SOURCE: Neelands, W. David. “Hooker on Scripture, Reason, and ‘Tradition.’” In Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade, pp. 75-94. Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997.

[In the following essay, Neelands examines the commonly held belief that Hooker originated the concept of “the triple authority of Scripture, reason, and tradition.”]

It is a commonplace of Anglican self-understanding to refer to the triple authority of Scripture, reason, and tradition. For at least one hundred years, Richard Hooker has been identified as a principal and original source of this position.¹ The purpose of this paper is to suggest first that Anglican theology could benefit from considering Hooker's account of the interrelationship of the first two elements of this triad,² Scripture and reason, since there has been no single definitive Anglican account of how these principles are related to each other, leaving the suggestion that they are to be considered somewhat independently and perhaps on an equal footing. This paper will attempt secondly to look again at “tradition,” with a view to being more cautious in implicating Hooker in the development of the triad.

I. SCRIPTURE AND REASON: A THOMISTIC CLUE TO THEIR INTERRELATIONSHIP

1. SCRIPTURE DOES NOT DESTROY NATURE, IT PERFECTS IT

For Hooker, Scripture and reason are not in conflict, since both have their source in God. Hooker makes this consonance visible in the high value he places on secular wisdom and pagan philosophy, even in theological matters, on the reasonableness of law, and on the integrity of nature.

Most English theological writers of the sixteenth century displayed their humanist heritage without shame and quoted freely from Greek and Latin pagan authors. Hooker went further and explicitly gave a value to this appeal to pagan authority by noting what “spiritual” knowledge the pagans could and did arrive at. The “wise and learned among the verie Heathens” acknowledge a first cause, an agent that “observeth in working a most exact order or lawe” (Lawes I.2.3; 1:59.33-60.4). Hooker's examples include Homer and the Stoic philosophers. Sometimes the ancients made estimates that were a near miss, as in the identification of providence and destiny (I.3.4; 1:68.2-12).

The “Painims” caught a vision of the angels (I.4.1; 1:70.16-22). And, like those whom God instructed through revelation, some, like Plato, aspired to a greater conformity with God through knowledge and virtue.³ The heathens witness to law built into the structure of the universe: Hesiod made Themis (Jus, “Law” or “Right”) to be a daughter of heaven and earth (I.8.5; 1:86.21-23), and Hooker quotes Sophocles to illustrate his claim that one mark of the laws of reason is that they have always been known.⁴

More daring still is Hooker's claim that Jesus's two precepts of charity in his summary of the law as love of God and love of neighbor as self have been found out “by discourse” like other “grand mandates.” Further, that all depends on these two laws is corroborated by nature. “Wherefore the naturall measure wherby to judge our doings, is the sentence of reason” (I.8.8; 1:88.28-89.1). Hooker, of course, like Thomas and the patristic consensus, combined a high evaluation of classical pagan wisdom with a recognition that revelation was also necessary. What is apparent here, nonetheless, is Hooker's conviction that, in the hands of the best, whether Christian or not, reason has a genuine value in the natural discovery of what is also given in revelation.⁵

Law was a consistent topic of discussion in the Reformation period. Especially after Calvin, it was recognized as having three uses. Two of these were for the time being, waiting for the eschaton: the first use of law in this interim was to educate; the second was to restrain evil. A third use of law had continuing relevance, but without coerciveness, now and in the kingdom to come, “for believers in whose hearts the Spirit … already lives and reigns.”⁶ This analysis owed much to the New Testament and to Augustine. Hooker, in one way or another, recognizes all three uses, but the organization of his system of laws owes little to Calvin's,⁷ and his treatment of law was a clear departure from these Reformation themes, although it did not oppose them. Hooker borrowed much from Thomas's treatise on law—and acknowledged the debt.⁸ Law was not to be considered negative in the historical present and positive in the eschatological future, as it was for the Reformers after Calvin; for Hooker, law is always primarily of positive value, and it is eminently reasonable, or ought to be. In the first place, laws of reason “are investigable by reason without the helpe of revelation supernaturall and divine” (I.8.9; 1:90.5-6). But, conversely, the data of revelation are reasonable; religion and virtue are reasonable; to think otherwise, that religion and virtue are “only as men will accompt of them,” that is, relative and arbitrary, is “brutish.” This remark is an indirect challenge to a view, such as that which Hooker attributes to the Puritans, that would make secular laws arbitrary, and therefore, to any extension of that view that would make divine positive law arbitrary (I.10.1; 1:95.27-96.3). This “positivistic” view would be shared by Libertines and Puritans, Hooker suggests. But the truth is rather that “the generall … law of nature and the morall law of scripture are in the substance of law all one” (III.9.2; 1:237.10-12).

Other authors of the reformed English church had identified similarities between human positive law and the law promulgated in Scripture, but there seems no hint in such authors of Hooker's view that all laws, natural or positive, come from God and are therefore reasonable and divine.⁹ Conversely, Hooker finds it easy to use scriptural illustrations for “philosophical” points. This is clearly more than the biblicism of the age, being based on his conviction that Scripture displays the paths of reason. Thus, for instance, the distinction between mandatory, permissive, and admonitory laws is illustrated from the Bible (I.8.8; 1:89.5-19). Hooker uses 1 Timothy 6:8 to illustrate Aristotle's dictum that happiness is the end of the individual life, and happiness in this world at that (I.10.2; 1:97.3-10). The story of Cain and Abel is used to show the need for law to restrain deep-rooted malice (I.10.3; 1:98.5-9).

In the Preface to the Lawes, Hooker boldly uses a principle of nature, in this case a general psychological principle, to illuminate a spiritual problem: the individual discretion that is the beginning of the development of mature judgment leads (improperly) to the scruples that make otherwise indifferent matters seem sinful to the scrupulous (Pref. 3.1). This same principle is used in Book IV to help establish Hooker's thesis that “subjective persuasion” is not a hallmark of truth. Confusion on this score is behind the puritan mistake, that will eventually “oppose their Me thinketh unto the orders of the Church of England” (IV.4.2; 1:286.4-5).

A theme that will become prominent in Hooker's response to the Christian Letter is addressed already in the Preface to the Lawes: the reasonable person proportions the degree of subjective credence to the degree of objective credibility. This is true both in matters of reason and in matters of revelation, since both reason and revelation have a single divine source, as two ways the “spirit leadeth men into all truth.” Reason is offered universally to the human race, revelation to “some few,” but the basic principle of reasonable behavior is the same in both (Pref. 3.10; 1:17.15-27). This rather bold proposition is also related to the controversial tack Hooker took on the question of Christian assurance in A Learned and Comfortable Sermon of the Certaintie and Perpetuitie of Faith in the Elect and in the Dublin Fragments.¹⁰

For Hooker, human nature has a natural integrity: through knowledge it may grow to glory (with the help of grace). The human being begins with no knowledge and proceeds toward full and complete knowledge of God such as the angels now possess (I.6.1; 1:74.20-25). Human nature shares various faculties with lower forms of life, but “the soule of man … [is] capable of a more divine perfection” than those of plants or animals, since the human being has intellectual capacity (I.6.3; 1:75.16-20). There is a long way to go; in this, Ramus was very naive and Aristotle more sound, for the human intellect requires a long process of “right helps of true art and learning” (I 6.3; 1:75.27-76.3). But the natural process of learning to judge between “truth and error, good and evill” (I.6.5; 1:76.23) is on the path to the knowledge of God, and in this there is a real continuity between the (apparently secular) knowledge of virtue and the blissful knowledge of God.

The systematic consonance of grace and nature, Scripture and reason, is apparent throughout Hooker's work and links him to Thomas and the medieval tradition that rejected the views of some thirteenth-century philosophers, like Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia, that there are “two truths,” one from reason, and another from faith, truths that do not threaten each other, because they have no real relationship.¹¹ For Thomas, as for Hooker, this is impossible. God is the source of nature and of grace; God's wisdom is the source of Scripture as much as it is the source of human reason.

But Hooker shares much more with Thomas than this conviction of the consonance between nature and grace, reason and Scripture. For Hooker, as for Thomas, grace does not destroy but perfects nature, and Scripture does not obliterate but perfects reason.¹² “Supernaturall endowmentes are an advancement, they are no extinguishment of that nature whereto they are given.”¹³ Grace being the beginning of glory in us, the same pattern is also claimed, by Thomas, for the relation of nature and glory: “nature is not done away, but perfected, by glory.”¹⁴ Hooker frequently adopts the thesis that grace perfects nature. Less frequently, but equally clearly, he extends this to the stronger thesis, that glory is a perfection of nature.¹⁵ This thesis that nature is perfected by grace or glory, not destroyed by either, appears throughout Hooker's writings. “The evidence of Gods owne testimonie added unto the naturall assent of reason” confirms that assent with regard to the many laws of nature included in Scripture (I.12.1; 1:120.13-15); by Scripture, the human “light of natural understanding” is perfected:

There is in scripture therefore no defect, but that any man what place or calling soever hee holde in the Church of God, may have thereby the light of his naturall understanding so perfected, that the one being relieved by the other, there can want no part of needfull instruction unto any good worke which God himselfe requireth.

(I.14.5; 1:129.3-8)

Scripture often states a law of nature.¹⁶ Against Cartwright's denial of the authority of human testimony, Hooker affirms that this authority, within proper limits, is not destroyed but perfected by being recognized in Scripture (II.7.2; 1:175.20-30). If the Puritan view were accepted, Scripture would have to be seen as destroying nature, but in giving Scripture God does not abrogate the law of nature, “which is an infallible knowledge imprinted in the mindes of all the children of men” (II.8.6; 1:190.9-16).

In one passage, the thesis of grace presupposing nature and perfecting it is linked to the related theses of (1) the need for revelation because of the difficulty and importance of spiritual topics and (2) the elusiveness of some necessary truths from rational inquiry:

What the Church of God standeth bound to knowe or doe, the same in part nature teacheth. And because nature can teach them but onely in part, neyther so fully, as is requisite for mans salvation; nor so easily, as to make the way playne and expedite enough, that many may come to the knowledge of it, and so be saved; therefore in scripture hath God both collected the most necessarie thinges, that the Schoole of nature teacheth unto that ende, and revealeth also, whatsoever we neyther could with safetie be ignorant of, nor at all be instructed in, but by supernaturall revelation from him.

(III.3.3; 1:210.20-29)

So Paul's preaching to the pagan Festus is an emblem of the principle that nature needs grace for its perfection, but this is not to deny the principle that grace, when given, does not bypass nature: “Which example maketh manifest what elswhere the same Apostle teacheth, namely that nature hath need of grace, whereunto I hope, we are not opposite, by holding that grace hath use of nature” (III.8.6; 1:223.26-29).

When Hooker comes to defend the prayer in the Book of Common Prayer for deliverance from all adversity against the charge that it goes further than any promise in Scripture, he uses the principle that Scripture does not make void what is found in nature: we may pray for things not promised in Scripture, so long as they are not impossible in nature (V.48.4; 2:191.24-192.3).

For Hooker, many of the customs of the English church have their ground in nature. Temporalities are defended by “a principle cleere in nature, an axiome,” that “men are eternallie bound to honor God with theire substance” (V.79.1; 2:449.4-8). Similarly, temporalities are justified because nature teaches all men to wish to perpetuate good things (V.79.3; 2:450.16-24). Nature, God, and Christ all teach the appropriateness and principles of rest and festival solemnities (V.70.5; 2:365.27-366.4). These are based on “the verie law of nature it selfe” (V.70.9; 2:368.28-369.2). As well, public days of fasting have their ground in the law of nature (V.72.1; 2:384.13-20), for nature is the general ground of both fasts and feasts (V.72.15; 2:397.7-18). The office of the burial of the dead is commended “to show that love towardes the partie deceased which nature requireth” (V.75.2; 2:409.17-19). In fact, in all church hierarchy and order, there is a mutual assistance of the hierarchy of nature in means and ends (V.76.9; 2:423.19-23).

In the Dublin Fragments, even God's gratuitous election of the predestined falls under this scholastic principle:

Predestination to life, although it be infinitlie ancienter then the actuall worke of creation, doth notwithstanding presuppose the purpose of creation. … Whatsoever the purpos of creation therefore doeth establish, the same by the purpos of predestination may be perfected, butt in noe case disanulled and taken away. Seing then that the naturall freedome of mans will was conteined in the purpos of creating man (for this freedome is a part of mans nature:) grace conteyned under the purpose of predestinating man may perfect and doeth, butt cannot possiblie destroye the libertie of mans will [that is, as human beings are considered abstracted from their current state of sin; but now that we live unavoidably under the aspect of the Fall,] predestination in us alsoe which are now sinfull, doth not implie the bestowing of other natures, then creation att the first gave, butt the bestowing of gifts, to take away those impediments which are growne into Nature through sinne.¹⁷

2. THE NATURAL DESIRE FOR AN END BEYOND NATURE.

In addition to adopting the principle that grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, Hooker also clearly adopted the rather daring Thomistic proposition that human nature was so related to grace that, through desire, it naturally identified as its end a state that was beyond nature altogether and thus dependent upon grace. Thomas insisted on a natural capacity to desire and identify an end, the attainment of which was, however, beyond any natural capacity, and he held that this was independent of the actual fallen condition of the human race.¹⁸ Like Thomas, Hooker adopts the “eudaimonean” principle common to Greek ethical thought generally, but most prominent in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: all human desires point to one end, human happiness. Following Augustine and patristic tradition, Hooker explains this end of happiness in Christian terms, as “union with God,” a divinization or glorification which is the end of a process that begins in time, for each individual on the way to salvation, with (first) justification and continues with sanctification, or growth in grace. What is striking about Hooker's account is that this pattern of God's gracious action in the individual on the way to salvation is the fulfillment of a natural desire.¹⁹

This proposition, crucial for the development of Hooker's argument about the force and nature of laws in Book I of the Lawes, is amplified by the sequel. The happiness, or bliss, of the individual on the way to salvation is a formative principle accounting for and defining the nature and use of laws in commonwealth and church. But the perfection which human beings desire always remains unattained in this life, where complete union is never achieved (though some forms of participation are), in part because we cannot persist toward that perfection, in part because the infinity of it eludes the creature.²⁰

Hooker insists on the natural capacity of desire, which yet cannot attain its object of happiness in this life, because of the nature of that object. Stability in perseverance is denied in this life; there are temporary lapses, and mistakes are made on account of natural weakness. But that natural desire will be perfected finally into full-fledged love, through the grace of God, and be fully satisfied in the world to come. For, Hooker insists, as the older scholastics, following their patristic sources,²¹ had insisted, that the human being is naturally capable of God, capax Dei: “Capable we are of God both by understanding and will.”²² Hooker at once cites Augustine on this natural disposition toward something beyond nature. And he goes on to link the propositions derived from reason with those derived from Scripture, indicating both that there is a three-fold aspect to the natural desire for perfection, as Aristotle claimed, and that it is particularly in the spiritual aspect, beyond the sensual and the moral, that perfection continues to elude human beings:

Man doth seeke a triple perfection, first, a sensuall … then an intellectuall, … lastly a spirituall and divine, consisting in those things wherunto we tend by supernatural meanes here, but cannot here attaine unto them. … So that nature even in this life doth plainly claime and call for a more divine perfection, then eyther of these two that have bene mentioned.

(I.11.4; 1:114.18-115.25)

3. GRACE PRESUPPOSES NATURE

For Hooker, as for Thomas, grace not only perfects nature, it presupposes nature, and Scripture presupposes reason. This principle comes to the fore particularly in the second book of the Lawes, where the scope of Scripture, and its relation to reason, are addressed. Thus Hooker will insist that divine wisdom was available to the pagans, to Adam, and to those who lived before the law was promulgated through Moses. Wisdom has two manners of teaching wherewith to instruct the human race, “the sacred bookes of Scripture” and “the glorious works of nature” (II.1.4; 1:147.25-148.6). As he had pointed out in Book I, the will of God is known in laws apart from Scripture (II.2.2; 1:149.15-30). Heathens, who do not know Scripture, can discuss good actions. In fact, apostolic exhortation in the New Testament to good behavior in the Christian community, so that the non-Christian neighbors may be impressed by the morality of Christians, implies that heathens can recognize naturally the morality Scripture codifies.²³

In Book I, this principle of grace presupposing nature is exhibited in the context of political theory. The first goal of a political organization, on Hooker's account, is to provide for the necessities of life, even though the kingdom of God is a higher kind of priority. But “righteous life presupposeth life,” so poverty must be dealt with before the celebration of religion. An illustration is taken from the scriptural narrative of Adam in paradise: God gave Adam maintenance before giving the law; similarly, after the expulsion from Eden, the human race is given tilling and herding before religion is mentioned (I.10.2; 1:97.3-20).

Hooker quotes at least twice Romans 1:21, the Pauline verse that was accepted generally as scriptural warrant for the view that the heathen “had the law written in their hearts.” Hooker went beyond interpreting this verse as evidence that the heathen shared some knowledge of revealed law: for Hooker the verse indicated that natural law, as well as positive divine law, is required of Christians themselves (I.16.5, 1:139.10-26, III.8.6, 1:223.9-14).

Most significantly, in terms of Hooker's attempt to undermine the puritan position as he defined it, Scripture presupposes reason for its interpretation. Chapter 14 of the first book addresses this thesis. There Hooker deals with the “sufficiencie of scripture unto the end for which it was instituted.” He argues that the intent of Scripture is to deliver the laws of “duties supernaturall.” But Scripture incidentally makes all truths more apparent, even those that may be derived independently by reason from nature, that is, Scripture aids the frailty of human reason even in those things that reason can attain to.²⁴ But Scripture presupposes prior knowledge of certain principles, especially the principles of the authority of Scripture and the scope of the canon. These principles come by means other than Scripture:

In the number of these principles one is the sacred authoritie of scripture. Being therefore perswaded by other meanes that these scriptures are the oracles of God, them selves do then teach us the rest, and laye before us all the duties which God requireth at our hands as necessary unto salvation.

(I.14.1; 1:126.9-13)

In this daring claim, Hooker has clearly identified the acceptance of the authority of Scripture (as, for that matter, its interpretation) as taking place within the otherwise natural process of coming to conviction or belief.

Hooker's interpretation of the use of authorities is also related to the presupposition of nature by grace. The authors of the Christian Letter objected to Hooker's use of reason in matters of faith.²⁵ Hooker's reply refers to the behavior of the Puritans themselves, who, like all theologians, cite authorities; he notes that this behavior recognizes that, in the words of the objection, there must be some “naturall light teaching knowledge of thinges necessarie to salvation, which knowledge is not contayned in holy Scripture.”²⁶

And in the Dublin Fragments, when attempting to defend his use of the term “aptness” for human nature under the Fall, Hooker points out that healing grace would be useless if it could not presuppose natural aptness, even aptness infested with the effects of sin. Precisely because grace must presuppose nature, aptness cannot be lost in the Fall: “had aptnes beene alsoe lost [as well as ableness], it is not grace that could worke in us more then it doeth in brute creatures.”²⁷

Hooker argues that Scripture cannot teach its own sufficiency, which therefore must be taught by something else, since it is not self-evident.²⁸ He rejects, however, as inadequate the view attributed to Roman Catholics, that tradition is therefore the only way to come to the knowledge of the sufficiency of Scripture. Nevertheless, Hooker does recognize the importance of experience, which teaches us that the (current) authority of the church inclines people to give Scripture this place of honor:

The question then being by what meanes we are taught this, some answere that to learne it we have no other way then onely tradition, as namely that so we believe because both we from our predecessors and they from theirs have so received. But is this enough? That which al mens experience teacheth them may not in any wise be denied. And by experience we all know, that the first outward motive leading men so to esteeme of the scripture is the authority of Gods Church.²⁹

4. REASON CRITICIZES SCRIPTURE

Hooker relates this thesis, that Scripture presupposes nature, to his view that human reason (at least within the church) stands above Scripture to criticize it and to qualify laws given in it. This view must have appeared rather shocking in the sixteenth century. The reformers had treated parts of the Hebrew law as abrogated by Christ. For instance, they held that Christ had abrogated the ceremonial law, including the commandment on the Sabbath.³⁰ But Hooker held that, because of the relationship of Scripture and reason, some positive laws of God not explicitly abrogated by Christ are mutable in the light of reason. And his account of the dependence of Scripture in some way on reason is a basis for a rejection of the view that Scripture gives an unalterable code of conduct. This thesis is of particular importance for undermining the puritan platform as Hooker has defined it: even if church polity is defined in Scripture, the church may be required and entitled to alter such definitions.³¹

In Book III, Hooker describes certain (positive) divine laws as mutable because the end for which they were created has been fulfilled. The ceremonial law was of this kind (III.10.2; 1:240.31-241.26). But there are cases where, even though the end of the law is permanent, the law must be altered, as, for instance, the judicial law of theft (III.10.3; 1:242.16-243.6). In both cases, the alteration of a divine positive law is not only allowable but required and is accomplished by human and rational means.

Reason and Scripture are not precisely co-equal, as the formula of Scripture, reason, and tradition might suggest. Rather, reason and Scripture are related precisely as nature and grace, not co-equal, but consonant, both having validity and neither being in conflict with the other. Hooker can claim reason as an authority alongside Scripture and compatible with it because he adopts a view like the Thomistic view, that there are not “two truths”: God is the source both of reason and of revelation, and therefore they do not contradict each other. Scripture contains general laws that reason can discover, for good cause. And in this it simply perfects nature without negating it. But reason can criticize Scripture, both to give it initial credibility and to determine the meaning of obscure or difficult passages. Thus, Scripture is above reason, in the sense that it delivers saving knowledge that reason is not competent to consider, but this priority does not mean that Scripture is opposed to or immune from human reason.

Recognition of the relationship between Scripture and reason which Hooker identified preserves an important priority for Scripture, as that to whose plain deliverances “the first place both of creditt and obedience is due” (V.8.2; 2:39.8-9), without making this priority absolute. This relationship was fundamental for his criticism of the puritan position on polity and may also be a permanent contribution to Anglican self-understanding, which still revolves around the terms Scripture and reason.

II. HOOKER ON “TRADITION”

The view that Hooker was a witness for the authority of tradition was identified at least as early as William Laud's Conference with Fisher the Jesuit.³² Laud rejects the attempts of Allerton and the “Romanists” to claim Hooker's support for their views of “tradition,” but he himself identifies Hooker's phrase “authority of man” with tradition, and he thus may be a remote source for the commonplace about Hooker and Scripture, reason, and tradition. At face value, Hooker could never have accepted this triad as a foundation for the Church of England. For him, “tradition” is a word with negative connotation, usually associated with what is taken to be the Roman Catholic attempt to erect something “merely human” as an authority independent of and alongside Scripture and reason.³³

In one passage, Hooker redefines “tradition” as custom deriving from the earliest ages of Christianity, and in this sense, it is acceptable and valuable:

Least therefore the name of tradition should be offensive to any, consideringe how farre by some it hath bene and is abused, wee meane by traditions ordinances made in the prime of Christian religion, established with that authoritie which Christ hath left to his Church for matters indifferent, and in that consideration requisite to be observed till like authoritie see just and reasonable cause to alter them. So that traditions Ecclesiasticall are not rudlie and in grosse to be shaken of, because the inventors of them were men.

(V.65.2; 2:302.3-11)

This shows that “tradition” as rightly understood is one part of what is included under those matters which are binding “by the authority of the church.”

In “matters indifferent,” Hooker does recognize that long usage and custom are important, but he does not call these “tradition” (II.5.7; 1:165.24-166.4). He also commends “the waight of that long experience, which the world hath had thereof with consent and good liking” (IV.14.1; 1:337.18-19).

Hooker does recognize three principles relevant to decisions in spiritual matters. He describes them fully only once, in Book V of the Lawes:

What scripture doth plainelie deliver, to that the first place both of creditt and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever anie man can necessarelie conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiasticall authoritie shall probablie thinke and define to be true or good, must in congruitie of reason overrule all other inferior judgmentes whatsoever.

(V.8.2; 2:39.8-14)

This passage, the only one in which such a formulation occurs,³⁴ is the sole possible source for the view that Hooker held the Scripture-reason-tradition view. The first two of these three principles, the “plain deliverance of Scripture” and “the force of reason,” are familiar from this examination; the third principle is of a very different order. Though rarely listed with Scripture and reason, it was clearly important for Hooker's arguments about the particular disputed customs of the Church of England. Human decision is appropriate in those areas where Scripture and reason do not order human religious affairs. And “tradition” may be understood properly in this way, although, according to Hooker, it was not commonly so understood. And in this sphere, human “experience” is important. For “nature, scripture, and experience” are usually consonant in what they teach, for instance, the wisdom of seeking an end of contentions by a binding adjudication (Pref. 6.1; 1:29:24-27). In this case, “the equity of reason, the law of nature, God, and man” all favor the same course. And human decision, at whatever level, is appropriate in the area of “matters accessory,” the adiaphora, and not in the area of “matters necessary.”³⁵ These “matters accessory” to those things that are necessary to salvation or civil order as Scripture and reason³⁶ have defined them include certain ceremonial matters, such as the sign of the Cross at Baptism, which Hooker explicitly called “matters indifferent” (V.65.2,11; 2:302.7-8, 311.22).

The category of “the indifferent,” in between the required and prohibited, was one derived originally from the Stoics. Paul of Tarsus had made use of the idea.³⁷ Thomas Aquinas had recognized the notion and had used it in his scriptural commentaries.³⁸ It had entered the logic of the Reformation at least as early as Luther and Melanchthon. It was used by Calvin and was well developed to support various positions within the English Reformation.³⁹

But Hooker generally uses the concept of adiaphora in a way opposite to Calvin's. Calvin argues “indifference” in order either to allow Christian liberty or to avoid certain practices, lest consciences⁴⁰ ensnare themselves. Hooker uses the notion so that Christians can observe such practices freely, or rather, so that the church can require them freely. Hooker argues that matters indifferent may be regulated by the church, and he speaks primarily of ceremonies, with no emphasis on the question of consciences. Calvin argues that matters indifferent must remain indifferent, that is, should not be regulated by the church,⁴¹ but he is not talking primarily of ceremonies. He does, however, explicitly exclude papist services because they offend the weak.⁴²

For Hooker, puritan arguments from the Pauline dictum to the conclusion that whatever is not commanded in Scripture is sin would include all indifferent matters (II.4.3; 1:154.1-5). These arguments would even forbid those things which are considered “expedient” in Scripture, the expedient being a part of the group of things indifferent (II.4.4; 1:155.2-4).

It would be an error to assume that, for Hooker, because something is indifferent, it is inessential or unimportant.⁴³ That this would be a misconstruction of Hooker is clear, when one takes into account those things which turn out to be “indifferent” but ordained by the church. For Hooker these matters include almost everything in debate between him and the Puritans. Even episcopacy was such a matter—though it probably had a dominical, and therefore divine, origin—since some communities Hooker recognizes as churches have deliberately, and some accidentally, abolished bishops. But, for Hooker, as he writes in Book VIII, these are matters that are to be decided definitively by “the authority of the church”—in the case of the Church of England, by the sovereign in parliament, which included church convocations—and they are to be so decided precisely because they are not inessential or unimportant.

With respect to “tradition,” then, Hooker did not generally use the word in a positive sense. For this reason, it may be misleading to describe him as an author of the Scripture-reason-tradition formula. Nevertheless, the word may not be totally inept to describe his views, as a study of his veneration of “long usage and custom” and as a recognition of the authority of the “voice of the church” in matters indifferent will show.

More significantly, however, the substitution of “tradition” for Hooker's “voice of the church” may underrate what Hooker had in mind, for episcopacy itself is involved, and the institution of bishops is usually considered to be “more than tradition.”

I close with a speculative suggestion. Hooker provides two extended passages showing the church, through its teachers and councils, as in the process of finding the correct explanation of a critical doctrinal principle in the midst of dispute. The first is in the fifth book of the Lawes, where he succinctly and accurately summarizes the Christological controversies of the third and fourth centuries.⁴⁴ The second passage I have in mind is his even more extended summary of the debates about grace and nature from Pelagius and Augustine through to the Second Council of Orange, which he gives in the Dublin Fragments.⁴⁵ In these passages he describes a church process that goes beyond the vocabulary of Scripture's treatment of the person of Christ and the operation of grace. In both passages, he describes the church at work with the result that doctrinal decisions, effectively declaring “the voice of the church” are the outcome. To describe these outcomes as “traditions” might fail to do justice to their significance.

Notes

1. To let a few stand for many, the following authors might be noted: Francis Paget, Introduction to the fifth Book (Oxford, 1899), 226; Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England from Cranmer to Hooker, 1534-1603 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1970), xv; H. R. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism (London: A. and C. Black, 1965), 152.

2. For consideration of views that Hooker offers an inconsistent or inappropriate account of the relationship between reason and Scripture, see Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), 61-62; Gunnar Hillerdal, Reason and Revelation in Richard Hooker (Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1962), 148-50. See also Egil Grislis, “Hooker's Image of Man,” in Renaissance Papers 1963 (Durham, N.C.: Southeastern Renaissance Conference, 1964), 82-83; W. David Neelands, The Theology of Grace of Richard Hooker (Th.D. diss., Trinity College, Toronto, 1988), 120-33.

3. I.5.3; 1:73.32-74.6. But the heathens never really escaped a polytheism of natural operation, though their philosophy pointed beyond polytheism. It is Christians who insist on a monotheism (I.3.4; 1:68.25-69.6).

4. I.8.9; 1:90.6-11. Hooker's use of the Corpus Hermeticum is an interesting case in point. Without indicating a commitment to the authenticity of this early Christian forgery, Hooker cites Hermes in proof of general points. Compare Pref. 3.14; 1:20.2-3. I.2.3; 1:60.6-7. I.6.3; 1:75.v. I.11.3; 1:112.w. V.72.6; 2:389.n.1. VII.24.16; 3:301.23-33 and b. For a discussion of Hermeticism in the Renaissance, see Wayne Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, Calif., 1972), 201-51. Shumaker discusses Hooker at 238-39.

5. John E. Booty gives a long list of Hooker's use of classical authors in the more “doctrinal” Book V at FLE 6:213.

6. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill and trans. F. L. Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 2.7.6-15; 1:354-64.

7. “Lawes do not only teach what is good but they injoyne it” Lawes I.10.7; 1:102.1; “Lawes politique … are never framed as they should be, unlesse presuming the will of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedience unto the sacred lawes of his nature; in a word, unlesse presuming man to be in regard of his depraved minde little better then a wild beast” (I.10.1; 1:96.24-29). For a discussion of Hooker's view of human depravity, see Neelands, Theology of Grace, 160-71.

8. Aquinas, S.T. 1a2ae.90-108. Hooker cites Thomas at I.3.1; 1:64.s.1 (paraphrase of Thomas in lines 7-12 of this note). Hooker ignores Thomas's treatment of the old and new law and adds a section on angelic law not dependent on this treatise in Thomas. In addition, his category of the second law eternal is not found in Thomas. It may derive from Thomas's Neoplatonist sources, in the distinction between “the One” and “Mind,” the first emanation from the One. Lee W. Gibbs, following A. S. McGrade, suggests (FLE 6:98.n.30) that the distinction may reflect the scholastic distinction between God's absolute power (potentia absoluta) and God's ordained power (potentia ordinata). These suggestions are not incompatible.

9. Henry Bullinger, whose Decades were an authorized text from 1586 on for the clergy of the Province of Canturbury who were not licensed to preach, had given an account of human law that suggests consonances with Scripture, but Bullinger, unlike Hooker, gives no account of any substantial reason for these similarities. Decades, 5 vols. in 4, ed. for the Parker Society by Thomas Harding (Cambridge, 1849-52), 3.8; 2:280-81.

10. Cert., 1; FLE 5:69.24-70.6. In the Dublin Fragments, note especially the silence surrounding the sixth Lambeth article, which dealt with assurance (46, FLE 4:167.7). For a discussion of Hooker's views on assurance and security, see Neelands, Theology of Grace, 185-203, 223, and Egil Grislis, “Hooker on Assurance,” in this volume.

11. James Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D'Aquino (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), 274-75. Compare: “now no truth can contradict any truth” (Lawes II.7.7; 1:183.31). See also Pref. 3.10; 1.17.10-23.

12. Aquinas, S.T. 1.1.8. This view, although perhaps never denied by the English reformers, was certainly not in sympathy with other elements of their position. Compare this recent assessment of Calvin: “God [for Calvin] does not co-operate with nature. He supplants nature with a new will and does this by effacing nature. God does not aid the will already in nature; he gives man a new will outside nature. It is not nature, or flesh, or the will, that is merely ‘strengthened’; conversion means a new will altogether. Our natural will is abolished ‘effaced.’” R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979), 21. Calvin referred to the passages from Ezekiel 11:19 and 36:26, on replacing a “heart of stone” with a “heart of flesh,” at Inst. 2.3.6; 1:297. This text, and this thought, had also been expressed in the Forty-two Articles of 1553, in Article 10, “Of Grace.” This article was omitted from the Thirty-nine Articles.

13. Lawes V.55.6; 2:230.28-29. In the Dublin Fragments, Hooker cites a version of the principle from the Pseudo-Dionysius: “for to destroy nature is not the part of Providence” (Dublin Fragments, 13; 4:113.12-13).

14. Aquinas, S.T. 2a2ae.26.13, sed contra.

15. “Our soveraign good or blessednes [is] that wherin the highest degree of al our perfection consisteth, that which being once attained unto there can rest nothing further to be desired, and therfore with it our souls are fully content and satisfied, in that they have they rejoyce and thirst for no more” (I.11.1; 1:111.2-6).

16. II.1.2; 1:145.24-29. See also I.12-13. III.9.1-2; 1:236.8-237.29.

17. Dublin Fragments, 2; 4:102.26-103.9. For another treatment of Hooker on the principle of the perfection of nature by grace, see Olivier Loyer, L'Anglicanisme de Richard Hooker (Lille: Atelier des thèses, 1979), 1:363-66.

18. See, for example, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.17-25.

19. “Now that which man doth desire with reference to a further end, the same he desireth in such measure as is unto that end convenient: but what he coveteth as good in it selfe, towardes that his desire is ever infinite. So that unlesse the last good of all, which is desired altogether for it selfe, be also infinite: we doe evill in making it our ende even as they who placed their felicitie in wealth or honour or pleasure or any thinge here attained, because in desiring any thing as our finall perfection which is not so, we do amisse. Nothing may be infinitly desired but that good which in deed is infinite, for the better the more desirable, that therefore most desirable wherin ther is infinitie of goodnes, so that if any thing desirable may be infinite, that must needes be the highest of all things that are desired. No good is infinite but only God: therefore he our felicitie and blisse. Moreover desire tendeth unto union with that it desireth. If then in him we be blessed, it is by force of participation and conjunction with him. … Then are we happie therfore when fully we injoy God, as an object wherein the powers of our soules are satisfied even with everlasting delight: so that although we be men, yet by being unto God united we live as it were the life of God” (Lawes I.11.2; 1:111.33-112.20). Compare: “sith there can bee no goodnesse desired which proceedeth not from God himselfe, … all things in the worlde are saide in some sort to seeke the highest, and to covet more or lesse the participation of God” (I.5.2; 1:73.5-10). See John S. Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition (Sewanee: Univ. Press at the University of the South, 1963), 111-12.

20. “Happines therfore is that estate wherby we attaine, so far as possiblie may be attained, the full possession of that which simply for it selfe is to be desired, and containeth in it after an eminent sorte the contentation of our desires, the highest degree of all our perfection. Of such perfection capable we are not in this life. For while we are in the world, subject we are unto sundry imperfections, griefs of body, defectes of minde, yea the best thinges we do are painefull, and the exercise of them greevous being continued, without intermission, so as in those very actions, whereby we are especially perfected in this life, wee are not able to persist: forced we are with very wearines and that often to interrupt them: which tediousnes cannot fall into those operations that are in the state of blisse, when our union with God is complete. Complete union with him must be according unto every power and facultie of our mindes apt to receave so glorious an object. Capable we are of God both by understanding and will, by understanding as hee is that soveraigne truth, which comprehendeth the rich treasures of all wisdom; by will, as he is that sea of goodnes, whereof who so tasteth shall thirst no more. As the will doth now worke upon that object by desire, which is as it were a motion towards the end as yet unobtained, so likewise upon the same hereafter received it shall worke also by love” (Lawes 1.11.3; 1:112.21-113.15).

21. “For although the human mind is not of the same nature with God, yet the image of that nature than which none is better, is to be sought and found in us, in that than which our nature also has nothing better. But the mind must first be considered as it is in itself, before it becomes partaker of God; and His image must be found in it. For, as we have said, although worn out and defaced by losing the participation of God, yet the image of God still remains. For it is His image in this very point, that it is capable of Him and can be partaker of Him; which so great good is only made possible by its being His image” (Augustine, On the Trinity, 14.8; A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First series [New York, 1887-92][NPNF.1], 3:189). See Aquinas, S.T. 1a2ae.113.resp.

22. Lawes I.11.3; 1:113.9, italics added. See also: “Wee are not dust and ashes but wourse, our mindes from the highest to the lowest are not right? If not right then undoubtedly not capable of that blessednes which wee naturallie seek” (Pride, 1; FLE 5:312.24-27).

23. II.2.3; 1:149.30-150.17. See also Pride, 1; 5:312.15-18.

24. See I.12.1-2.

25. A.C.L., 3; FLE 4:11.20-32.

26. “They are matters of salvation I think which you handle in this booke. If therfore determinable only by scripture, why presse you me so often with humane authorities? Why alleage you the Articles of religion as the voice of the Church aganst me? Why cite you so many commentaries bookes and sermons partly of Bishops partly of others?” (A.C.L., 3; 4:13.1-6).

27. Dublin Fragments, 1; 4:101.30-31.

28. Lawes III.8.13; 1:230.29-231.15; compare II.4.2; 1:153.17-18.

29. III.8.14; 1:231.15-22. In this, Hooker was adding his echo to Augustine's famous dictum: “But should you meet with a person not believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the catholic church.” Against the Epistle of Manichaeus 1.4; NPNF.1, 4:131. This dictum was quoted by Luther, Werke (Weimar, 1906-), 6:561; 10.2:216; by Henry VIII, “the hearts of the faithful more ancient than the books,” Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, ed. Louis O'Donovan (New York, 1908), 356; and by Calvin, Inst., 1.7.3; 1:76.

30. Henry Bullinger, for instance, although holding for a solemn observance of the fourth commandment, clearly acknowledges the church's mandate to move the observance of the sabbath to the first day of the week and the Christian's liberty to dispense with the rigors of the sabbath, based on Christ's logion about the sabbath being made for man. Decades, 2.4; 1:264-66.

31. “Positive lawes are either permanent or else changeable, according as the matter it selfe is concerning which they were first made. Whether God or man be the maker of them, alteration they so far forth admit, as the matter doth exact.” Lawes I.15.1; 1:130.26-29.

32. William Laud, Conference with Fisher, 6th ed. (Oxford, 1849), 101-3.

33. I.13.2; 1:123.3-8. I.14.5; 1:129.14-16. II.8.7; 1:191.16-20. III.8.14; 1:231.15-18. Compare the “unwrytten verities” to which the Church of Rome gives “the same creditt and reverence which we gyve to the scriptures of god.” Just, 11; FLE 5:119.24-26. Compare also the series of incompatible compromises ending with “traditions and Scriptures,” Jude 1, 7; FLE 5:21.4-5.

34. The phrase “voice of the church” seems to be related to what Hooker calls “man's authority” in the second book: “By a mans authoritie we here understand, the force which his word hath for th'assurance of an others mind that buildeth upon it. … The strength of mans authoritie is affirmatively such that the waightiest affayres in the world depend thereon. In judgement and justice are not hereupon proceedings grounded?” (II.7.2; 1:175.18-27).

35. “We teach that whatsoever is unto salvation termed necessarie by waye of excellencie, whatsoever it standeth all men uppon to knowe or doe that they may be saved … of which sort the articles of Christian fayth, and the sacramentes of the Church of Christ are, all such things if scripture did not comprehende, the Church of God should not be able to measure out the length and the breadth of that waye wherein for ever she is to walke, Heretiques and Schismatiques never ceasing some to abridge, some to enlarge, all to pervert and obscure the same. But as for those thinges that are accessorie hereunto, those thinges that so belong to the way of salvation, as to alter them is no otherwise to chaunge that way, then a path is chaunged by altering onely the uppermost face thereof … we holde not the Church further tyed herein unto scripture, then that against scripture nothing be admitted in the Church” (III.3.3; 1:211.2-21). See II.4.4 for another description of “the necessary” and “the indifferent.” For a high estimation of the importance of the concept as “a fundamental concept in Anglican theology,” see Loyer, L'Anglicanisme de Richard Hooker, 126.

36. That the realm of the “indifferent” was not limited to those things “neither commanded nor forbidden” in Scripture, but included those things neither required nor prohibited by reason, is clear from Hooker's use of the term “a thing arbitrary” in his general consideration of the origin of government in Book I: “The case of mans nature standing therfore as it doth, some kind of regiment the law of nature doth require; yet the kinds therof being many, nature tieth not to any one, but leaveth the choice as a thing arbitrarie” (Lawes I.10.5; 1:100.16-19). That is, there are adiaphora in the area of Scripture, and there are adiaphora in the area of reason: for instance, while the precise form of polity is not dictated by either Scripture or reason, reason requires that there be a political system of some kind. See also III.4.1; 1:213.4-7.

37. A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 78-79.

38. Deuteronomy 4:2. See Commentary on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians by St Thomas Aquinas (Albany: Magi Books, 1966), 22.

39. Calvin, Inst. 3.19.7; 1:838-39. See also 19.4; 1:836. At 19.8 (1:840) Calvin cites Romans 14:22 in a fashion opposite to that of the English Puritans. See Bernard Verkamp, The Indifferent Mean (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1977), 149-51. Verkamp notes that in the English Reformation, adiaphorism was first used in debates about ceremonies, then in matters of action, and finally in relation to doctrinal matters, 36, 38, 94.

40. Calvin, Inst. 3.19.10; 1:842. See the discussion of both the offence of the weak and the offence of the Pharisees, 3.19.11; 1:843-44.

41. Calvin, Inst. 3.19.9; 1:841-42. Calvin does later recognize that the church may regulate and enforce the determination of ceremonies otherwise indifferent. Inst. 4.10.30, 17.43; 2:208, 1420. Verkamp, Indifferent Mean, 65-66.

42. Calvin, Inst. 3.19.12; 1:849-50.

43. S. W. Sykes, The Integrity of Anglicanism (London: Mowbrays, 1978), 53-54, on the Anglican use of adiaphora generally, as leading to indifference in doctrinal matters.

44. V.52. Note that Hooker clearly identifies some central doctrines, “the necessitie wherof is by none denied [as] … in scripture no where to be found by expresse literall mention” (I.14.2; 1:126.18-23).

45. Dublin Fragments, 10-12; 4:109.4-111.33.