Richard Hooker, Theologian of the English Reformation

The convictions of the author of a classical statement of Anglican theology

Anglicans as well as others often claim that the Reformation in England was mainly ecclesiastical and jurisdictional rather than doctrinal. But do the doctrinal writings of the period support this interpretation? Was the reform in doctrine really confined to a vernacular edition of the Bible (1538) and a vernacular liturgy (1549)? Some formidable theological writers give pause to those who accept such a view uncritically.

Thomas Cranmer, a scholar and theologian of solid worth and historic importance, is one figure to consider in reviewing this claim about the English Reformation. Cranmer was a student of Holy Scripture and of the Church Fathers. He was architect of the Book of Common Prayer and is thought also to be the principal author of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, that irenic, scriptural statement of systematic theology found in the back of nearly all editions of the Book of Common Prayer. Then there is John Jewel, whose Apology of the Church of England remains a monument of the sixteenth-century dialogue with the papacy. Jewel’s great work still deserves thoughtful reading by any Christian whose spiritual ancestry can be traced back to British Christianity.

A generation later, after the fires of Smithfield had been extinguished and the martyrs of reformed England had borne their testimony, there appeared a careful, thoughtful, courteous, and peace-loving scholar who is widely acknowledged as the greatest of all English theologians. The remarkable Mr. Hooker was born in Exeter in 1553 or 1554 and thus was a contemporary of Shapespeare. He seems to have been a youth of modest circumstances who through the influence of none other than Bishop John Jewel himself was admitted to Oxford. There in 1579 he became tutor in Hebrew.

In 1585 Hooker was appointed master of the temple, where he was the morning preacher and the Puritan Walter Travers was the afternoon preacher. Travers began to attack Hooker as unsound because Hooker did not urge the acceptance of a more radical Protestantism. Hooker was of a conciliatory temperament and entered this kind of controversy with great reluctance. As Calvin had described himself as “only a timid scholar,” so Hooker said to his bishop that he wished to be “free from noise.”

Yet out of this controversy grew Hooker’s magnum opus, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. This monumental treatise in eight books (three of which were published posthumously) is generally considered the classic statement of Anglican divinity. While it is an argument in defense of the Anglican, or Prayer-Book, point of view against the Puritan point of view, it is very much more than a mere rebuttal; it sets forth a positive and very well thought-out position of its own. The tone of the work is not polemic but conciliatory.

No Mere Echo

To say that Hooker is to Anglicanism what Luther is to Lutheranism or Calvin is to the Reformed tradition might be misleading, but something of an analogy might be found in the relationship of John of Damascus to Eastern Orthodox theology. And yet this analogy has its limits also, for Hooker was by no means merely a synthesizer or collector of previous theological writers. He was a learned patrologist but no mere echo of the Fathers. He valued Thomas Aquinas, but recent efforts (such as that of Professor John Marshall of Sewanee) to make him out to be a Thomist are less than convincing. He was an admirer of Calvin, whom he calls “incomparably the wisest man that ever the French Church did enjoy,” and yet he was obviously not a conventional Calvinist. He was a biblical theologian, and yet one of the most prominent features of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is his argument that not all needed knowledge can be derived from Scripture alone. Hooker was an original, constructive, and independent theologian, gratefully acknowledging sources but not enslaved by them. Just as the English Reformation was itself sui generis, so was its chief apologist, Richard Hooker.

Although Hooker differed from the Puritans in denying the absolute self-sufficiency of Scripture, he agreed with them and with the Reformers generally in asserting the ultimate authority of Scripure over both Church and reason. The supremacy of Scripture as a source of religious knowledge and the complete self-sufficiency of Scripture are not the same thing.

Hooker is famous, of course, for his defense of the role of reason in theology. But this is not so much rationalism as empiricism, an appeal to experience and, perhaps, common sense. Because of our tendency to confound reason with logic, the very word “reason” becomes misleading. While Hooker’s mentality would not deny reason access to historical event underlying the faith, it would not be congenial to the notion of reason as sovereign over Faith.

The incarnation, atonement, and resurrection of Christ are the basis of Hooker’s doctrine. Like some of the Greek Fathers, he keeps the Person and the Work of Christ closely intertwined. Deliverance from sin and death is by participation in Christ: “We are, therefore, adopted sons of God to eternal life by participation of the only-begotten Son of God, whose life is the well-spring and cause of ours” (The Laws of Ecclesiastical Policy, V, 56). Who Christ is underlies what Christ does. His Work is grounded in his person.

Hooker views Christ’s death as an expiatory sacrifice: “… this caused his voluntary death for others to prevail with God, and to have the force of an expiatory sacrifice” (ibid.). The voluntariness of Christ’s death is an aspect of his obedience, and this obedience was an instrument of the restoration of the world. There seems to be some sort of “divine exchange” by which Christ acts for us, or in our stead, and what is his becomes ours: “by removing through the death and merit of His own flesh that which hindered the life of ours” Christ acts on our behalf in such a way that his death becomes the basis of our life, his voluntary helplessness the basis of our deliverance.

Hooker gives Christ the title “Justice,” “because he hath offered up himself a sacrifice for sin.” Justice, sacrifice, and atonement are associated. The sacrifice of Christ is meritorious because of his divine nature; that which sanctified the human nature of Christ also undergirds his sacrifice: “The blood of Christ, as the Apostle witnesseth, doth therefore take away sin, because ‘through the eternal Spirit he offered himself to God without spot.’ That which made it a sacrifice available to take away sin, is the same which quickeneth it, raised it out of the grave after death, and exalted it unto glory” (ibid.).

Does Hooker teach a substitutionary view of the Atonement? Some passages suggest it: “We have redemption, remission of sins through his Blood, health by stripes; justice by him” (Discourse of Justification, 31). Certainly the calamites that befell Jesus are deemed in some way to have taken away our guilt. That Christ’s sacrifice is infinitely meritorious is quite clear; that it broke the threat of the Law and in some sense nullified its claim is also clear. What is less clear is whether this was accomplished because Jesus suffered some specific legal penalty in our stead.

Hooker apparently teaches that Christ died for all and that the benefits of his sacrifice are applicable to the whole world. These benefits, while applicable to the whole world, are in their fullness applied only to the elect. Calvin speaks of election in terms of being “in Christ”; Hooker’s view seems to be similar. Hooker mentions “our being in Christ by eternal foreknowledge,” and says that “through him according to the eternal purpose of God before the foundation of the world, born, crucified, buried, raised, we were in a gracious acceptation known unto God long before we were seen of men: God knew us, loved us, was kind to us in Jesus Christ; in Him we were elected to be heirs of life” (ibid., 31). It is in view of the infinite meritoriousness of Christ’s sacrifice that his people are elected in him. The ground of election and salvation is always in the work of Christ, never in ourselves. Like Calvin, Hooker rejects the idea that election is in view of foreseen works, “for the grace which electeth us is no grace, if it elect us for our work’s sake.” However, he does not teach double predestination.

Safe Till The End

Hooker does teach the perseverance of the saints, and he holds that the security of the Christian soul is found in the work of Christ. In The Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect, he maintains that since the blood of none less than the God-Man has been shed for us, this sacrifice cannot have been made in vain and that therefore those who through faith are made its beneficiaries will be kept safe unto the end.

We are therefore delivered from estrangement and alienation, from sin and death, by participation in Christ, who saves us both by who he is and by what he does. To be made partakers of his nature and of the fruits of his sacrifice is the privilege of his elect, a privilege no one can take from them.

How is the risen Christ present to his people? Hooker discusses this question at some length in the fifth book of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. He holds that Christ is not present physically in his natural human body, since ubiquity is not characteristic of a natural human body. He dissents from the German doctrine of the omnipresence of our Lord’s humanity.

Hooker does not mean that Christ’s resurrection was only a disembodied immortality of the soul, or that it was not the resurrection of a transformed and transfigured human body, but that the risen body continued to be a body with its normal characteristic of definite or local presence. Hooker, like Calvin, seeks to defend the complete reality of Christ’s humanity. Nevertheless, since God is omnipresent, Christ’s humanity, according to Hooker, can be said to be omnipresent “by conjunction.” Hooker seemingly wishes to avoid the very appearance of Nestorianism.

The risen Christ must be present in order for men to participate in him. Christ’s life and righteousness are made present to us both by imputation and by impartation. The view of the imputation of the fruits of his victory is closely related to Hooker’s idea of justification, which he develops in the Discourse of Justification. On justification Hooker agrees with Luther and Calvin.

The benefits of the work of Christ are made ours by faith, “for by Faith we are incorporated into Christ.” Although men are sinful in themselves, when they are incorporated into Christ by faith, God sees them in Christ and no longer imputes sin to them. Hooker criticizes the Roman view that justification is on the basis of something inherent in us. He follows Calvin’s line of thought in his distinction between justification, which he associates with imputed righteousness, and sanctification, which he associates with imparted righteousness. “God giveth us both the one justice and the other,” he says, “the one by accepting us for righteous in Christ; the other by working Christian righteousness in us.” Sanctification, characterized by good works, follows justification.

The Life In Grace

In considering how the new life in Christ is appropriated, it is interesting to note that Hooker excludes free will. This point of doctrine comes in somewhat incidentally and implicitly, although he specifically refers to “the Heresy of Free-will.” Life in Christ, then, is a life in grace, built upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ and made available to the believer through Christ’s resurrection and present cosmic Lordship. It is a work of Christ based upon the Work of Christ. By the work of Christ men become partakers of the divine nature so that they dwell in God and he in them. Thus they participate in Christ’s sacrifice and victory.

This participation in the life of Christ is realized by participation in the life of the Church, the Body of Christ, and especially by participation in the sacraments. Hooker retains the objective and community-centered note in this insistence upon the importance of life in the Church and the centrality of the sacramental system. Here again he resembles Calvin, for whom Church and sacraments were of decisive importance.

The spiritual reality of Church and sacraments rests upon the divine promise given in the Word. The Church lives in terms of promise; it is the promise that makes sacraments efficacious. The promise that was fulfilled in Christ’s atonement and resurrection is renewed in Church and sacraments. The magisterium of Church and the virtus of Sacraments rest upon the validity and the power of the promise of the Word.

Hooker recalls that it was to the college of apostles that the promises were given; and the witness and writings, not of isolated mystics, but of this apostolic college and community form the basis upon which Christianity rests. The New Testament and the Church cannot be separated.

Hooker disagrees with the Puritan tendency to treat sacraments as nothing more than subjective symbols, designed to stir men’s memories or emotions. Nor are sacraments intended primarily for instruction. Rather, they are means of grace, although they do not themselves contain grace nor are they efficacious ex opere operato. Their power is not inherent; it is from God. However, sacraments are the normal means by which God bestows grace and hence are necessary: “Neither is it ordinarily His will to bestow the grace of Sacraments on any but by the Sacraments; which grace also, they that receive by Sacraments or with Sacraments, receive it from Him, and not from them” (The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, V, 57). One may correctly say that Hooker teaches that sacraments are generally necessary to salvation.

What Is A Sacrament?

Following the lead of the continental Reformation, which defined the term “sacraments” more strictly than did the earlier Church, Hooker counts two sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. There are, he says, three elements in a sacrament: the grace that is offered by the sacrament, the element that signifies the grace offered, and the Word that expresses what is done by the sacrament. Calvin says that “Christ is the substance of Sacraments,” and so does Hooker: “We receive Christ Jesus in Baptism once, as the first beginner, in the Eucharist often, as being by continual degrees the finisher of our life.” Participation in sacraments is participation in the life of Christ.

Hooker sees the Eucharist as preeminently a participation in Christ. He rejects both consubstantiation and transubstantiation as inadequate efforts to explain the inexplicable mystery of the presence of Christ. Yet he does affirm that presence as a reality of Christian experience. “The Real Presence of Christ’s most blessed Body and Blood,” he says, “is not to be sought for in the Sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the Sacrament” (ibid.).

The presence of the risen and living Christ in the heart of the believing communicant is a method of interpreting the Eucharistic presence in terms of event, of divine reconciling action, of divine function and deliverance, of union with and participation in the divine nature.

So then Hooker regards the Holy Communion as a true and real participation in Christ, and not as merely figurative. He holds that the notion of oral manducation is nowhere taught in Scripture, but he strongly affirms a spiritual manducation of which the Holy Communion is an instrumental means. The sacrament is not merely an aid to memory, or a kind of memorial service; it is an act of union with Christ in his divine nature, in his sacrifice, and in his resurrection. In it we are mystically caught up in that great divine Act that took away the sin of the world, for, as Hooker puts it, “these Mysteries do, as nails, fasten us to His very Cross.”

Obviously, then, Hooker was not unfriendly to the continental Reformation, and on many crucial doctrines he came down quite solidly on the Reformed side. Even so he differs from the narrow, legalistic rigorism of the Puritans and recognizes the variety and richness of the ways of God with men. His theology is intensely Christ-centered, seeing in Christ’s incarnation and atoning sacrifice the ground of the victorious life of God’s elect.

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