far distant past. In the seventeenth century John Donne was conscious of change and of the emergence of a somewhat frightening situation:

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of fire is quite put out;
The Sun is lost, and th' earth, and no mans wit
Can well direct him, where to look for it.(91)

The Aristotelianism basic to Hooker's understanding of the universe also contributes to his understanding of the divine and human in Christ. The two-nature model is derived from Aristotle's understanding of primary and secondary substance (Categoriae, c.5). Characteristics belonging to ourselves as individuals and as members of a species combine to make us who we are. The two-nature model as developed in the early church (una hypostasis and duo physeis) virtually identifies hypostasis with primary substance, or with the individual characteristics of the person, and physis with secondary substance, or the characteristics of the species or genus. The result, when applied to the second person of the Trinity, is, on the one hand, a dualism unknown to the New Testament, and, on the other hand, a depreciation of the human individuality of Jesus, depicting him as taking on what amounts to a vague but nevertheless important generality at the time of the Incarnation.⁹² Granted that all christologies are in one way or another deficient and that, when we say “this coffee is weak,” we are still involved in the basic Aristotelian distinction between primary and secondary substance; yet the two-nature model on which Hooker relied is not tenable now. Its view of substance is impossible and its understanding of human nature is altogether too static. The result is that Christ in Hooker's writing is often cold, distant, an abstraction in whom we participate not in the sense of participation as we know it with other persons, but rather as it is experienced in relation to attitudes, powers and principles.

Nor is Hooker's view of church and state tenable now. Here he seemed to have some qualms concerning absolute monarchy. F. D. Maurice indicated that Hooker often “failed in tracing the boundary line between” church and state,⁹³ but he did stop short of the theory of “divine right of kings.” Given his understanding of the universe of laws, he could never countenance a ruler who said and believed: “I am above the law; I am the law.” Nevertheless, the modern situation is far different from anything Hooker could have imagined. Most states are neither antagonistic to the church (as the state was in the two centuries before Constantine) nor overtly supportive of any particular religious groups (as states were in the sixteenth century). Separation of church and state characterizes the American situation—however much practice mocks theory. The same person is not always both a member of the church and of the body politic, and if a person is a member of both such membership does not mean the same now that it did in Hooker's day. Our relationships tend to be contractual. Hooker understood the relationship between church and state to be of divine origin and to be sustained by universal law.

And, finally, there may be something too ecclesiastical or “churchy” in Hooker's theology, at least where modern predelictions are concerned. For example, the ordained ministry seems, after all allowances have been made, to exist on a much higher level than the laity and to exist apart from the generality of the people of God. Furthermore, Hooker's way of expressing the superiority of the ordained ministry may seem sexist. For instance, priests are “presbyters of fatherlie guides” to whom “Christ has communicated the power of spirituall procreation” (V.78.3). Granted that such language reflects the age in which it was used and that Hooker could not be any other than a man of that age; even so some Anglicans will find Hooker hopelessly outmoded and his writings objectionable. The same could be said of Luther and Calvin. In the sixteenth century, church and society were hierarchical in structure and, with some exceptions, patriarchal and sexist.

It would be wrong to end on such a note, however. The theology of participation set forth by Hooker tends to rise above the culturally determined particulars which we have reviewed above. Participation is a term peculiarly suited to the modern age of globel interdependence and democratic ideals. Participation as a key term suggests ways of adjusting to new cosmologies. Hooker is at pains to avoid overdefinition, to admit that he doesn't know spiritual realities as he knows material things and to emphasize the importance of participation in the ultimate as saving grace. Christianity doesn't depend on the truth or falsity of its mythology, however such truth or falsehood may be determined. It depends upon participation as experienced through reasonable faith in the context of the holy community. This is the universe that ultimately matters, for here in participation is to be found the assurance needed concerning the unknown and the unknowable.

Furthermore, as the mode of Christ's presence is not the essential issue (that issue being the reality of participation in Christ), so the relation of the divine and human in Jesus Christ is not something we must logically understand, define and thus control, so much as it is something to be experienced in and through Word and sacraments and explained in rational, communicable terms. Christian experience is not irrational. As Hooker says, the working of the Spirit of God in us yields its reasons, reasons we must be capable of conveying lest we find ourselves indulging in private fancies. The person who participates in Christ, in that personal encounter which preserves individuality in community, knows that Christ is present and can speak of that knowledge rationally.

Then, too, participation in Christ takes place in the community which we know as the people of God. These people are citizens, hopefully active and responsible citizens engaged in political units ranging from the family to the nation, and beyond to the global community. Church and state intersect at many points, but nowhere more meaningfully than in the church itself as the affairs of state demand the church's prophetic judgment, and in the state itself when the course of events leads toward certain disaster without that prophetic judgment needed to alter its suicidal course. Both church and state are concerned for the happiness of the people and the preservation of the eco-system. As Christians we believe that the commonwealth needs the Gospel.

And, finally, participation is the key to the full ministry of the church. The purpose of the ordained ministry is to enable the participation of all the people of God in Christ as Savior working through the Spirit in Word and sacraments. The focus, as we have seen, is on the ministry of the people of God, of which people the ordained ministers are members. That ministry of the people is a ministry to one another and to the world for which Christ died. Hooker's theology of participation is modern because it partakes of that which is timeless.

HOOKER AND PRESENT ANGLICANISM: A CONCLUSION

If Hooker has one clear message for modern Anglicanism, it concerns the necessity to locate and emphasize that which is truly essential in terms of ultimate ends and purposes. The foundation of the Christian faith, he tells us, is acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior, with the faith which he has transmitted to us down through the ages, and baptism in his name. Or, to put it another way, the general aim is happiness, which is salvation through participation in Christ. To realize this end, there are God-given means, chiefly Word and sacraments, and the ordained ministry charged with responsibility for the preaching and administration of the same.

Such an understanding of salvation through participation by means of Word and sacraments stresses one end of a dialectic, that which Hooker indicates when writing of angels descending with doctrine. It seems evident, then, that at the heart of Anglicanism there will be the reading and preaching of God's Word, and thus a strong emphasis on God's gracious initiative emanating from his love. That the public reading and preaching of the Word have been neglected is altogether too evident and accounts for at least some of the weakening of Anglican churches in Great Britain and America. In the Third World and especially in Africa, Anglican churches have been growing rapidly. There the Word is read and preached with evangelical fervor and with openness to its power. Alongside the Word read and preached, there is at the heart of Anglicanism the administration of the sacraments, baptism as the beginning of saving participation in Christ and the Holy Communion as the means of continuance and growth in that participation. But, although the Eucharist has become the main means of corporate worship in the Anglican communion, too often its basic significance as a means of participation in Christ resulting in changed lives and a changed society is lost in a welter of secondary or even trivial concerns—sometimes a result of misunderstanding, sometimes a result of the deliberate avoidance of that which might be unpleasant.

The ordained ministry is emphasized in Anglicanism because it is responsibly engaged in essential matters—matters of the greatest importance to people as people and not only as church people. This responsibility is centered upon reading and preaching the Word and administration of the sacraments—they are central. From them there flow other tasks, such as pastoral care which is fundamentally concerned with that participation which is the chief end of Word and sacraments. The ministry of bishops, priests and deacons in Anglicanism is viewed primarily in the light of such fundamental responsibility. But the ministers must understand this and accept it. The laity must understand this and demand such responsible activity from their clergy. Hooker stresses the vital importance of the ordained minister leading the people in common prayer. “The authoritie of his place, the fervor of his zeale, the pietie and gravitie of his whole behavior must needes exceedinglie grace and set forward the service he doth” (V.25.3). Then too, according to the Anglicanism which Hooker represents, while the ordained ministry is honored, there is no place in it for pomposity or arrogance. This ministry serves the people of God. The fundamental order is that of deacon. Every priest, every bishop, is first of all and always a deacon. As such the ordained minister serves the needs of the people of God and of the world. Viewed thusly, the ordained ministry is subservient to the people and at its best it has always acknowledged that fact with gratitude. There is no greater honor than that which is shared by all who participate in Christ, and he in them. That the church is in trouble now is in large part due to the fact that ordained ministers and laity have forgotten the lessons which Hooker taught.

To be an Anglican is to await and receive God's Word and to attend and participate in the sacraments with conscientious care for their administration according to their proper ends. None should be ordained without having proven dedication and skill in preaching and administering the sacraments. In addition, the laity should understand that they are ill served if preaching and administration of sacraments are done in an off-hand, slovenly manner. Administration of the local church, counseling, social service and the like are all important, but secondary. And this is so because Anglicans believe that, if the essential matters are properly attended to, the rest will follow and be more meaningful and effective than they would otherwise be without the ministry of Word and sacraments.

Thus emphasizing essentials, Anglicans are not so wedded to their denominational identity that they find it a barrier to fellowship on a larger scale. They are first and foremost catholic Christians. The earliest Anglicans believed that the Church of England was not a denomination, but rather Christ's one, holy, catholic and apostolic church in England. True Anglicans have inherited that attitude and embrace it, working actively for the achievement of organic unity amongst all Christians. Anglicans exist to die, or rather to live in a larger context than they now know.

The other side of the dialectic—we have been considering doctrine, or the Word of God read and preached and the sacraments administered—is prayer, or the ascent of the angels back to God. Anglicans are a praying people, although their understanding of prayer may be so broad that to other Christians they may seem to pray not at all. Their prayer is a yearning, a thirst for God, for the Good which takes form in thoughts, words and actions. This prayer is enabled by divine inspiration working in the hearts of individuals as they are sustained in the holy community. Prayer as response to divine inspiration, and as the fulfillment of the most basic desire for the good, is expressed through what Hooker and his contemporaries understood when they wrote and spoke of the commonweal and every Christian's responsibility for the welfare of every other living being. We should speak now of social service or social action. For Hooker and Cranmer and others, such social action was not something apart from prayer or a mere extension of prayer; it was prayer itself. The Book of Common Prayer presupposed this fact, a fact which has been woefully neglected to the detriment of ourselves and those we are called to serve. The understanding and attitude so clearly expressed by Hooker is of vast importance for the present world as we strive to come to terms with our environment, learn to practice Christian presence in the midst of other world religions, and come to grips with the “new” cultural insights into human sexuality. God is merciful, desiring the salvation of all people and of all creation. To yearn for God and to desire the good is to participate in the divine mercy. This positive attitude toward God and the creation is characteristic of Anglicanism. Where it is lacking, there Anglicanism is diminished.

Involved in the Anglican attitude there is a sense of awe and wonder. This is expressed with considerable power by Hooker when dealing with the multiplicity of God's ways of communication with the creation and when explaining the essential nature of the Holy Communion. The holy, the beautiful, the good and the true are all highly valued by Hooker and by Anglicans in general. And this is so at least in part because, when confronted by the creation and by God in and through the creation, Anglicans are so often overwhelmed. As humans we are seemingly impelled to analyze and dominate that which we encounter. We are concerned to discover whether there is a God and if so what God is like and how God communicates to the world. The knowing is no idle exercise of natural curiosity, however, but involves an attempt to control that which is known. Likewise, when confronted by the Holy Communion, we want to know exactly how Christ is present, perhaps in anticipation that through such knowledge we shall be able to control his presence. Hooker's gift to Anglicanism, as one who highly respected reason, was the reminder that, if God is God and the Holy Communion a means of participation in Christ, we cannot know in the sense that we want to know or dominate that which is nothing less than God's grace. Anglicanism is not alone in inculcating awe and humility in its people, nor is it alone in neglecting such awe and humility, yielding to the aggressive, egocentric impulses of our kind. But Anglicanism is only true to its heritage when it glories in the holy, worshiping, loving, witnessing to the God beyond the gods we create and control.

There is much more that could and should be said here, but there is at least this much. Richard Hooker was the recipient of a tradition in process of formation, based upon the tradition which began with Jesus of Nazareth, and before. That he influenced Anglicanism is a fact beyond doubt, contributing to the development of a tradition which is, in its admittedly fallible way, faithful to the past and to the future in the present.

Notes

1. The bibliography provides an indication of the variety of denominations and professions represented in modern Hooker studies. Olivier Loyer is the French Roman Catholic, Gunnar Hillerdal is the Swedish Lutheran, George Edelen, W. Speed Hill and Paul Stanwood are professors of English literature, Arthur S. McGrade and John Marshall are philosophers and Arthur B. Ferguson is a historian, while C. F. Allison, C. W. Dugmore and H. F. Woodhouse are among the church historians represented.

2. This is The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, W. Speed Hill, general editor, 6 vols. Two have been published. Vol. 1: Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Preface, Books I to IV, Georges Edelen, editor. Vol. 2: Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Book V, W. Speed Hill; editor (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977).

3. “The Good and Great Works of Richard Hooker,” New York Review of Books, 24(19), Nov. 24, 1977, p. 55. This is a copy of the address given at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., when the first two volumes of the new edition were published.

4. Cited by W. Speed Hill, “The Evolution of Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,” Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works, edited by Hill (Cleveland and London: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972), p. 136.

5. See, for instance, the way in which Hooker begins a discussion of Puritan objections to the celebration of feast days with a profound dissertation on time, in the Laws, Book V, Chapter 69, Sections 1-3. Subsequent citations incorporated in the text are by book (Roman), chapter (arabic) and section (arabic) numbers, as these are found in the new edition of Hooker's Works (Folger Library Edition) for Preface and Books I-V. For Books VI-VIII see, The Works of … Mr. Richard Hooker, ed. John Keble, 7th ed., revised by R. W. Church and F. Paget (Oxford: At, the, Clarendon Press, 1888), Vol. 3.

6. See Laws, III.8.14 and J. E. Booty, “Hooker and Anglicanism,” Studies in Richard Hooker, ed. Hill, pp. 215-30.

7. See Hooker's Answer to the Supplication cited below, note 14, for a definition of Reason.

8. See, for instance, Laws, III.11.21, citing Rom. 11:33-34.

9. Izaak Walton, The Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson, with an intro. by George Saintsbury (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 77.

10. Cited by H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1958), pp. 387-88.

11. A Christian Letter of certaine English Protestants ([Middleburg: R. Schilders], 1599), p. 16.

12. See C. J. Sisson's corrections of Walton's Life in The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of “The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940).

13. See Inner Temple, Petyt MS. 538 (52), ff. 11-12, 22.

14. See Travers' Supplication, in Hooker's Works (1888), 3:559-590, and Hooker's Answer, 3:576-577.

15. See L. Thomson's description of the debate between Hooker and Travers, Dr. Williams' Library, MS Morris A., f. 35.

16. A colorful report is given of Travers' dismissal by Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Great Britain, ed. J. S. Brewer (Oxford: At the University Press, 1845), 5:186.

17. See Salisbury Cathedral, Chapter Act Book, Penruddock, pp. 22, 29. For an account of a session of the Sub-Dean's Court presided over by Hooker, see the Act Book of the Sub-Dean of Sarum, Jan. 1589-Sept. 1596, fol. 6 of the Court Records of December 1591. And see the letter to the editor from Elsie Smith, Times Literary Supplement, 135(3), Friday, March 30, 1962, p. 223.

18. A Defence of the Government Established in the Church of Englande (London, 1587), STC 3734. See Martin Marprelate's Oh read over D. John Bridges, for it is a worthy worke (1588), STC 17454.

19. See George Cranmer's letter to Hooker, February 1598, and especially notes made by Cranmer and Sandys on Book VI, in Hooker's Works (1888), 2:598-610, 3:108-139.

20. W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas, Puritan Manifestoes (London: S.P.C.K., 1954), p. 20.

21. See W. Speed Hill, “The Evolution of Hooker's Laws,” pp. 145-47.

22. The so-called Conventicle Act. See John Strype, The Life and Acts of John Whitgift (Oxford, 1822), 3:299-300.

23. For a discussion of the Letter, together with a critical edition and commentary, see Vol. 4 of the Folger Library Edition of Hooker's Works, forthcoming.

24. This is Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS 215b; most of the notes are contained in footnotes in the Keble (1888) edition of Hooker, but they are reproduced in their entirety in Vol. 4 of the Folger edition.

25. See Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker, and especially the documents, pp. 127-56.

26. Concerning the authenticity of Book VI, see W. Speed Hill, “Hooker's Polity, The Problem of the ‘Three Last Books,’” Huntington Library Quarterly, 34(4), August 1971, pp. 317-36. But see also A. S. McGrade, “Repentance and Spiritual Power: Book VI of Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 29(2), April 1978, pp. 163-76, where a strong case is made for its authenticity.

27. Fuller, Church History, 5:183.

28. Hooker defines a law as “That which doth assigne unto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the forme and measure of working” (I.2.1).

29. But see McGrade, “Repentance and Spiritual Power,” noted above. That which is identified as Book VI in Hooker's work is of importance as an essay on the Anglican understanding of contrition, repentance, absolution and satisfaction or penance.

30. Book V occupies the center of attention in the discussion of Hooker's theology of participation, the main part of this chapter. See F. Paget, An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1907).

31. W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, “The Philosopher of the ‘Politic Society,’” in Studies in Richard Hooker, pp. 56-57.

32. That Hooker's views would not have pleased those espousing the divine right of kings has been further proven by newly discovered autograph notes: Trinity College, Dublin, M8 364, ff. 73-84. Of particular interest is Hooker's use of Aeneas Sylvius; see f. 73. The notes are printed in Vol. 3 of the Folger edition of. Hooker's Works.

33. See note 14.

34. Hooker, Works (1888), 3:558. See Michael T. Malone, “The Doctrine of Predestination in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker,” Anglican Theological Review, 52 (1970), pp. 103-17.

35. Ibid., 3:560.

36. Ibid., 3:470.

37. Ibid., 3:471.

38. Ibid., 3:531-2.

39. Ibid., 3:532.

40. See C. F. Allison, The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter (London: S.P.C.K., 1966), pp. 1-5.

41. Hooker, Works (1888), 3:606.

42. Ibid., 3:594-5.

43. See note 24, above.

44. Trinity College, Dublin, MS 364, f. 80 r-v; see P. G. Stanwood, “The Richard Hooker Manuscripts,” Long Room 11, spring-summer 1975, pp. 7-10.

45. Trinity College, Dublin, MS 121 (old B.1.13).

46. Fragments, 13; Hooker, Works (1888), 2:550; and in Vol. 4 of the Folger edition.

47. Hooker, Works (1888), O:652.

48. Ibid., 3:670f., sections 10-11.

49. Ibid., 3:696.

50. Ibid., 3:708.

51. Trinity College, Dublin, MS 774, 57r; see P. G. Standwood and Laetitia Yeandle, “The Manuscript Sermon Fragments by Richard Hooker,” Manuscripta 21 (1977), pp. 33-37.

52. Trinity College, Dublin, MS 774, 58r.

53. Rudolph Almasy, “The Purpose of Richard Hooker's Polemic,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 39(2), April-June 1978, p. 251.

54. C. H. Dodd, Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1954), pp. 195-96.

55. See the 1552 Prayer Book, the third exhortation to communion and the Prayer of Humble Access, where the language of John 6 is used. The language is also found in the 1549 prayer of consecration.

56. Hooker, Works (1888), 3:612-3, citing a passage from Gregory of Nazianzus.

57. Doctrine in the Church of England (New York: Macmillan, 1938), p. 81.

58. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1:176. See also G. F. Woods, Theological Explanation (Welwyn: James Nisbet, 1958). This is a neglected work by a theologian convinced that the personal provides the most viable basis for doing theology today.

59. Cited by David Balas, Metousia Theou, Studia Anselmiana 4 (Rome: I. B. C. Liberia Herder, 1966), p. 56.

60. Hooker, Works (1888), 3:624.

61. C. W. Emmet, “The Psychology of Grace,” in The Spirit, B. H. Streeter, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1921), pp. 157ff.

62. See H. R. McAdoo, The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1949), pp. 21-23.

63. Hooker, Works (1888), 2:542 (Append. I.5).

64. Ibid., 3:471(Serm. 1).

65. See A. C. Sculpholme, “Anniversary Study of John Donne. Pt. 2: Fraited with Salvation,” Theology 75 (1972), pp. 75-76.

66. The structure of the sentence here is mine.

67. Hooker here acknowledges his reliance on Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, Book 10, ch. 13. His debt to this source is considerable.

68. Hooker, Works (1888), 2:549 (Append. 1.13).

69. See the Act against Revilers, and for Receiving in Both Kinds (1 Edw. 6, c.1) and Jewel's Challenge Sermon and Apology, for instance, and S. L. Greenslade, The English Reformers and the Fathers of the Church (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1960).

70. Martin Chemnitz, Secunda Pars Examinis Decretorum Concilii Tridentini (Frankfurt: Iohannem Feyrebendi, 1596), p. 65: “Non difinimus certum modum illius praesentiae, sed eum humiliter commandamus sapientiae et omnipotentiae Dei.”

71. Christ in our Place (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1957), pp. 98-99.

72. Hooker, Works (1888), 2:550 (Append. I.13).

73. Ibid., 2:573 (Append. I.32). Drawing on 2 Cor. 3:5.

74. Malone, “The Doctrine of Predestination,” p. 112.

75. See Charles Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion (London: George Bell and Sons, 1895), pp. 303 (Art. 10), 311-13 (Art. 17), 363-67 (Lambeth Articles of 1595). Hooker ends his fragment on predestination with a version of the Lambeth Articles; Works (1888), 2:596-7 (Append. 1.46).

76. Compare this with the Post-Communion Thanksgiving of the Prayer Book.

77. See the preface to the Prayer Book which stresses the importance of Scripture, the lectionary, propers and various rubrics which provide for the reading of copious amounts of Scripture, and the Holy Communion which directs that a sermon shall be preached; if that is not possible then it was expected that a portion of the Book of Homilies (1547, 63) would be read.

78. The Sermons of John Donne, E. M. Simpson and G. R. Potter, eds., (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1953-1962), 5:250.

79. See Hooker's emphasis on baptism as the sacrament of divine mercy (V.61.4-5) and as the sacrament of “life and remission of sins” (V.62.15).

80. See, John Booty, “The Bishop Confronts the Queen: John Jewel and the Failure of the English Reformation,” in the forthcoming festschrift for Professor George Williams.

81. In Calvin's Theological Treatises, LCC 22 (Philadelphia: Westminster, [1954]), pp. 267-8; Opera, Corpus Reformatorum, 9:470-1.

82. Details are given in John E. Booty, “Church and Commonwealth in the Reign of Edward VI,” Anglican Theological Review, Supplementary Series 7, November 1976, pp. 67-79.

83. Concerning Hooker's use of Machievelli, the prime atheist, see Felix Raab, The English Face of Machievelli (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 62-65.

84. See the discussion of Book VIII, note 5.

85. Hooker, Works (1888), 3:617.

86. This is the argument of Richard Cosin in Conspiracie for Pretended Reformation: viz. Presbyteriall Discipline (London: Christopher Barker, 1592) STC 5823.

87. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1952); see espec. pp. 49-51, 56-59,75-77,106-13,124-52.

88. The problem of civil disobedience was one which deeply troubled apologists for the Church of England and Royal Supremacy; see John E. Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: S.P.C.K., 1963), pp. 191-97.

89. Hooker seized upon Cartwright's statement that, in Hooker's words, citing the Puritan, “the scripture, must be the rule to direct in all thinges, even so farre as to the taking up of a rush or strawe” (II.1.2), and drove it beyond Cartwright's meaning.

90. See Philip Grierson, “The European Heritage,” Ancient Cosmologies, ed. Carmen Blacker and Michael Loewe (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975), pp. 249-52.

91. “The First Anniversary,” 11.205-8.

92. See John McIntyre, The Shape of Christology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966), Ch. 4.

93. Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1872), 2:196.

Further Reading and Bibliographies

Editions Of Hooker's Works:

The most recent critical edition is that of the Folger Shakespeare Library, volumes 1 (Of the Lawes, Bks. 1-4) and 2 (Bk. 5), published by the Balknap Press of Harvard University Press in 1977; four more volumes are scheduled to be published by about 1984. This edition is meant to replace Keble's 7th edition published by the Oxford University Press in 1888, as revised by Church and Paget. One of the most accessible editions of Bks. 1-5 of the Lawes is found in the two volumes published in the Everyman's Library, printed from the 7th Keble edition. There is also a recent volume of selections, edited by A. S. McGrade and Brian Vickers, from the Lawes, published in 1975 by Sidgwick and Jackson in London.

Useful Works Published in Relation to the Folger Library Edition:

Egil Grislis and W. Speed Hill, Richard Hooker: A Selected Bibliography (Pittsburgh: The Clifford E. Barbour Library, Pittsburg Theological Seminary, 1971).

W. Speed Hill, Richard Hooker: A Descriptive Bibliography of the Early Editions: 1593-1724 (Cleveland and London: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1970).

W. Speed Hill (ed.), Studies in Richard Hooker: Essays Preliminary to an Edition of His Works (Cleveland and London: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1972). This contains numerous important essays, making it a good one-volume companion to an edition of his works.

Selected Secondary Works Concentrating on Theology:

C. F. Allison, The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter (New York: Seabury; London: S.P.C.K., 1966). Ch. 1.

Richard Bauckham, “Hooker, Travers and the Church of Rome in the 1580s,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 29(1), Jan. 1978, pp. 37-50

Leslie Croxford, “The Originality of Hooker's Work,” inProceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Lit. and Hist. Section, 15(2), Feb. 1973, pp. 15-57.

C. W. Dugmore, Eucharistic Doctrine in England from Hooker to Waterland (London: S.P.C.K.; New York: Macmillan, 1942). Ch. 1.

Arthur B. Ferguson, “The historical perspective of Richard Hooker: A Renaissance Paradox,” in The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 3(1), Spring 1973, pp. 17-49.

Egil Grislis, “Richard Hooker's Method of Theological Inquiry,” in Anglican Theological Review, 45 (1963), pp. 190-203.

———, “Richard Hooker's Image of Man,” in Renaissance Papers (The Southeastern Renaissance Conference, 1963), pp. 73-84.

———, “The Role of Consensus in Richard Hooker's Method of Theological Inquiry,” in The Heritage of Christian Thought, R. E. Cushman and E. Grislis, eds. (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 64-88.

W. Speed Hill, “The Doctrinal Background of Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1964.

———, “Doctrine and Polity in Hooker's Laws,” in English Literary Renaissance, 2(2), Spring 1972, pp. 173-91.

Gunnar Hillerdal, Reason and Revelation in Richard Hooker, Lunds Universitets Arsskrift, N.S., 1, 54(7), (Lund: G. W. K. Gleerup, 1962). See Grislis for rebuttal.

Robert Hoopes, Right Reason in the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).

Olivier Loyer, L'Anglicanisme de Richard Hooker, doctoral thesis, University of Paris, 1977. Useful in relating scholastic to Hookerian doctrine. 3 vols.

Arthur S. McGrade, “Public Religion: A Study of Hooker's Polity in View of Current Problems,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1961

———, “The Coherence of Hooker's Polity: The Books of Power,” in Journal of the History of Ideas, 24 (1963), pp. 163-82.

———, “The Public and the Religious in Hooker's Polity,” in Church History, 37 (1968), pp. 404-22.

Michael T. Malone, “The Doctrine of Predestination in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker,” in Anglican Theological Review, 52 (1970), pp. 103-17.

John S. Marshall, Hooker and Anglican Tradition: An Historical and Theological Study of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (Sewanee, Tenn.: The University [Press] at the University of the South; London: A. and C. Black, 1963).

Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952).

Francis Paget, An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker's Treatise of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1899; 2d. ed., 1907).

F. J. Shirley, Richard Hooker and Contemporary Political Ideas (London: S.P.C.K., 1949).

C. J. Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940). Dated, but still useful.

Lionel S. Thornton, Richard Hooker: A Study of His Theology (London: S.P.C.K.; New York: Macmillan, 1924). Dated, but there's nothing else quite like it, except for Hillerdal, perhaps, and he's so negative that his opinions are always suspect.

Basil Willey, “Humanism and Hooker,” in The English Moralists (London: Chatto and Windus; New York: W. W. Norton, 1964; rpt. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 100-23.

H. F. Woodhouse, The Doctrine of the Church in Anglican Theology 1547-1603 (London: S.P.C.K.; New York: Macmillan, 1954).

———, “Permanent Features of Hooker's Polity,” in Anglican Theological Review, 42 (1960). pp. 164-68.