Richard Hooker's
Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie
Towards a Public Scriptural Hermeneutic
by
Terry Miller
To be sure, the Bible has been and is for the Christian Church the primary source of its teaching and the chief rule of guidance for its religious life. Those ordained to the Episcopal orders are required to take an oath that they "believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation." The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral holds the primacy of Scripture to be one of the four distinguishing fundamentals of Anglicanism.(1) Articles VI and XVIII of The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion make mention of the role or authority of Scripture. Yet according to Paul Tillich, "Probably nothing has contributed more to the misinterpretation of the biblical doctrine of the Word than the identification of the Word with the Bible."(2) Today within our church we see expressed the entire range of possibilities in interpretation and exegesis of the Scriptures, including literalist, pietist, historical-critical, feminist, and liberationist. Each group claims a particular understanding of the Bible, and asserts its authority as interpreters of the Word of God, to the exclusion of other approaches. It would appear that the Scriptures divide our church as often as unite it. The challenge of determining how to interpret Scripture is further complicated in the Anglican Church on account of the fact that Scripture is frequently seen as one authority among several. Indeed, it is commonplace in Anglican self-understanding to refer to the triple authority of "Scripture, reason and tradition."(3) However, despite the near ubiquity of this notion of triple-authority,(4) there has been no single definitive Anglican account of how these principles are related to each other,(5) leaving the suggestion that they to be considered somewhat independently and perhaps on equal footing. For at least one hundred years, Richard Hooker (1553-1600) has been identified as a principal and original source of this notion of triple authority.(6) The purpose of this paper is to consider Hooker's understanding of the interrelationship of the first two elements of this triad,(7) Scripture and reason, in the hope that we might discern how Hooker understood the authority and role of Scripture.
The Estimation of Scripture in the Lawes
Reading through the Lawes, one is quickly made aware of the fact that Richard Hooker revered Holy Scripture.(8) Hooker never undervalued the Bible. In the Preface, he refers to the Bible as "that most blessed fountaine, the booke of life."(9) He speaks firmly and eloquently, describing the great wealth of Scripture as "the oracles of God," the provider of that which we need.(10) In Ch 21 of Book V of the Laws Hooker wrote: "we are to knowe that the word of God is his heavenlie truth touchinge matters of eternal life revealed and uttered unto men....We therefore have no word of God but the Scripture."(11) Indeed, the Scripture has a special and honored place for Hooker.(12) It was his primary text consistently throughout the Lawes. Haugaard notes that in Books II-IV, more than half (242) of his 431 explicit references are to the Holy Scriptures, and that almost three-quarters of these references are introduced into his discussion with his theological opponents.(13) What is more, says Hooker, the kind of truth that has been revealed in Scripture possesses a unique advantage, for it is incontrovertible.(14)
Puritan Opponents and their Position
Yet, despite the reverence in which Hooker held Scripture and the place of authority he attributed to it, Hooker found himself at odds with English churchmen who sought to reform the polity of Church of England according to a scriptural discipline. For Hooker, their assertion of the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura exceeded its proper boundaries. Hooker identified(15) the Puritan error, the "very maine pillar" of the cause,(16) in their assertion "that the Scripture of God is in such sort the rule of humaine actions, that simply whatsoever we doe, and are not by it directed thereunto, the same is sinne."(17) Again, Hooker wrote: "whereas God hath left sundry kindes of lawes unto men, and by all those lawes the actions of men are in some sort directed: they hold that one onely lawe, the scripture, must be the rule to direct in all thinges, ever so farre as the taking up of a rush or strawe."(18) What the Puritans, according to Hooker, appear to be asserting is an "omnicompetence" of Scripture, that is, that Scripture, apart from any other authority, is sufficient and competent to determine every facet of the Christian's personal and corporate life. What is assumed by the Puritan claim to the omnicompetence of Scripture is that the goodness of God is something that can be communicated into a written form that codifies that righteousness for human behavior. As Hooker recognized, if all of God's goodness is communicate in Scripture, the overwhelming problems of interpretation and making daily decisions consistent with that revelation necessarily cause consciences to rely on themselves. Life would consist of a constant inwardness as one attempts to align oneself with a particular interpretation of Scripture.(19)
What the Puritans were in fact doing by their hermeneutic was claiming certainty in matters of God's will through their doctrines concerning inspiration and the human conscience.(20) Their conception is summarized in the following way. The first point is that Scripture, which undoubtedly consists of human words, has its authority on the basis of these words being inspired by God. On this point, all the major protagonists of Elizabethan England would agree. The problem occurs in the second part of the Puritan hermeneutic, which is, namely, that the same Spirit that gives authority to these words also enables the spiritual person to interpret Scripture properly.(21) Thus, in the Puritan hermeneutic, whether others can be persuaded by a particular interpretation of Scripture does not matter since the authority of the Spirit is immanently located in the holiness of the spiritual person. It is a matter, he says, of the "force of their owne discretion."(22) This appeal to individual conscience strikes one as troublesome and inappropriate given the Puritan doctrine of the total depravity of human nature, the very doctrine that made them distrust the use of reason in the interpretation of Scripture.(23) On the surface, it appears that the Puritan concern here is to affirm our total dependency on God for the correct interpretation of Scripture.(24) However, Hooker is convinced that what is affirmed on the surface is denied in fact. By removing faith from rational, public deliberation, the Puritans, Hooker alleged, became unwitting slaves to their private fancies and prejudices.(25) Thus, in frustration, Hooker observes that this view causes a judgment where "reason were an enimie unto religion [and] childish simplicitie the mother of ghostlie and divine wisedom."(26)
Elsewhere, Hooker attacks the unexamined Biblicism of the would-be reformers of the Church of England by examining its unspoken assumptions. That no authority had ever any right to contradict Scripture was such an obvious Protestant insight of his own day that Hooker does not even try to defend it. He simply assumes it, focusing his attention instead on the principle that every authoritative demand must be rational. He denounces as "brutish" any attempt to secure loyalty on the basis of naked appeals to the inspiration of human authorities, declaring "that authority of men should prevaile with men either against or above reason, is no part of our belief."(27) Hooker suggests that the exclusive appeal to Scripture to resolve moral quandaries can in fact legitimate the private judgments of individuals who twist the Bible to support their questionable views. In the Preface, Hooker already calls attention to the way a "misfashioned preconceipt" can color one's perception of the biblical message.(28) In Book III, he points to a specific exegetical practice which will yield conclusions already formulated in an a priori fashion. His opponents, he says, commonly "quote by-speeches in some historicall narration or other" as law. By so doing, they "adde to the lawe of God," a damning charge considering the principle sola Scriptura at the center of Protestant confession. Hooker harshly condemns those who "shall presume thus to use the scripture."(29)
Hooker identifies a further, and more critical danger of the Puritan hermeneutic. He worries if the Puritan approach to Scripture will not inevitably lead to sectarian and indeed schismatic exclusivism. In the Preface his description of Anabaptism is designed to warn his readers concerning the descent into fanaticism which results once persons "imagine that Scripture every where favoureth that discipline" designed to cure the alleged evils of society.(30) This inevitably results in the withdrawal of spiritual groups from society under the special illumination of the Spirit since Scripture concurred with what was already held to be true, and called for general conformity to this view. In Hooker's mind, the idea of a group enjoying 'special illumination' and withdrawing from all contaminating influences is inextricably bound up with this mode of moral reasoning.(31) Hooker was therefore concerned by the elitist results of Puritan conviction, and by the church fragmenting on the basis of moral discrimination around a predefined understanding of Scripture.(32)
Scripture in a World of Laws
For Hooker, the Puritans gave too much ground in their hermeneutic to an individual's own subjective beliefs, which would, he believed, lead to numerous social problems, such as elitism and sectarianism. Since Hooker was faced with the same dilemma he put to the Puritans, that is, asserting a biblical hermeneutic free of "preconceipt," it remains to examine what approach he used to resolve it. Many authors have drawn attention to Hooker's emphasis on reason and the interpretative outcome of "probable" results, which is to offer conclusions based on consensus that are also amenable to discussion.(33) The "probable" here does not, however, refer to an unrestricted pragmatism that offers only private conviction, but to one that by definition secures the resources of heaven by virtue of the primary authority of the Scriptures and its aptness for communal interpretation. In response to what he saw as the subjectivity of the Puritan interpretation of Scripture, Hooker looked for open and public interpretation of Scripture, as well as for debate about ecclesiastical and social polity. He fortified his claim by appealing to judicious learning publicly deployed, and by a general consensus in the church present and past. In the Preface, he sought an open-minded hearing from his Puritan opponents as he deployed his arguments.(34) Though this might be dismissed as mere rhetoric, Hooker's repeated reference to the ideal of "judicious learning' and his preference for a "more judicious exposition" of Scripture reflect more than a merely polemical tactic.(35) The superiority of public deliberation, and the communal nature of faith in general, in fact underlies and directs the whole of his theological argument. Indeed, the desire to place the debate in the public arena naturally leads to developing his discussion of "lawes eternal" and of the relationship between reason and Scripture.
Hooker sought to establish the grounds and framework for public deliberation by placing it in as wide a context as possible. While affirming Scriptures' indispensability for salvation, Hooker did not regard them as the only means by which God communicates with humans. In Book I of the Lawes, Hooker locates divine revelation through Scripture within the general capacity of humans to know anything, including the "certaine boundes and limits"(36) of knowledge which are conditioned by the reality of the created order itself. Within such an order, knowledge is appropriated in varying ways, and humans vary in their capacity to know. Hooker speaks of three ways of knowing God's will that it may be done: sense, reason, and revelation "which doth open those hidden mysteries that reason could never have beene able to finde out, or to have knowne the necessitie of them unto our everlasting good."(37) These ways of knowing, Hooker suggests, correspond to the structure of the universe. Hooker argues that the universe is ordered according to 'laws,' or eternal principles, through which God governs, upholds, and directs all of Creation.(38) He identifies first God's secret eternal law, from which all other categories or classifications of law are derived, including the law of nature, the law of angels, the law of reason, the scriptural law or divine law, and human law. Scripture, or scriptural law, is, then, one sort of law, one way of knowing God's will. The other way by which humans know God's will is in natural law, which humans perceive through reason. The powers of deductive reasoning are therefore not to be thought absolutely corrupt (as Calvinist would have it) but open to divine appeal, since if this were not so, "eyther all flesh is excluded from possibilitie of salvation, which to thinke were most barbarous, or else that God hath by suernaturall meanes revealed the way of life so far forth doth suffice.(39) With such a structure, Hooker can thus say that we "have no word of God but the Scripture"(40) while at the same time insisting that God, through laws other than the supernatural, guides and directs the creation to the fulfillment of the divine will.
Before discussing the nature of scriptural law, Hooker first explains why it is necessary. When Hooker develops his understanding of the basis of human society, he speaks of the desire of all men to be happy.(41) And in pursuit of happiness, humanity seeks a physical perfection, an intellectual perfection, and also a spiritual and divine perfection.(42) This last perfection can only come by divine reward, which humanity cannot naturally attain and apart from which we are lost.(43) Yet none of our works can be pure enough to merit such a reward of spiritual perfection-hence the need for divine revelation. Through Scripture, God reveals the supernatural way of salvation,(44) a way which begins with his compassion for the lost condition of humanity and then redemption through Christ's death.(45) Owing to humanity's willful rejection of the order of creation, the natural law by itself is insufficient to secure the unity of the cosmos under God. With a marked Augustinian emphasis, Hooker notes that fallen humanity continues to possess a natural desire to be happy,(46) and thus to be reunited with the eternal source of order; yet, on account of original sin, man is "inwardly obstinate, rebellious and averse from all obedience unto the sacred lawes of his nature."(47) Thus, observance of the natural law is not (or, at least, is no longer) effectual in preserving the divinely constituted order within humans.(48) According to Hooker, this predicament has as much to do with the 'nature' of natural law as it does with sin.(49) Nevertheless, reason cannot escape the predicament of desiring both a participation of the divine nature while, at the same time, being constitutionally incapable of finding its way to the consummation of its own deepest longing.(50) While nature demands a "more divine perfection,"(51) the means whereby this perfection is attained cannot themselves be natural. Hence, the need for supernatural revelation in Scripture.
Scriptures in Relation to Reason
While acknowledging the necessity of Scripture to guide us as to God's will beyond what reason can determine and unto salvation, Hooker at the same time emphasizes continuity between that ideal law of nature and of reason, and those positive laws which are revealed in Scripture. According to Hooker, Scripture and reason are not in conflict, since both have their source in God(52) as two ways by which 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.(53) Here we see a distinction between Hooker and his Calvinist opponents. According to Hooker, the human mind, in spite of its infection by sin, retained the capacity to perceive divine intentions for the world and for humankind as well as the ability to perceive truth in the special revelations.(54) Men and women could direct their lives in right ways by combined use of their natural capacities and grace. Consequently, humans are not to despise the God-given law of nature, "imprinted in the mindes of all the children of men," which gives both general principles and guidance for "the choise of good and evill in the daylie affaires of this life."(55) For his opponents, adhering to a belief in total depravity, Hooker's affirmation of the validity of natural reason for moral decisions was a denial of the Protestant doctrine of salvation by grace through faith and evidence of Hooker's lapse into Papism. Hooker did, however, affirm salvation by grace,(56) but he was not as willing to throw out nature for it. The created order, coming from the hand of God, was not at variance with divine purpose and love. The corruptions of human mind were not complete, and thus the Scriptures themselves presupposed the human capacity to reason and debate as good in itself, and not fatal to faith or obedience.(57) Indeed, Hooker strongly implies that refusing the gift of reason constitutes an act of "presumptuous boldnes"(58) bordering on blasphemy against the generous Creator.(59)
This thesis that reason is consonant with Scripture, not destroyed by it, 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.(60) The systematic consonance of Scripture and reason, grace and nature, is apparent throughout Hooker's works and connects him to Thomas Aquinas and to the great medieval tradition.(61) But Hooker shares much more with Aquinas than this conviction of the consonance between reason and revelation. For Hooker, as for Aquinas,(62) grace does not destroy but perfects nature, and Scripture does not obliterate but perfects reason.(63) Scripture makes all truths more apparent, even those that may be derived independently by reason of nature. To put it another way, Scripture aids the frailty of human reason even in those things that reason can attain to.(64) Scriptural law builds upon natural law, which to Hooker is likewise essential,(65) perfecting the human "light of natural understanding."(66) Thus, against the Puritans' denial of the authority of reason, Hooker affirms that reason, within proper limits, is not destroyed but is in fact perfected by being recognized in Scripture.(67)
As Hooker holds that Scripture presupposes and builds upon reason, it comes as no surprise, then, that he believes reason must also shape our encounter with Scripture. The point of departure is the common ground shared by all Christians that "we all beleeve that the Scriptures are sacred, and that they proceeded from God,"(68) a belief Hooker himself shares. Yet, he recognizes that such a belief rests on an assumption that has so far not been examined. Scripture presupposes the operation of human reason and authority for its credibility and interpretation.(69) First, regarding credibility, Hooker recognizes that, prior to interpreting Scripture, we must possess knowledge of certain principles, especially the principle of the authority of Scripture. We must be convicted of the sacred authority of Scripture, which Scripture itself cannot teach.(70) We must be persuaded by other means (namely, by church authority and/or by experience(71)) that Scriptures are the oracles of God.(72) Second, even when the authority of God's Word is confirmed, any actual use of Scripture requires exercising reason in hermeneutical discernment, for "betweene true and false construction, the difference reason must shew."(73) Reason is necessarily active in the interpretation of Scripture, both for the elusiveness of some necessary truths from rational inquiry and for many deep and profound points of doctrine not explicit in the Scriptures. Hooker specifically designates belief in the Trinity, the coeternity of the Son with the Father, the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the baptizing of infants, which are "in scripture no where to be found by express literall mention," but "only deduced they are out of scripture by collection," that is, by "reasoning" or "logical inference."(74) This "collection" from Scripture limits what is necessary, not what may be conjectured or surmised.(75)
Related to this thesis that Scripture presupposes and builds upon reason is Hooker's view that human reason (at least within the church(76)) stands above Scripture to criticize it and to qualify laws given in it. While many Reformers had treated parts of the Hebrew law as abrogated by Christ (for example, that Christ abrogated the ceremonial law), Hooker went beyond and asserted that, because of the relationship of Scripture and reason, some positive laws of God which were not explicitly abrogated by Christ are nevertheless mutable in the light of reason. In Book III, Hooker describes certain (positive) divine laws, such as the ceremonial law, as mutable because the end for which they were created had been fulfilled,(77) but also allows for revision in cases where, even though the end of the law is permanent, the law must be altered, e.g. the judicial law of theft.(78) In both cases, the alteration of divine law is not only allowable but required and is accomplished by rational means.(79)
Teleology within History
By stating that some scriptural laws are open to revision, Hooker implicitly recognizes that some laws are mutable while others are eternal and unchanging. The principle with which Hooker discriminates between the two sorts has been described by William Haugaard as a process marked by "historical contextualization and teleology."(80) According to this interpretive model, Hooker sought to exegete Scripture according to "that end wherto it tendeth"(81) in light of the historical context (or, more accurately, in the context of biblical salvation-narrative) in which the text is located. Hooker draws on his Aristotelian Thomism(82) to insist that "the words of [God's] mouth are absolute...for performance of that thing whereunto they tend."(83) Philosophical and metaphysical teleology becomes a tool in understanding the scriptural text both in its original context and in its application to his own age. According to this hermeneutic, the purposes of divine as well as human words provide a key to interpreting texts, and their purposes are only accurately determined by taking account those changes in human society which were, for Hooker, a given of God's creation.(84) Thus, while Hooker regards all scriptural laws to be from God's by direct revelation,(85) the conditions under which they operate and the purpose for which God introduces them are subject to the same considerations and limitations as natural laws derived through the processes of reason and positive laws determined by human decree or legislation.(86) For this reason, modern exegetes have long appreciated his concern to distinguish passages that reflect the unchanging principal purpose of Scripture from those reflecting other concerns.(87) It was the hermeneutical combination of teleology and historical contextualization that enabled Hooker to make such an analysis.
Hooker describes the purpose of Scripture in a number of different, though complementary, ways, all of which indicate that the purpose of Scripture is to grant knowledge of saving truth.(88) As this knowledge is conveyed in the form of a narrative, the salvation story as a whole then becomes for Hooker an interpretive schema by which he interprets biblical texts for his context in sixteenth-century England.(89) And as Jesus Christ is the focus of the salvific meta-narrative, it is only natural, then, that the Incarnation is a central and controlling element in Hooker's hermeneutic.(90) It affects the way in which he understands the authority of Scripture, history and church life.(91) The Incarnation is the foundational point of the divine revelation, and it therefore provides the authority by which all other revelatory authorities are to be judged. Thus Scripture's authority is contingent upon the authority of the greater revelation in the Incarnation of the Son of God in Christ. It is the Scripture's witness to that revelation which gives it authority.(92) The Scriptures have, then, a demarcated authority in terms of purpose, namely to offer salvation: "The ende of the word of God is to save, and therefore we terme it the word of life."(93) Elsewhere, Hooker speaks of "that eternal veritie which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wisedome in Christ."(94) Hooker's attention is thus fixed on the end and purpose of Scripture, on that which is witnessed to rather than on the witness. It is from this Christocentric perspective, also, that Hooker is able to affirm the continuity between the Old and New Testaments.(95)
Having determined the purpose for which Scripture is intended, Hooker can discriminate between things within Scripture which are foundational and peripheral. Though it is clear that Hooker sees reason and natural laws, which are intermingled with supernatural laws in Scripture, as important means by which to distinguish those things which are essential from those that are not, it is also important to Hooker that what is essential or central must refer fundamentally to that which is "necessary for salvation." Hooker distinguishes in the Lawes between "matters accessory," the adiaphora, and "matters necessary."(96) These "matters accessory"(97) to those things that are necessary to salvation or civil order, as Scripture and reason have defined them, include certain ceremonial matters, such as the sign of the Cross at Baptism, which Hooker explicitly called "matters indifferent."(98) The category of "the indifferent," for Hooker, referred to matters in-between the required and prohibited, matters which could thus be left to the church to regulate.(99) Being "indifferent" did not, however, mean that such matters were unimportant or arbitrary. That this would be a misconstruction is clear, when one considers those things which turn out to be "indifferent" but ordained by the church, matters such as ceremonies and church polity. For Hooker, these matters include almost everything in debate between Hooker and the Puritans.(100) Indeed, in the Preface and the following Books II-IV, the primary thrust of Hooker's polemic is directed toward refuting the advanced Puritan claims that there is one and only one platform of God in the Bible; that such a polity is one of the essential "marks" of the Church (along with the true preaching of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments); and that having such a polity in place is "necessary for salvation."(101) Rather, Hooker assigns church polity here and elsewhere to the realm of "things indifferent" (adiaphora) that can and must be determined by "human law" insofar as the church is a "human" as well as a "divine" society, and only after taking local and national historical circumstances into account. Thus, it would seem that "indifferent" is a category which does not refer to the nature of the matter itself, as if it were arbitrary, but rather refers to the degree to which Scriptural precept or precedence bears on the matter.
Scripture and the Context of Community
The consideration of Hooker's hermeneutic, in general, points toward another and vitally important perception governing his theology-corporate context. For Hooker, reason presupposed not only the individual knower, but also the community as the locus of meaning and knowledge, experience and assent. The Christian knower is in Christ and being in Christ is in the fellowship and communion of Christ, the visible church where justification and sanctification occur concretely in relation to the communal sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist.(102) For Hooker, the church is then necessarily the location for authoritative interpretation of Scripture, and it is thus for three reasons.(103) First, because the church is a saved community, built upon the Incarnation and the grace bestowed through that, it is a community committed to the centrality of those things which are necessary for salvation, and to the non-centrality of those things which are secondary and not necessary. The second reason, related to the first, is that, in the church, reason is redeemed and shown to be consonant with revelation.(104)
Third, the church is important in terms of Hooker's concern of consensus in doctrine.(105) Hooker appeals to the Church Fathers as he appeals to the generality of learned humanity,(106) involving "the rule of common discretion,"(107) the insights of wise men (whose wisdom is preferable to that of the common lot of men),(108) in accord with the wisdom of the ages, a consensus formed through history,(109) and the sentences of human authority in and through wise men, or the "orders, laws, and constitutions in the church."(110) However, because the Church Fathers in particular represent the continuing perceptions of Christian people in light of the salvation which they have and continue to experience because of their knowledge of God through Jesus Christ in the Incarnation, that particular consensus has special value for Hooker. In this context, therefore, the interpretation of Scripture should take place within the framework of the community of the church. True, of course, there is reference to natural reason available to people at large, but the interpretation of Scripture occurs in the church and in the light of the church's tradition.(111) Hooker summarizes:
"Be it in matter of the one kind or another, what Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place of both credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever."(112)
There is further meaning to Hooker's locating the use of Scripture within the church.(113) Whereas the Puritan tendency was to regard Scripture as confronting the individual sinner, instructing, correcting, edifying the individual, Hooker regards Scripture as the church's treasure, properly regarded in the context of corporate worship:
For with us the readinge of scripture in the Church is parte of our Church litourgie, a speciall portion of the service which we doe to God, and not an exercise to spend the time, when one doth waite for an others comminge, till thassemblie of them that shall afterwardes worship him be complete. Wherefore as the forme of our publique service is not voluntarie, so neither are the partes thereof left uncertaine, but they are all set downe in such order, and with such choice, as hath in the wisdome of the Church seemed best to concurre as well with the speciall occasions as with the generall purpose which we have to glorifie God.(114)
The really noteworthy part of this quotation, as John Barton and John Halliburton point out,(115) is the statement that in the context of liturgy, the reading of Scripture in the church is "a speciall portion of the service which we doe to God." That is to say, the salvific story of God's acts in history is remembered in the context of liturgy. This involves an understanding of Scripture contrary to that of the Puritans, and, one might add, contrary to the understanding prevalent among biblical literalists today. Hooker understood the reading of Scripture in terms of "worship" and "proclamation," more than "edification" and "correction."
Conclusion
As has been argued, Hooker's intention from the beginning was to defend the necessarily public nature of scriptural interpretation and Christian faith as a whole, against Puritan reformers who advocated what Hooker understood to be the authority of private conscience and individual discretion. Towards this end, he sought to uncover the assumptions and presuppositions undergirding his opponents' position and to demonstrate the self-deception inherent in their fideist assertion of sola Scriptura, in particular its vulnerability to prejudice and subjectivity. At the same time, Hooker sought to articulate his own hermeneutic, including the philosophical and theological presuppositions underlying it (as best he could identify). By expositing his theological method, Hooker exposes his theology and himself to public scrutiny, which he willingly accepted in order to provoke open, judicious deliberation which would, exercising right reason, produce a reasonable consensus. Consensus of the wise and godly throughout the ages regarding God's will as seen through reason and Scripture is, he felt, as sure an authority as we might ever find. But, his appeal to consensus does not in itself ensure that those who make use of it have done well.(116) Rather, it invites further discussion and nurtures a climate of deliberation with seriousness and diligence. This is the kind of theological stance which Hooker thought best for anyone genuinely interested in truth, and he proposed it as a means of furthering theological thinking in his own generation.
Recognition of the relationship between Scripture and reason which Hooker identified preserves an important principle for an important priority of Scripture, as that to whose plain deliverances "the first place both of credit and obedience is due,"(117) without making the 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. Indeed, those who would follow Hooker in affirming reason as a means to discover spiritual truth, should first consider the primacy Hooker placed on Scripture in his theology. Such would-be claimants of Hooker's legacy should furthermore consider how Hooker understood the term 'reason.'(118) Hooker's theology has no place for individualistic, rationalistic conceptions of reason. For Hooker, reason directs and legitimates not individual discretion, but public truth. Consequently, those in the church that look to Hooker for support in affirming reason as a source of knowledge appropriate for theological discourse cannot, if faithful to Hooker, use 'reason' as justification for the facile toleration of divergent theology and "difference" within the church. Even less can they argue from Hooker and reason to ecclesial 'self-determination.'(119) Indeed, underlying the whole of the Lawes is an argument against private conscience as an inviolable authority, and an argument for public deliberation and consensus.(120) It would not only be a shame but also grave infidelity on the part of those who claim theological descent from Hooker to overlook his impassioned plea for public, 'judicious' discourse. Admonished by Hooker's example, and recognizing the inescapably social nature of questions facing the Anglican Communion presently, Anglicans and Episcopalians are challenged to engage in the difficult human labor of dialogue, with Scripture and with one another, in search of communal consensus, which alone can offer a reliable enough basis for action on behalf of the common good.
Endnotes
1. Book of Common Prayer (1979), pp, 876 77.
2. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1951 63), Part I, p. 158.
3. Or, alternatively, "Scripture, tradition, and reason." To name but a few examples, the authority triad is taken as normative for Anglicans in Scripture, Tradition and Reason: a Study of the Criteria of Christian Doctrine, ed. R. Bauckham and B. Drewery (Edinburgh, T & T Clark., 1988); The Study of Anglicanism, ed. Sykes, Booty, and Knight (SPCK: London, 1988), where the third section is entitled "Authority and Method" includes chapters on each of the three; Anglicanism and the Bible, ed. F. Borsch (Morehouse Barlow: Wilton, CT, 1984); and more recently the Windsor Report (2004, sections 53, 135), where the triad is identified with almost no explanation.
4. Identified as the "three legged stool" or "three fold cord" in most books introducing the Episcopal Church for the past fifty years or so.
5. See (and note the order in this title) Scripture, Tradition and Reason: a Study of the Criteria of Christian Doctrine, in which "what is at stake throughout the volume is the one problem of the relationship between the three" (p. vii). See also in Christopher R. Seitz' "Repugnance and the Three Legged Stool," in Reclaiming Faith: Essays on Orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church and the Baltimore Declaration, ed. E. Radner and G. Sumner (Eeerdmans: Grand Rapids, Mich., 1993), p88 93, and especially citations 3 4.
6. Again, 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; HR McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism (London: A and C Black, 1965), 152); and Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, ed. Bauckham and Drewery, 35.
7. 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, NC: Southeastern Renaissance Conference, 1964), 82 83 and W. David Neelands, The Theology of Grace of Richard Hooker (Th.D. diss., Trinity College. Toronto, 1988), 120 33.
8. See William P. Haugaard, "The Scriptural Hermeneutic of Richard Hooker", in This Sacred History, ed. D. Armentrout (Cowley: Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 166. Haugaard notes:
Hooker never undervalued the Bible; it was consistently his primary text throughout the Lawes. In Books II to IV, more than half (245) of his explicit references (431) are to Scripture, and Hooker introduced almost three quarters of these into the discussion with his theological opponents. His concern to set proper limits to scriptural authority was not intended to detract from the Bible, but, on the contrary, to establish its credibility: "We must...take great heede, last in attributing unto scripture more than it can have, the incredibillitie of that do cause even those things which indeed hath most aboundantly to be lesse reverendly esteemed. (11.8.7; 191, 23 192 1).
9. Hooker, Of The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, Preface, 2.1; 1:3.18 19. Citations refer to The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Hooker, ed. W. Speed Hill (Cambridge, Mass., 1997) and follow the pattern of book and section, followed by volume of FLE volume, page, and line number.
10. Lawes, I.14.1; 1.126.11.
11. V.21.2; 2:84.13 18.
12.
By scripture it hath in the wisedom of God seemed meete to deliver unto the world much but personally expedient to be practised of certaine men; many deepe and profound pointes of doctrine, as being the maine originall ground whereupon the precepts of dutie depend; many prophecies the cleere performance whereof might confirme the world in beliefe of things unseene; many histories to serve as looking glasses to behold the mercie, the truth, the righteousnes of God towards all that faithfullie serve, obey and honor him; yea, many intire meditations of pietie to be as paternes and presidents in cases of like nature; many things needfull for explication, many for application unto particular occasions, such as the providence of God from time to time hath taken to have the severall bookes of his holie ordinance written. (I.13.3; 1:123.24 124.8)
13. William Haugaard, "The Scriptural Hermeneutics of Richard Hooker," p. 166.
14. "That for which we have probable, yea, that which we have necessary reason for, yea, that which we see with our eies, is not thought so sure as that which the scripture of God teacheth; because wee hold that his speech revealeth there what himselfe seeth. And therefore the strongest proofe of all, and the most necessaryly assented unto by us (which do thus receive the scripture) is the scripture." (II.7.5; 1:179.19 25)
15. How accurate was Hooker's estimation of the Puritan position? John Coolidge (The Pauline Renaissance in England, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1970) has pointed out that Hooker and Cartwright were not in as sharp disagreement on Scripture and reason as was supposed and that Cartwright's "straw" statement must be seen alongside his conviction that the authority of Scripture for most ecclesiastical matters is found in four general rules enunciated by Paul: that there be no offense given (1 Cor. 10:32), "that all be done in order and comeliness (1 Cor. 14:40), that all be done to deifying" (1 Cor. 14:26), and that all be done to the glory of God (Rom. 14:6 7). It is in this sense that nothing should be done without the express warrant of Scripture. Coolidge thus emphasizes a larger degree of agreement among the combatants than Hooker would allow, but he then acknowledges a basic difference. The Puritan "insists on trying to hear God's voice of command in all his thought," while Hooker and others of his mind seem convinced that "in following the dictates of reason alone": they are "obeying some part of God's law." William Haugaard (The Scriptural Hermeneutics of Richard Hooker) discerns a further difference, this time not only separating Hooker from Cartwright but from Whitgift as well. This difference pertains to the way in which the Scripture is perceived, all acknowledging the authority of Scripture, and yet qualifying that authority. Cartwright and Whitgift qualify parts of the Old Testament in the light of Jesus Christ, but otherwise take the Scriptural texts at "face value as they applied them." Hooker applies his teleological principle (Lawes I.14), insisting that "the words of [God's] mouth are absolute... for performance of that thing whereunto they tend." (Lawes II.6.1; 1:168.3 5) Haugaard points out that, while Cartwright, Whitgift, and Hooker all could agree that 'certain thinges' in church life might vary according to 'time, places, persons, and other circumstances,' only Hooker took this principle of historical relativity and applied it not only to church life subsequent to the New Testament, but to the exegesis of biblical passages themselves. (168)
Francis Paget (Introduction to the Fifth Book, Oxford, 1899) helpfully distinguishes between Puritan and Hookerian understandings. The Puritan principle tends toward a view of life "as a flat surface all equally lit from one source of evidence, the Scripture, which required always...one form of acknowledgement, and absolute and settled assent." Hooker's understanding is more in accord with the facts of life, as Paget sees them. For Hooker, there are a multiplicity of evidences, great diversity, degrees of clarity and obscurity, with corresponding degrees of assent, "varying between certain conviction and suspense of judgement." Says Paget: "The evidence of plain Scripture, the evidence of sense, the evidence of invincible demonstration, the evidence of preponderating probability, the evidence of human authority, all command their corresponding measure of assent. And thus correspondent adaptation of assent to evidence in each case is both a fact of experience ... and also a religious duty."
The passages in Book II to which Paget refers require careful attention. First: "the truth is, that how bold and confident soever we may be in words, when it commeth to the point of tryall, such as the evidence is which the truth hath eyther in it selfe or through proofe, such is the hearts assent thereunto, neither can it be stronger, being grounded as it should be." (II.7.5; 1:180.16 20) Second: "in all things... are our consciences best resolved, and in most agreeable sort unto God and nature settled, when they are so farre perswaded as those grounds of perswasion which are to be had will beare." (ibid.; 1:180.5 8) There is more of note here than presently can be considered but the chief point at this juncture is plain. Evidence and assent are various. The human quest for meaning and thus for salvation is complex, although the foundation of the faith appears to be simple and clear. This is so because God's influence is "into the verie essence of all thinges, without which influence of dietie supportinge them theire utter annihilation could not choose but followe." (V.56.5; 2:236.22 25) God is the Creator whose eternal law is the source from which all laws come, by which all is governed in a rich, variegated, multifaceted world, perceived by humans in various ways according to varying evidence, assented to in various degrees. Hooker put it well in one of his most famous statements:
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 books 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 onely by worldly experience and practise. 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; 1.147.23 148.6)
16. Pref. 7.3; 1:35.4 5
17. II.1.3; 1:146.25 27. "Compare An Admonition to the Parliament" (Available in W. H. Frere and C.E. Doulass, Puritan Manifestoes (SPCK: London, 1907; rpt. London, 1954): "that nothing be done in this or any other thing, but that which you have the expresse warrant of God's Worde for." (5 10)
18. II.1.2; 1:145.10 14.
19. "Admit this; and what shall scripture be but a snare and a torment to weake consciences, filling them with infinite perplexiies, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, and extreme despaires?" (II.8.6; 1:190.16 19) I cannot but recognize similarities between the commonalities, in approach and in dangers, between the hermeneutic of Hooker's Puritan opponents and that of contemporary American Christian who claim to be Bible based yet do not acknowledge, let alone articulate their own hermeneutic.
20. See Peter Munz, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.: London, 1952)
21. This presents a 'hermeneutical circle' that functions that individuals first look inward to judge their spiritual state and then proceed claiming the authority of the Spirit in matters of interpretation. Barry G. Rasmussen ("Trinitarian Hermeneutic of Grace" in ATR LXXXIV:4, p932) calls attention Steven Ozment's claim that such a hermeneutical circle is evident in Jean Gerson's influential mystical hermeneutic of the early 15th century. The result of this circle is that the spiritual person is given authority in matters of scriptural interpretation. See Ozment, Homo Spiritualis: A Comparative Study of the Anthropology of Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson, and Martin Luther (1509 1516) (EJ Brill, Leiden, 1969)
22. Preface 3.1; 1:12.25
23. Munz, Place of Hooker, 32
24. The Puritans, as seen through Hooker, believed their approach to Scripture to be in line with Calvin's. While they recognized that reason had a legitimate function as a tool in the processes of human thought, it was not a dependable source of knowledge. They judged that, in Calvin's words, "the misshapen ruins" of human reason, "choked with dense ignorance...cannot come forth effectively." (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trns. Henry Beveridge (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Mich., 2001), II.2.12) Thus denying the utility of reason, they embraced instead Calvin's hermeneutic of the Spirit which declares that the testimony of the Spirit is superior to reason. For as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely entrusted." (Institutes, I.7.4)
So, there is a spiritual precondition necessary, in Calvin's view, for the right reading of Scripture necessitated by the "foul ungratefulness" of the human condition. (Institutes, I.5.4) The reader of Scripture is then simply the humble beneficiary of the ancient texts, such that when understanding fails, the text can still be appropriated with the full assurance of faith. Those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture; that Scripture carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on our own judgement or that of others, that the Scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgement, feel perfectly assured as much so as if we beheld the divine image visibly impressed on it that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God. We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgement, but we subject our intellect and judgement to it as too transcendent for us to estimate. This, however, we do...because we have a thorough conviction that, in holding it, we hold unassailable truth...more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge." (Institutes, I.7.5) However, this interpretation of Calvin evidences a shallow reading of the Institutes. For, the Genevan Reformer did in fact affirm the existence of natural law, of which all humanity has knowledge. On account of this, none have excuse before God:
The minds of all men have impressions of civil order and honesty. Hence it is that every individual understands how human societies must he regulated by laws, and also is able to comprehend the principles of those laws. Hence the universal agreement in regard to such subjects, both among nations and individuals, the seeds of them being implanted in the breasts of all without a teacher or lawgiver. (Institutes II.2.13)
If the Gentiles have the righteousness of the law naturally engraven on their minds, we certainly cannot say that they are altogether blind as to the rule of life. Nothing, indeed is more common, than for man to be sufficiently instructed in a right course of conduct by natural law, of which the Apostle here speaks. Let us consider, however for what end this knowledge of the law was given to men... The end of the natural law, therefore, is to render man inexcusable, and may be not improperly defined the judgment of conscience distinguishing sufficiently between just and unjust. (Institutes II.2.22)
Such knowledge he accepted as being imprinted on the heart of everyone, which in some sense teaches us everything that is necessary to know of God's will. Yet, because sin has obscured that testimony, (Institutes II.8.1) we are unable by our powers either to acquire or to reacquire and retain the knowledge of God's natural law in its entirety and need a clearer and more reliable revelation of the will of God for our lives, lest we wander off the path of holiness and righteousness, God has revealed God's moral law, supremely in the Decalogue. "Both for our dullness and our contumacy, the Lord has given us his written Law, which, by its sure attestations, removes the obscurity of the law of nature, and also, by shaking off our lethargy, makes a more lively and permanent impression on our minds." (Institutes II.8.1) For Calvin, scriptural law reveals and clarifies natural law, that is, the law that is known through reason. "The law of God which we call moral, is nothing else than the testimony of natural law, and of that conscience which God has engraven on the minds of men, the whole of this equity of which we now speak is prescribed in it. Hence it alone ought to be the aim, the rule, and the end of all laws." (Institutes IV.20.16) Hooker acknowledges the Puritans' misconstruction of Calvin when he cites the Reformer's view that the church has power to make rules and regulations beyond Scriptural precept or precedent for its own life. (Lawes III.11.13; 1:259)
25.
Most sure it is, that when mens affections doe frame their opinions, they are in defense of error more earnest a great deale, than (for the most part) sound believers in the maintenance of truth apprehended according to the nature of that evidence which scripture yeeldeth: which being in some things plaine, as in the principles of Christian doctrine; in some things, as in these matters of discipline, more darke and doubtfull; frameth correspondentlie that inward assent which Gods most gracious Spirit worketh by it as by his effectuall instrument. It is not therefore the fervent earnestnes of their perswasion, but the soundnes of those reasons whereupon the same is built, which must declare their opinions in these things to have been wrought by the holie Ghost, and not by the fraud of that evill Spirit, which is even in his illusions strong. [2 Thess 2:11] After that the phancie of the common sort hath once thoroughlie apprehended the Spirit to be author of their perswasions concerning discipline; then is instilled into their hearts, that the same Spirit leading men into this opinion doth thereby seale them to be Gods children; and that, as the state of the times now standeth, the most speciall token to know them that are Gods owne from others, is an earnest affection that waei. (Preface, 3.10: 1.17.29 18.4)
Whatsoever is spoken of God or thinges appertaining to God otherwise then as truth is; though it seeme an honour, it is an injurie. And as incredible praises geven unto men do often abate and impaire the credit of their deserved commendation; so we must likewise take great heede, lest in attributing unto scripture more than it can have, the incredibillitie of that do cause even those things which indeed hath most aboundantly to be lesse reverendly esteemed. (II.8.7; 1:191.25 192.1)
26. III.8.4; 1:222.27 28
27. II.7.6; 1:181.13 15
28. Preface 3.9; 1:16.17 18
29. III.5.1; 1:215.10 12 and 18 19. It would be legitimate to ask how Hooker's own use of Scripture can be free of an opposite but just as problematic "preconceipt." Hooker is aware of the problem, and declines to give absolute guarantees. As Egil Grislis describes his position: "There is simply no theological method, however correct, that can itself ensure its own infallibility." ("The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker," in Studies in Richard Hooker, ed. W. Speed Hill, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, 1972) 179. But Hooker believes our best hope lies in consensus reached after broad dialogue. (More on this later) As he put it, the way to "peace and quietnes" was to permit "the probable voice of everie intier societie or bodie politique [to] overrule all private of like nature in the same bodie" (Pref. 6.6; 1:34.6 9). 30. Pref. 3.16; 1:21.3 4
31. Pref. 3.16: 1:21.3 4.
32. Don. H. Compier, "Hooker on the Authority in Matters of Morality," in Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, (RHCCC) ed. Arthur S. McGrade, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, No 165 (Tempe Ariz.: SUNY, 1997), 255
33. "Even Scripture itself is understood with the help of reason and may be misunderstood or applied quite inappropriately [II.7.9]...Hooker recognizes that a mere appeal be it to reason or to Scripture does not automatically produce truth. There simply is no theological method, however correct, that can itself ensure its own infallibility. Even when the best method is most judiciously employed, it yields, at the very best, only the highest probability that can be humanly achieved and is never beyond further debate." Egil Grislis, "The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker," p. 179.
34. Preface 1.3; 1:2.24 3.6
35. Egil Grislis ("The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker," p. 173 76) calls attention to Hooker's use of "judicious" as a superlative to refer to hard and diligent , oftentimes painful and full of travail (Pref 1.3; 1:3.5 6 and 7.7; 1:36; also I.7.7; 1:81.10 12).
36. I.14.1; 1.125.18
37. I.15.4; 1:134.7, 12 14
38. To those of us accustomed to thinking about law as a written rule, Hooker's definition of the term represents a surprising expansion. He begins much in the manner of Aristotle and Aquinas, dealing with though not analyzing the various kinds of causes. Then he moves quickly to his first definition of law: "All things that are have some operation not violent or casuall. Neither doth any thing ever begin to exercise the same without some forconceived ende for which it worketh. And the ende which it worketh for is not obtained, unlesse the worke be also fit to obteine it by. For unto every ende every operation will not serve. That which doth assigne unto each ting the kinde, that which doith moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the forme and measure of working, the same we tearme a Lawe" (I.2.1; 1:58.22 29). Elsewhere he defines law, consistently to be sure, but more simply, "any kind of rule or canon whereby actions are framed" (I.3.1; 1:63.13 14) or "a directive rule unto goodnes of operation" (I.8.4; 1:84.17).
Even God works in eternal decrees through some principle, Hooker writes, though the divine law remains beyond our understanding. He quotes pagan philosophers who saw the First Cause as acting in accordance with Reason, "that is to say, constant order and law is kept." (I.2.3; 1:60.13) As to God's purposes in His laws working, Hooker writes, "God worketh nothing without cause. All those things which are done by him, have some ende for which they are done: and the ende for which they are done, it a reason of his will to do them." (I.2.3; 1:60.20 23) Even though God's reasons and ends are hidden, so central are reason and law from Hooker's standpoint that they become a priori principles, matters of faith: "The particular drift of everie acte proceeding externally from God, we are not able to discerne, and therefore cannot always give the proper and certaine reason of his works. Howbeit undoubtedly it be proper and certaine reason there is of every finite worke of God, in as much as there is a law imposed upon it." (I.2.4; 1:61.12 16) The rational nature of God, for Hooker, is reflected in his created order.
From here, Hooker moves on to describe the various kinds of laws. The law of God's own being and purposes Hooker terms the "first law eternal." A "second law eternal" governs the wills, actions, development, and alteration of all created beings: "that which with himselfe he hath set downe as expedient to be kept by all his creatures, according to the severall condition wherwith he hath induced them." (I.3.1; 1:63.8 10) All other categories or classifications of law are derived from this second law, including the law of nature, the celestial law or law of angels, the law of reason, the scriptural law, and human law, which he understood as being "out of the law either of reason or of God, men probablie gathering to be expedient, they make it law." (I.3.1; 1:63.24 26) Scripture, then, has a place in this schema amidst the other types of knowledge of God's will.
39. I.14.3; 1.127.21 26
40. V.21.2; 2:84.13 18
41. I.11.3; 1:112.21 113.15. See also David Neeland's article "Scripture, Reason, and 'Tradition,'" RHCCC, p83 84
42. "Man doth seeke a triple perfection, first, a sensuall, consisting in those things which very life it selfe requireth either as necessary supplementes, or as beauties and ornaments therof; then an intellectuall, consisting in those things which none underneth man is either capable of or acquainted with; lastly a spirituall and divine, consisting in those things wherunto we tend by supernatural meanes here, but cannot here attain unto them." (I.11.4; 1:114.18 25)
43. I.11.5; 1:117 8
44. "God him self is the teacher of the truth, whereby is made knowen the supernaturall way of salvation and law for them to live in that shalbe saved." (I.11.5; 1:117.9 12)
45. "...redemption out of the same by the pretious death and mert of a mightie Savior which hath witnessed of himself saying, I am the way, the way that leadeth us from miserie into blisse. This supernaturall way had God in himself prepared before all worldes. The way of supernaturall dutie which to us he hath prescribed, our Savior in the Gospell of saint John doth note, terming it by an excellencie, the worke of God." (I.11.6; 1.118.20 26).
46. I.11.4; 1:114.8 10
47. I.10.1; 1:96.26 29
48. "The light of nature is never able to finde out any way of obtayning the reward of blisse, but by performing exactly the duties and workes of righteousnes. From salvation therefore and life all flesh being excluded this way, behold how the wisedome of God hath revealed a way mysticall and supernaturall ... concerning that faith hope and charitie without which there can be no salvation; was there ever any mention made saving only in that lawe which God him selfe hath from heaven revealed?" (I.11.5, 6; 1:118.11 15,119.12 15). In this, Hooker is in agreement with the Magisterial Reformers, particularly Calvin. See Institutes II.8.1.
49. "What the Church of God standeth bound to knowe and 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).
50. Human nature is so related to grace that, through desire, it naturally identified as its end a state that was beyond nature altogether and thus dependent on grace (Lawes I.11.2; 1:111.33 112.20. See also I.5.2; 1:73.5 10.). The classic discussion of this predicament is Augustine's Confessions. See the account of the "natural weight" of the soul in Book XIII.ix. (Hackett, Indianapolis, 1993, p266).
51. See W. David Neelands, "Scripture, Reason and 'Tradition'," RHCCC, pp. 83 85.
52. Pref. 11.5
53. Pref. 3.10; 1:17.15 27
54. W. David Neelands ("Hooker on Scripture, Reason, and Tradition," in RHCCC, p. 87) points to Hooker's use of the term "aptness" to emphasize the capacity of humans to appropriate grace and which could not be lost in the Fall since, "had aptness beene also lost, it is not grace that could worke in us more than it doeth in brute creatures." (IV.101.30 31)
55. II.8.6; 1:190.12 16
56. See Hooker's "A Learned Discourse of Justification," in FLE, vol 5, especially p50 1, 105 6, 109, 112 3, 116, 312 13,
57. Hooker repeatedly reaches into the Bible itself to illustrate the operation of reason as a natural God given human faculty. He found "that there may be a certaine beliefe grounded upon other assurance then Scripture" in the very challenge of Jesus to believe because of his works and in Thomas' demand to see and feel the nail prints in Jesus' flesh (John 10:38; 10:25; II.4.1; 1:152.5 12). Hooker points to the apostles' reasoning on the text of the Psalms, to Paul and Barnabas' winning the unconverted through reason, to Peter's arguing to the Council of Jerusalem in matters of church policy, to the verse in 1 Peter that Christians ought render a reason for their faith, and finally to "our Lord and Saviour him selfe" reasoning in disputation with the crowd. (III.8.16 17; 1:233.10 15, 234.9 18, 18 25; 233.21 25; 234.2 7)
58. III.8.3; 1:221.16
59. Cf. III.8.9; 1:226.11 15. Hooker never appeals to reason as the only authority for truth, he consistently preserves the traditional two fold understanding of truth as both natural and supernatural, and he does not prejudice which means God should employ in disclosing a truth more wisely than to one individual only. Truth may be obtained "either with miraculous operation, or with strong and invincible remonstrance of sound Reason." (V.10.1) Compare
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 be want no part of needful instruction unto any good worke...It sufficeth therefore that nature and scripture doe serve in such full sort, that they both jointly and not severally eyther of them be so complete, that unto everlasting felicitie wee need not the knowledge of any thing more than these two, may easily furnish our mindes with on all sides, and therefore they which adde traditions as part of supernaturall necessarye truth, have not the truth, but are in error. (I.14..5.129.3 16)
60. I.12.1; 1:120.13 15, and II.1.2; 1:145.24 29. See also I.12 13; 1:119.26 124.26, and III.9.1 2; 1:236 237.29.
Particularly daring is Hooker's claim that Jesus' two precepts of charity in the summary of the law as love of God and of neighbor as self have been found out "by discourse" (i.e. by reason) like "other 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)
61. David Neelands, Scripture, Reason, and Tradition, p. 79.
62. Summa Theologica I.1.8. Cf. ST II II.26.13
63. "Supernaturall endowments are an advancement, they are no extinguishment of that nature whereto they are given." (Lawes V.55.6; 2:2230.28 29)
64. See I.12.1 2; 1:119.26 121.29.
65. "It sufficieth therefore that nature and scripture doe serve in such full sort, that they both jointly and not severallye eyther of them be so complete, that unto everlasting felicitie wee neede not the knowledge of any thing more than these two." (I.14.5; 1:129.10 13)
66. "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 be want no part of needful instruction unto any good worke which God himselfe requireth." (I.14.5; 1:129.3 8)
67. II.7.2; 1:175.20 30.
68. II.4.2; 1:153.14 15.
69. "We have endeavored to make it appeare, how in the nature of reason it selfe there is no impediment, but that the selfe same spirit, which revealeth the things that god hath set down in his law, may also be thought to aid and direct men in finding out by the light of reason what lawes are expedient to be made for the guiding of his Church, over and besides them that are in scripture." (III.8.18; 1:235.6 11).
70. "For if any one booke of Scripture did give testimonie to all, yet that Scripture which giveth credite to the rest would require another Scripture to give credite unto it: neither could we ever have any pause whereon to rest our assurance this way; so that unlesse besides Scripture there were something which might assure us that we do well, we could not thinke we do well, no not in being assured that scripture is a sacred and holie rule of well doing." (II.4.2; 1:153.18 25).
71. In Book III of the Lawes Hooker wrote of the Christian first accepting Scripture as God's Word relying upon the Church's authority in declaring it to be God's Word. In time, as we are nurtured by the Church's liturgical routine, "we find that the thing it selfe doth answer our received opinion concerning it." (III.8.14).
72. "In the number of 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).
73. III.8.16; 1:233.20.
74. I.14.2; 1:126.10 24.
75. Compare Hooker's notion of "collection" with Article VI of The Thirty Nine Articles: "so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."
76. The authority of reason which Hooker places alongside with revelation is not the general capacity for thinking present in all men, who "are of God." (Pref. 3.10) By contrast, those who are not redeemed by grace possess only a perverted reason that cannot function properly.
77. III.10.2; 1:240.31 241.26.
78. III.10.3; 1:242.16 243.6.
79. Hence, when Hooker attacked the Puritan insistence that the apostolic age provides a permanent authoritative norm for church policy, he employs the principle that a "difference of times, places, persons, and other the like circumstances" on occasion requires the alteration of particularities of "the Lawes of Christ" as they were described in the New Testament. III.11.13; 1:261.7 11.
80. William P. Haugaard, The Scriptural Hermeneutic of Richard Hooker, subtitle for article, p. 161f.
81. II.8.5; 1:189.10 11. Cf. I.14.1; 1:124.27 28.
82. While much has been made of Hooker's reliance on Thomistic thought in his discussion of laws and of Scriptural interpretation, it should be recognized, however, that Calvin developed a similar hermeneutic for determining the moral relevance of Old Testament laws. See Calvin's discussion of the Decalogue in InstitutesII.8.8f. 83. II.6.1; 1:168.3 5.
84. "The severall bookes of scripture having had some severall occasions and particular purpose which caused them to be written, the contents thereof are according to the exigence of that speciall ende whereunto they are intended. Hereupon it growth that everie booke of holie scripture doth take out all kinds of truth, naturall, historical, forreine, supernaturall, so much as the matter handled requireth." (I.14.3; 1:127.21 26)
85. II.7.5; 1:180.25 26.
86. I.12, 15; 1:119.26 122.5; 130.7 134.18.
87. "Unlike many modern biblical critics, Hooker could write that the scriptural texts literally contained 'manifest testimony cited from the mouth of God himself'; yet, at the same time, foreshadowing the work of such critics, his exegesis took account of human limitations inherent in many ways of those texts." William Haugaard, The Scriptural Hermeneutics of Richard Hooker, p. 169 70.
88. "Although the scripture of God...be stored with infinite varietie of matter in al kinds, although it abound with all sorts of lawes, yet the principal intent of scripture is to deliver the lawes of duties supernaturall." (1.14.1; 1:124.29 32) Again, "The laws of reason doth somewhat direct men how to honour God in such sort as their Creator, but how to glorifie God...to the end that he my be an everlasting Savior, this we are taught by divine law [scripture]." (I.16.5; 1:139.3 7) And elsewhere, "The ende of the word of God is to save, and therefore we term it the word of life. The waie for all men to be saved is by the knowledg of that truth which the worde hath taught." (V.21.3; 2:84.24 26)
89. Theologians generally agreed that fundamental Jewish moral laws continued in force for Christians, whereas ceremonial laws are abrogated; they did not always agree on the force of Old Testament judicial (criminal) laws. Hooker consistently interprets the force of such laws in the light of their purpose and historical situation. The judicial laws provide key test cases for identifying issues of Biblical omnicompetence. A law ought to be maintained only if "the ende for which it was made and...the aptnes of thinges therein prescribed unto the same end" continued in the present historical circumstances. (III.10.1; 1:239.32 240,2. Cf. I.11.3; 1:113.9).
Hooker's interrelated analyses of "ende" and "aptnes" provided him with a flexibility that freed his exegesis from a literal Biblicism that often marked English Protestant writing in his day. For example, he explained the severity of God's order to execute a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath; the severity was "perhaps the more requisite at that instant both because the Jews by reason of theire longe aboad in a place of continuall servile toile could not suddainely be wained and drawn unto contrarie offices without some strong impression of terror, and also...there is nothing more needful than to punish with extremitie the first transgressions of those lawes that require a more exact observation for manie ages to come." (V.71.8; 2:380.10 6; see also III.11.8; 1:252.20 26).
This penalty for Sabbath breaking in the Book of Numbers was appropriately "apt" in its day, but the same "ende," namely "rest from labor wherewith publiquelie God is served," is better promoted in later ages by recognizing "occasions" when people may "with verie good conscience" be drawn "from the ordinarie rule." (V.56.6; 2:380.1 3).
90. JS Marshall, Hooker and Anglican Tradition: An Historical and Theological Study of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1963), p122: "Hooker's is an Incarnational theology." Cited by Bruce Kaye, "Authority and the Interpretation of Scripture," JRH 21:1 Feb 1997, p. 96 98.
91. One can see the central place which Christology has for Hooker in his discussion of the sacraments in Book V.50 57. In Book V, Hooker is dealing with the criticism of the Puritans that there is a great deal of superstition retained in the various public duties of the Christian religion as they are practiced in the Church of England. After preliminary discussion he deals with the question of places of public service, of public teaching, or preaching and of prayer. Then he comes to the question of the sacraments. Before discussing the sacraments and their necessity, Hooker provides an extended discussion of Christology in order to demonstrate that God is in Christ by the personal Incarnation of the Son who is Himself very God. The logic is entirely consistent with the framework which has been set out in the first two books: "The use of sacraments is but only in life, yeat so that here they converne a farre better life then this, and are for that cause accompanied wit grace which worketh salvation., Sacraments are the powerfull instruments of God to eternall life. For as our naturall life consisteth in the union of the bodie wit the soule; so our life supernaturall in the union of the soule with God. And for as much as there is no union of God with man without that meane betweene both which is both, it seemeth requisite that wee first consider how God is in Christ, then how Christ is in us, and how the sacraments doe serve to make us pertakers of Christ. In other thinges wee may be more brief, but the waight of these requireth largeness." (V.50.3).
92. "Precisely because Scripture has Christocentric shape, it is of essential importance that in interpreting individual passages the over arching design be carefully kept in mind."92 (Egil Grislis, "The Hermeneutical Problem in Hooker", p. 192) Thus Hooker interpreted Scriptures in terms of what David Tracy has called "focal meaning": "he event/gift/grace of Jesus Christ" and qualified the verbal inspiration of Scripture. (187)
93. V.21.3; 2:84.23 4.
94. I.11.6; 1:118.31 32.
95. The mayne drifte of the whole newe Testament is that which Saint John setteth downe as the purpose of his owne historie, These things are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is Christ the Sonne of God, and that in believing yee might have life through his name. The drift of the old that which the Apostle mentioneth to Timothie, The holie Scriptures are able to make thee wise unto salvation. So that the generall end both of the olde and newe is one, the difference between them consisting in this, that the old did make wise by teaching salvation through Jesus Christ that should come, the newe by teaching that Christ the Saviour is come, and that Jesus whome the Jewes did crucifie, and whome God did rayse again from the dead is he. (I.14.4; 1:128.4 14)
96. "We teach that whatsoever is unto salvation termed necessarie by way of excellencie, whatsoever it standeth al men upon to knowe or doe that they may be saved...of which sort the articles of Christian faith, and the sacraments of the Church of Christ are, all such thinges 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 things that are accessorie hereunto, those thinges that so belong to the way of salvation, as to alter them is no otherwise to change that way, then a path is changed by altering onely the uppermost face thereof...we holde not the Church further tyed herein unto scripture, then that against scripture nothing to be admitted in the Church." (III.3.3; 1:211.2 21)
97. These matters are to be distinguished from "thinges arbitrarie" (I.10.5; 1:100.16 19).
98. V.65.2, 11; 2:302.7 8, 311.22. The category of "the indifferent," referring to matters in between the required and prohibited, was recognized by Thomas Aquinas in his scriptural commentaries and entered the logic of the Reformation, as early as Luther and Melancthon. It was used by Calvin and was well developed to support various positions within the English Reformation. But Hooker generally uses the concept of adiaphora in a way different to Calvin's, however. Whereas Calvin employs it in order either to allow Christian liberty or to avoid certain practices, lest consciences be ensnared (Institutes III.19.10. See also III.19.11). Hooker uses "indifference" for the notion that Christians can observe such practices freely, or rather, so that the church can require them freely.
Furthermore, when Hooker argues that "matters indifferent" may be regulated by the church, he speaks primarily of ceremonies, with no emphasis on the question of consciences. Calvin, by contrast, argues that "matters indifferent" must remain indifferent, that is, should not be regulated by the church, but he is not talking primarily about ceremonies. (Institutes III.19.9. Calvin does later recognize that the church may regulate and enforce the determination of ceremonies otherwise indifferent. See Institutes IV.10.30, 17.43) For Hooker, Puritan arguments that whatever is not commanded in Scripture is sin would include all indifferent matters (Lawes II.4.3; 1:154.1 5) and thus forbid those things which are considered "expedient" in Scripture, the expedient being a part of the group of things indifferent. (Lawes II.4.4; 1:155.2 4). See William Neelands, Scripture, Reason, and Tradition, 92.
99. Neelands, Scripture, Reason, and Tradition, 92.
100. Lawes II.4.3; 1:154.1 5. Cf. II.4.4; 1:155.2 4.
101. Article XIX of The Thirty nine Articles of Religion affirms the Lutheran and Reformed teaching of that the two marks that identify the presence of the true church on earth are the true preaching of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments. Calvin stopped short of declaring discipline or polity a mark essential to the very essence of the church.
102. V.57.11 13.
103. See Bruce Kaye, "Authority and the Interpretation of Scripture in Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity," in JRH, 21:1 Feb 1997, p. 104 5.
104. "The redeeming presence of God in Jesus Christ, dwelling within the church, assures Christians that reason and revelation have not lost their power and will inform as well as transform the seeker." Egil Grislis, "The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker," p. 198.
105. Egil Grislis draws particular attention to the role of consensus gentium has in Hooker's theological method. See Egil Grislis, "The Role of Consensus in Richard Hooker's Method of Theological Enquiry" and "The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker." Egil Grislis has emphasized Hooker's concern for consensus gentium in doctrine.
106. I.8.3; 1:84.1 2.
107. II.8.6; 1:190.23.
108. II.7.2.
109. Wisdom in the truest sense of the word is proclaimed not by individuals but by whole nations living through the centuries. This is the best available vantage point from which to obtain the highest measure of truth: "The generall and perpetuall voice of men is the sentence of God himself. For that which men have at all times learned, nature herself must needs have taught; and God being the author of nature, her voyce is but her instrument." (I.8.3; 1:84.1 4) And again, "That which all men's experience teacheth them may not in any wise be denied." (III.8.14; 1:231.19 20)
110. II.7.1.
111. It should be pointed out that Hooker's locating Scriptural interpretation in the church does not overthrow his advocacy for public discourse, for in Hooker's day, the church and state of England were coterminous.
112. V.8.2.
113. Here I am indebted to John Booty, who in "Richard Hooker and the Holy Scriptures" (SEAD Occasional Paper No. 3: Center Sandwich, New Hampshire May, 1995) calls attention to Hooker's view of the corporate and doxological use of Scripture. www.seadinternational.com/occasional_papers/booty.htm
114. V.19.5.
115. Barton and Halliburton, Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith (SPCK: 1981), p. 79 107.
116. "There simply is no theological method, however correct, that can itself ensure its own infallibility. Even when the best method is most judiciously employed, it yields, at the very best, only the highest probability that can be humanly achieved and is never beyond further debate." Egil Grislis, "The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker," p. 179.
117. V.8.2; 2:39.8 9.
118. "We miss Hooker's meaning if we understand reason in a post Cartesian fashion, construing it as the faculty for precise logical demonstration. Instead this product of humanist rhetorical training is pointing to a discursive trait which permits human beings to reach a consensus which can provide sufficient assurance for the business of living." Don H. Compier, "Hooker on the Authority of Scripture in Matters of Morality," p. 258.,
119. Books VI VIII argue strongly against this notion.
120. See Egil Grislis, "The Role of Consensus in Richard Hooker's Method of Theological Enquiry," in The Heritage of Christian Thought, ed. Cushman and Grislis (Harper & Row, 1965), and Peter Munz, The Place of Richard Hooker in the History of Thought (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.: London, 1952)
W Terry Miller
December 16, 2004
Archbishop Eames, Evaluation and Critique
Barth - Economic Life and a History Chapter 5
Barth - Political Responsibility for Economic Life Chapter Four
Building Up the Ancient Ruins - A Response to the Present Crisis
Cranmer on Salvation - Introduction
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?
Infant Baptism and Confirmation
Introduction to Anglican Theology
Introduction to Anglican Theology - Anglicanism and Scripture
Introduction to Anglican Theology - Articles One Through Five
Introduction to Anglican Theology - Articles Six Through Twenty
Introduction to Anglican Theology - Articles Twenty-One Through Thirty-Nine
It's Not Just Sex, It's Everything - The Virginia Guidelines
Judgment Begins at the Household of God
Jung, the Faith, and the New World Order
Justification, The Reformers, and Rome
Nicea and the Invasion of Bishops in Other Dioceses
Preface to the 1549 Prayer Book
Prefaces and Offertory Sentences
Reason and Revelation in Hooker
Richard Hooker and Homosexuality - Introduction
Richard Hooker and the Archbishop's Address
Richard Hooker and the Puritans
Richard Hooker and Universal Salvation
The Anglican Formularies are not Enough
The Creeds and Biblical Interpretation
The Creeds and Biblical Interpretation Continued
The House of Bishop's Pastoral Study on Human Sexuality - Theological and Scientific Consideration
