Abstract
Law, in its concept and formulation in the first book of Richard Hooker’ s treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, is fundamental to understanding his subsequent account of sacramental participation in the redeeming work of Christ. Hooker speaks of sacraments and the Atonement in the vocabulary of the magisterial reform, but (perhaps uniquely) understands the same doctrines within the framework of law.1 When Hooker describes law in Aristotelian and teleological terms, he is describing a process of participation. Law has a mediating role, in which the emanation of being through causes results in a return to the First and Final Cause, God. Creatures participate in God through the natural law, but after the fall, man’s participation is restored in the divine law. The centrality of the idea of participation in a work called the Lawes is therefore not surprising. With reference to both the natural and divine laws, Hooker describes participation in the same terms; the difference between the two lies in the way in which participation is brought about, either naturally or supernaturally. Hooker’s account of the Atonement therefore takes into account the idea of law, as a restoration of the participation in God that man was to have enjoyed from the beginning. By virtue of the hypostatic union, Christ is able to carry out the law of man’s nature, as well as offer satisfaction for its original abandonment. In this way he becomes the cause of new life for individuals, who partake of him as effects partake of their cause, and are oriented to their proper end. Christ the Mediator is therefore also the New Law. In the sacramental mysteries, the Holy Spirit derives to particular men the grace enjoyed by Christ’s human nature, causing them to participate in him as he participates in God. The sacramental signs, however, can be only instruments, and not causes of grace, on the analogy that the person of Christ is a cause, but his human nature an instrument, of salvation. Hooker’s treatment of participation, then, relates law to the Atonement and sacraments.
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References
For a discussion of the relation of Hooker’s doctrine of law to that of the Reformers and Thomas Aquinas, see W. J. Torrance Kirby, The Theology of Richard Hooker in the Context of the Magisterial Reformation (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 2000), and W. David Neelands, “Hooker on Scripture, Reason and `Tradition’,” in RHC, 75–94. Kirby shows that Hooker adopts central concepts of the magisterial reform—in particular, the distinction between the two realms of nature and grace—while Neelands states that Hooker’s treatment of law, while not opposed to Calvin’s, owes much to Thomas Aquinas; for Hooker, “law is always primarily of positive value,” RHC, 77–78. See also Lee W. Gibbs, “Introduction to Book I,” Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, vol. 6 (part 1) (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993), 81–124.
FLE 6(1):190–202
W. J. Torrance Kirby, The Theology of Richard Hooker, 23–32. See also by Kirby, “Richard Hooker’s Theory of Natural Law in the Context of Reformation Theology,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 30.3 [19991: 688–690.
Booty also sees this law as basic to Hooker’s “holistic” vision. “The Law of Proportion: William Meade and Richard Hooker,” Saint Luke’s Journal of Theology 34.2 (1994): 25
Kirby, The Theology of Richard Hooker, 26–27
See Bryan D. Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Anglican Theology: Sacraments and Salvation in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker ( London: The Scarecrow Press, 1999 ), 109–158.
Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethan Theology, 133
Lawes I.2.1; 1:58.22–33
Lawes I.2.2; 1:59.5
to Lawes I.2.3; 1:60.4
Lawes I.2.3; 1:60.20–23
Lawes I.3.1; 1:63
Lawes L2.5; 1:61.18–62.13
Lawes I.16.8; 1:142.9
Lawes I.16.7; 1:142.4–7
For example: “[O]rder is a graduall disposition. The whole world consisting of partes so manie so different is by this only thing upheld, he which frameth them hath sett them in order. Yea the very deitie it self both keepeth and requireth for ever this to be kept as a law, that wheresoever there is a coagmentation of many, the lowest be knitt to the highest by that which being interjacent may cause each to cleave unto other, and so all to continue one” Lawes VIII.2.1; 3:331. 19–332. 1
Forms are that which give things “their being,” Lawes I.3.4; 1:67.24. In a footnote Hooker defines form. “Forme in other creatures is a thing proportionable unto the soule in living creatures. Sensible it is not, nor otherwise discernable, then only by effects. According to the diversitie of inward formes, things of the world are distinguished into their kindes” (I.3.4; 1:67.23, n.y). Being that which “gives the thing its specific nature and is the cause of its specific properties,” form is therefore closely linked with law, which governs ends, another of the four Aristotelian causes.
Lawes I.3.4; 1:68.1–8
Lawes L3.4; 1:68.19
Lawes I.5.1; 1:73
Lawes I.5.2.; 1:73.10, my emphasis
Lawes I.5.3; 1:74.5–14
Lawes I.7.2; 1:78.5
Kirby sees this Aristotelian chain of perfections as an example of the lex divinitatis, noting that Hooker cites Pseudo-Dionysius here. Kirby, The Theology of Richard Hooker, 26, notes 10 and 11
Lawes I.11.2; 1:112.13–20
Lawes L4.1–3; 1:69.21–72.24
Lawes I.4.3; 1:72.15–17
Lawes I.7.7; 1:80.26–28
Lawes 1.8.11; 1:92.27–28
Lawes L9.1; 1:93.30–94.7
In an autograph note in the margin of ACL, Hooker chastises its author for condemning nature `under colour of condemning corrupt nature“ (FLE 4:17.23–29).
For a survey of the “consonance” of the natural and divine laws based on Thomistic maxims, see Neelands, “Hooker on Scripture, Reason and `Tradition’,” RHC, 77–88.
Lawes I.11.6; 1:118.15–18
Lawes 1.11.6; 1:118.20–22
Lawes I.11.6; 1:118.26, qu. John 6.29
John Calvin, Inst. II.17.1, my emphasis
Lawes V.51.3; 2:211.1
Lawes V.53.3; 2:218.17
Lawes V.53.1; 2:216.22–29
Lawes V.53.2; 2:217.18–21
Lawes V.53.3; 2:218.17–28
Lawes V.54.3; 2:222.20
Lawes V.54.4; 2:223.6–7
Lawes V.54.6; 2:224.25–225.2
Lawes V.55.1; 2:227.25–27
Lawes V.55.1; 2:227.28–30
Lawes V.56.1; 2:234.29–235.3
Lawes V.56.2; 2:235.4–5
Lawes V.56.3, 2:236.2–4, my emphasis 5o Lawes V.56.4; 2:236.12–13
Lawes V.56.5; 2:237.19–22.
Lawes V.56.5; 2:237.23–25, emphasis added
Lawes V.56.6, 7; 2:237.25–238.9
In another passage Hooker again compares the operations of natural and divine law. In God eternally through Christ, members of this spiritual offspring have God “actuallie now in them, as the artificer is in the worke which his hand doth presentlie frame.” This relation is summed up as “the participation of divine Nature.” See Lawes V.56.7; 2:238.1042,18. There are plain analogies between the participation of a thing in its cause, a work in the artist, created in creator, and new-created in Saviour.
Lawes V.56.7; 2:238.23–239.7
Lawes V.56.7; 2:239.19–31
Lawes V.56.7, 8; 2:240.3–4, 9–27; emphasis added
Lawes V.56.10; 2:242.2
Lawes V.56.10; 2:242.8–243.2
These last observations concerning “the twofold participation of grace” are derived from Kirby, The Theology of Richard Hooker, 46, 48, and 56. The mutuality of the “inward hold” also implies a doctrine of predestination: Wee are therefore in God through Christ eternallie accordinge to that intent and purpose whereby wee were chosen to be made his in this present world before the world it selfe was made… But in God wee actuallie are no longer than onlie from the time of our actuall adoption into the bodie of his true Church, into the fellowship of his children… For in him wee actuallie are by our actuall incorporation into that societie which hath him for their Head, and doth make together with him one bodie… for which cause, by vertue of this mysticall conjunction, we are of him and in him even as though our vene flesh and bones should be made continuate with his. Wee are in Christ because he knoweth and loveth us even as partes of him selfe. No man actuallie is in him but they in whome he actuallie is (V.56.7; 2:238.21–239.7; my emphasis).
Inst. II.17.2
The activity of the Holy Spirit is not, of course, peculiar to the divine law. As the “Power” of God, he is “neerest unto everie effect which groweth from all three [persons of the Trinity]” (V.56.5; 2:237.5), whether natural or supernatural. On this account, the order of nature is in some respects just as mysterious as the matter of faith. See, for example, Lawes I.3.4; 1.66–68 and V.56.5; 2: 236–237.
Hooker tends to reserve the term “instrument” for natural beings or agents, designating only supernatural things as “causes.” Thus, Christ—in whom the divine and human natures are supernaturally united—is a cause; the human nature by itself is an instrument of the person of Christ. In a fascinating passage in which he rejects the Platonic notion that in their operations natural things adhere to eternal ideas, Hooker posits instead the influence of law, itself the mediated influence of God. The Platonists’ “exemplary draughts or patternes” are replaced by an eternal law, “an authenticall, or an original draught written in the bosome of God himselfe,” i.e. the divine Word itself; Lawes I.3.4; 1:66.33. See FLE 6(1):100. The forms of natural things are the means by which they follow the laws of their nature, and following law, the will of God. Having forms—and therefore an intrinsic principle of operation—natural (in this case, involuntary) agents are nevertheless not accorded an independence of action, not even to the point of being described as secondary causes; rather, they are “nothing else but Gods instrument”: Those things which nature is said to do, are by divine arte performed, using nature as an instrument: nor is there any such arte or knowledge divine in nature her selfe working, but in the guide of nature’s work. Whereas therefore things naturall which are not in the number of voluntarie agents… do so necessarily observe their certaine lawes, that as long as they keepe those formes which give them their being, they cannot possiblie be apt or inclinable to do otherwise then they do… [This law] is as it were an authenticall, or an originali draught written in the bosome of God himselfe; whose spirite being to execute the same useth everie particular nature, everie mere natural agent, only as an instrument… to work his owne will and pleasure withal (Lawes I.3.4; 1:67.17–25, 68.13–18).
Lawes V.55.8; 2:234.2–4
Lawes V.55.8; 2:232.23–233.1
Lawes VI.5.2; 3:53.24–54.9. Lee W. Gibbs has characterized Hooker’s understanding of the Atonement as “essentially the Latin objective or satisfaction theory,” as formulated by St. Anselm in “Richard Hooker and Launcelot Andrewes on Priestly Absolution,” in RHC, 271. That Hooker is also in line with the magisterial Reform in this matter is established by comparing this (Hooker’s) summary with Calvin’s view (Inst. 1I.17.1–6). While Hooker assumes this framework, however, his idea of the Atonement is coloured by his preoccupation with law. This serves to rescue his doctrine of the Atonement from a purely forensic interpretation.
Restoration“ and ”compensation“: I am using the terms that appear in a translation of Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, edited by Brian Davies and G.R. Evans, Anselm of Canterbury: the Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 283.
fi8 Lawes VI.3.6; 3:13.11–12; my emphasis
Lawes VI.3.3; 3:9.6
Lawes VI.3.3; 3:9.21–23
Lawes VI.3.3; 3:10.4
Calvin, Inst. 1I.17.2
Lawes I.5.2; 1:73.10
Lawes V.50.1; 2:207.10–19
Lawes V.50.2; 2:207.26–27
Lawes V.50.3; 2:208.18–19
Lawes V.59.5; 2:253.7–9
Lawes V.60.2; 2:254.22–255.9
Lawes V.67.1; 2:330
Once again, natural flesh and blood are spoken of as causes “not by the bare force of theire owne substance, but through the dignitie and woorthiness of his Person which offered them up by way of sacrifice,” that is, by virtue of their union with divinity. Lawes V.57.4; 2:333.14–16
Lawes V.67.4; 2:333.31–334.589 Hooker makes explicit reference to this Christological analogy. In response to the charge, for example, that sacraments in Reformed thought are “naked, empty and uneffectuall signes wherein there is noe other force, then only such as in pictures, to stirre up the mind” (Lawes VI.6.10; 3:84.18–20), Hooker responds: For even as in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ both God and man, when his humane nature is by itselfe considered, wee may not attribute that unto him
If on all sides it be confest that the grace of baptisme is powred into the soule of man, that by water wee receive it although it be neither seated in the water nor the water chaunged into it, what should induce men to thinke that the grace of the Eucharist must needes be in the Eucharist before it can be in us that receive it?“ (V.67.6; 2:335.10–14) [my emphasis].
Booty, “Hooker’s Understanding of the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist,” 141, 144.
The Book of Common Prayer, 1559: The Elizabethan Prayer Book, ed. John Booty ( Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976 ), 264.
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Irish, C.W. (2003). ‘Participation of God Himselfe:’ Law, the mediation of Christ, and sacramental participation in the thought of Richard Hooker. In: Kirby, W.J.T. (eds) Richard Hooker and the English Reformation. Studies in Early Modern Religious Reforms, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0319-2_11
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