Arguably the closest Anglicanism ever came to boasting its own Luther or Calvin was the sometime Master of the Temple and theologian Richard Hooker.  His Of the Laws of the Ecclesiastical Polity proved to be very influential in the Tudor and Stuart counterattack against more radical forms of evangelicalism as the Church of England struggled to delineate its own identity and structure.  Just as importantly, Hooker has proven to be perennially popular as a theological touchstone by which authentic Anglicanism can be tested.  Such has perhaps never been truer than today when both so-called conservatives and liberals invoke his threefold theological method to support their own cause or to describe their own version of Anglicanism.  In the following reflections, I will propose that Hooker’s aid cannot be invoked in such a facile way—that to accept his methodology requires a recognition of his underpinning theology—but that his theology when grasped as a whole suggests fruitful avenues for further thought and reflection.

Perhaps no other late medieval philosophy proved so influential as the voluntarism of William Ockham, Duns Scotus, and others that proposed a radical freedom for the Divine Will.  According to voluntarism, God is completely free to do as he pleases.  He is bound by no necessity, and therefore not only could have fashioned creation in an infinite number of ways but can theoretically still do so.  Indeed, Scotus suggested that God does break his own laws, and some voluntarists pointed to miracles as examples of this.  As the classical statement of voluntarism puts it: ‘God does not command things because they are good, rather they are good because God commands them’.  The voluntarist shift from a theological emphasis on love (as inherited from Augustine) to one focused on God’s Will shook the medieval intellectual world to its foundations.  Coupled with burgeoning discoveries in natural philosophy, particularly in astronomy, voluntarism swept aside a closed and harmonious universe for one in which God tended to recede behind an enormous universe of immutable laws.  By Hooker’s day, the music of the spheres had long since fallen silent.

Hooker attacks voluntarism near the beginning of Book 1 of the Laws.  He writes: ‘They err therefore who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides his will (I.ii.5)’.  Instead, Hooker argues that God’s ways are often beyond human comprehension.  Mystery, therefore, lies at the heart of creation and its depths can never plumbed.  Confronted with this mystery the only human response is admiration and adoration: ‘That little thereof which we darkly apprehend we admire, the rest with religious ignorance we humbly and meekly adore (I.ii.5)’.  Interestingly, for a theologian noted as having an optimistic view of reason, Hooker assumes that humans will only ever be able to recognize a small part of God’s law.  Most of God’s ways ought, therefore, to be received in humble and adoring ignorance. Hooker concludes confidently, ‘although there seem unto us confusion and disorder in the affairs of this present world [...] “let no man doubt that everything is well done, because the world is ruled by so good a guide,” as transgresseth not His own law: than which nothing can be more absolute, perfect, and just (I.ii.5)’.  None of this ought to be taken as abrogating God’s freedom as he of ‘his own free’ will imposed this eternal law upon himself.

Central to the patristic and medieval conception of reality was the Platonic idea of participation (mimesis).  A classical statement of this is to be found in Augustine’s De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae 2.4.6:

‘Now, compare with this perplexity…the consistency of the statements in the teaching of the Catholic Church, according to which there is one good which is good supremely and in itself, and not by participation of any good, but by its own nature and essence; and another good which is good by participation, and by having something bestowed.

All created existence is therefore contingent, drawing its essence from its continual participation in God.  Furthermore, every good—be it virtue, wisdom, reason, or bodily goods—derives from God and one may exhibit any of these goods, particularly in the case of wisdom and reason, only insofar as one participates fruitfully in God.  Conversely, the appearance of sins demarcates, as it were, one’s distance from a full divine participation as one falls away towards nothingness; the further one has fallen away from God the more one is a sinner.
One finds a similar conception of the world in V.55. of Hooker, Laws, when he writes: ‘Such as the Substance of each thing is, such is also the Presence thereof.  Impossible it is that God should withdraw his Presence from anything, because the very Substance of God is infinite.’  Again, in the next chapter, Hooker writes:

God hath his influence into the very Essence of all things, without which influence of the Deity supporting them, their utter annihilation could not choose by follow.  Of him all things have both received their first Being, and their continuance to be that which they are.  All things are therefore partakers of God, they are his Offspring, his influence is in them… (V.56).

Participation, however, describes not only mere existence but also redemption.  Augustine formulated a theology whereby humankind is redeemed by the participation of the divine within humanity.  Further developing Irenaeus’s dictum, ‘God became man so that men could become God’, Augustine explained how redemption works:
We too became through grace what we were not, that is, children of God, but we were nonetheless something, and this something was much less, that is, we were human children.  He, therefore, descended in order that we might ascend, and while remain in his nature, he became a partaker of our nature in order that we, while remaining in our nature, might become partakers of his nature, but not in the same way.  For his participation in our nature did not make him worse, but our participation in his nature makes us better (ep. 140.10).

Humankind is saved by Christ’s participation in human nature, which opens up to the faithful the way for a fruitful participation in God.  What distinguishes Christians from non-Christians, therefore, is the former has, by Christ’s Incarnation and through grace, now moves towards fuller participation while the latter falls away towards non-being.

Likewise, even though Hooker holds that everything participates in and derives its existence from God, in another sense only the faithful are ‘actually in God (v.56)’.  The incorporation of the faithful through baptism into the Body of Christ enables them to participate in the Divine Life: ‘We are, therefore, adopted children of God, granted eternal life by participation in the life of the only begotten Son of God, whose life is the well-spring and cause of our lives’.  Finally, as with Augustine, Hooker understands the sacraments as the means by which we continue to participate in Christ’s Body and therefore in God.  In Latin, both participate and partake are the same word (participo).  Thus, it is by partaking of or participating in the sacraments that we partake of or participate in God.

Taken together then, Hooker’s laws exist within a world that’s far cozier than the one to which we are accustomed.  In a sense, God is closer to man, not only in that he actively gives existence and allows us to participate in his own goodness and life, but also in that by limiting himself by his own eternal laws, God freely binds himself to his own creation.  As with medieval theology, Hooker’s world is soaked with God in a way that is almost entirely foreign to us.  Consequently, when Hooker speaks of Scripture, tradition, and reason it is from a standpoint not immediately translatable into our own context.

With regards to the present-day debates within Anglicanism Hooker provides at least two challenges.  On the one hand, he confronts the voluntarism upon which so much reformed theology is based.  According to reformed theology, because God’s will is, in a sense, arbitrary (God does not will what is good but determines what is good by his will) little or nothing trustworthy can be known about God through the study of creation.  The historical antipathy of reformed theology towards natural revelation ultimately derives from voluntarism.  Gone are the Divine footprints (vestigia) in creation so important to Augustine or Bonaventure.  In the end, the only trustworthy knowledge of God is that found in Scripture.  Against this approach, Hooker upholds the traditional understanding that the world is teeming with signs of God’s beauty and goodness; participative existence can do no other than reveal the fountain-fullness of God’s goodness.

On the other hand, attempts to enlist Hooker into the ranks of modern or postmodern approaches to methodology are equally problematic.  Few people today think of creation in terms of participation and would likely be horrified by the prospect if such were presented to them.  So, for example, when people appeal to reason, they conceive of reason as a human faculty autonomous from any type of metaphysic.  On the other hand, when Hooker speaks of reason, he refers to a human faculty that is derived from God, not only originally but actively, and therefore immediately affected by the individual’s or (for Hooker far more important) the community’s relationship to God.  I suspect most liberals would reject out of hand any notion that one’s moral condition has any essential influence over one’s capacity for reasoning.
Thus, when Hooker speaks of people growing in knowledge (for which Scripture, tradition, and reason are necessary) he is referring to something altogether different than what most people mean by that today.  In agreement with medieval theologians (who drew upon Neoplatonism), Hooker understands growth in knowledge to be one aspect of the humankind’s growth in goodness.  In I.v.1, Hooker argues that everything that enjoys contingent existence has an appetite or desire (again drawing from Augustinian and Scholastic thought) ‘whereby they incline to something which they may be; and when they are it, they shall be perfecter than now they are’.  This growth towards perfection is Goodness, and so everything that exists is also good.  That goodness towards which everything grows proceeds from God (I.v.2), who is the ‘cause of all things’, and manifests itself as the desire of all things to continue and to resemble God ‘in the constancy and excellency of those operations which belong unto their kind’.  By this Hooker apparently means something along the lines of Platonic universals, which from Augustine onwards were placed within the Mind of God and which contingent beings can only ‘imitate’.  Indeed, it is interesting that Hooker should use the word ‘imitate’ (Gk. mimesis) in this context as it suggests that he has Plato very much in mind.  Within Neoplatonic thought imitation and participation are synonymous.

Voluntary agents (i.e. human beings) are capable of a higher perfection than non-voluntary agents since they can acquire knowledge ‘higher than unto sensible things (I.vi.3)’.  Hooker agrees with Augustine that until an individual reaches the age of reason, he or she is stuck in the world of the sensible.  Sensory knowledge, however, provides the means for people to ascend to a higher knowledge, a capacity which is disciplined by education and instruction.  Behind Hooker’s argument lies the old distinction, imparted to western theology by Augustine’s De trinitate, that the mens is divided into two faculties: scientia and sapientia. Scientia is knowledge of the sensory world acquired through the five senses.  Sapientia, or wisdom, is knowledge of eternal truths.  Hooker retains this distinction, though he replaces the term mens with reason.  In I.vii.1, he writes, ‘By reason man attaineth unto the knowledge of things that are and are not sensible’ by which he means sensory.  Thus, the higher faculty of reason directs the will towards truths.  In effect, this is what it means for a human being to grow in perfection.

The means whereby reason discerns goodness are by an understanding of the causes of goodness or by the signs produced by goodness.  Hooker believes the first is so difficult that almost everyone shuns it (I.viii.2). As for the signs, he argues that these vary in fallibility.  He betrays his conservative bent by asserting, ‘The most certain token of evident goodness is, if the general persuasion of all men do so account it (I.viiii.3)’.  This is not infallible, however, but can only be rooted out by understanding the causes of the goodness.  He adds that such inquiry must discover overwhelming proof of error: ‘surmises and probabilities will not serve, because the universal consent of men is the perfectest and strongest of this kind…’  Hooker is a thoroughly conservative Tudor thinker.  One suspect that his assertion, ‘The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God himself’ would find many supporters today.  In his own day, however, this must have been taken as the sort of strong support for the role of tradition that Puritans rejected.  In effect, Hooker argues that God’s truths are revealed in universal customs. 

The same thought appears later when Hooker discusses tradition within the Church.  In I.xiv.5, he explains to Roman Catholics that Anglicans accept Apostolic tradition as carrying the same authority as Scripture itself.  Only later traditions are rejected as sufficiently authoritative because they cannot be shown to be of God.  But that which ‘is of God, and may evidently proved to be so, we deny not but it hath in his kind, although unwritten, yet the selfsame force and authority as the written laws of God’.  These are apostolic traditions, and the principle holds true because what matters for Hooker is not how the laws are transmitted but who their author is.

Reason, however, does not work without aid: ‘...there is no kind of faculty or power in man of any other creature, which can rightly perform the functions allotted to it, without perpetual aid and concurrence of that Supreme Cause of all things (I.viii.11)’.  In fact, reason is wholly dependent upon God, who is entirely free to withhold illumination.  Of course, this makes perfect sense within a metaphysic in which all existence participates in God and derives its goodness from him.  For Hooker, as with all medieval theologians, reasoning cannot be easily distinguished from prayer.

Up to this point, Hooker apparently has in mind primarily moral truths.  When he passes on to discuss the role of Scripture, he returns to a more traditional understanding of sapientia, beginning where all his predecessors began: happiness.  What people desire, argues Hooker, is happiness and the only infinite felicity is God himself.  Thus, the universal desire for happiness is fundamentally a desire for God.  Hooker understands true happiness in typically Neoplatonic (and Augustinian) terms as a participative union with God:

...desire tendeth unto union with that it desireth.  If then in him we be blessed, it is by force of participation and conjunction with him [...] Then are we happy therefore when fully we enjoy God, as n object wherein the powers of our souls are satisfied even with everlasting delight: so that although we be men, yet being unto God united we live as it were the life of God (I.xi.2). 

Such felicity is beyond human capacity, however, precisely because our reason depends on God.  The Fall has marred reason to such a degree that it cannot conceive of how to attain union with God.  Hooker asks rhetorically who since the beginning of the world could say ‘My ways are pure? (I.xi.5).’  Since no one can make this claim, the path towards union with God—the true purpose of higher knowledge—must be provided by God himself.  And this is precisely what Scripture does.  It teaches ‘supernatural truth’ whereby we can come to enjoy a certain vision of God.  Scripture accomplishes this task by teaching truths beyond human reasoning, correcting human error, and revealing that which is otherwise unknowable.  Hooker writes:

Concerning Faith, the principal object whereof is that eternal Verity which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wisdom in Christ; concerning Hope, the highest object whereof is that everlasting Goodness which in Christ doth quicken the dead; concerning Charity, the final object whereof is that incomprehensible Beauty which shineth in the countenance of Christ the Son of the living God: concerning these virtues, the first of which beginning here with a weak apprehension of things not seen, endeth with the intuitive vision of God in the world to come; the second beginning here with a trembling expectation of things far removed as yet but only heard of, endeth with real and actual fruition of that which no tongue can express; the third beginning here with a weak inclination of heart towards him unto whom we are not able to approach, endeth with endless union, the mystery whereof is higher than the reach of men… (I.xi.6)

This passage could have been written by a medieval mystic since like them Hooker sees knowledge of truths such as verity, hope, beauty, and love as avenues into a deeper union with God.  Ultimately, for Hooker, this is the purpose of Scripture: it provides the knowledge that reason (which seeks to comprehend higher truths) needs to enable one to grow in perfection towards God.

Hooker does not believe, however, that all supernatural truths are self-evident in Scripture.  Some truths—he uses the example of the Trinity—are only obtained by ‘deduction’ through ‘collection’ (I.xiv.2).  What Hooker means by this is a little obscure, though it may help to know that in his day ‘collection’ more usually meant ‘to gather parts together so they can be seen as a whole’.  This process is never-ending: ‘For let us not think that as long as the world doth endure that wit of man shall be able to sound the bottom of that which may be concluded out of Scripture’.  This is precisely where sapiential reasoning is employed, first cleansed through faith, in discerning God’s laws.  Hooker concludes boldly: ‘It sufficeth therefore that Nature and Scripture do serve in such full sort, that they both jointly and not severally either of them be co complete that unto everlasting felicity we need not the knowledge of any thing more than these two may easily furnish our minds with on all sides (I.xiv.5)’.  For medieval theologians scientia takes the faithful only so far towards knowledge of God before having to yield to sapientia, which, though superior, still depends on scientia. So too for Hooker must Natural reason give way eventually to Scriptural reason, which although superior must be united with Natural reason to be complete.

What we are left with is a scheme far richer than the facile debates carried on today.  Hooker’s methodology is actually more like a traditional contemplative approach towards bliss through knowledge of God than it is like a modern dispute over ecclesiastical policy.  In this respect, Rowan William’s description of Hooker as a ‘contemplative pragmatist’ is not without merit (Anglican Identities, 24-39).  Certainly, the great mystics would have found some of his language distinctly odd.  Where, for example, is the role of prayer in sapiential reasoning?  Hooker often sounds like he assumes that knowledge is gained through investigation and deduction alone rather than also through prayer and contemplation.  In other words, medieval theologians would have categorized his entire explanation of reason as scientia. Yet, at the same time, Hooker’s whole scheme of reasoning is itself a form of prayer since investigation and deduction both depend on the constant aid of Divine illumination.  Humankind discerns God’s laws not from outside but from within those laws and from within even God himself.  To have life is to have God’s presence in us and to participate in him (V.56).  Thus, our feeble attempts at reasoning (which for Hooker can only ever know a small part of God’s laws) are surrounded and permeated by God’s Being and Goodness; we may only ever achieve what God cleanses and enables us to achieve.  Thus, perhaps what Hooker offers us today is less a methodology and more a call prayerfully to admire and adore the mystery of God’s will before we pretend to know that will.

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