Abstract
Augustinian-calvinist tradition, which in England had gradually emerged and matured through the development of the eucharistic thought of Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), was generally followed by Hooker. At times Hooker also utilized the insights of St. Thomas Aquinas. As could generally be expected in this developing Anglican context Hooker greatly relied on the theologians of the Early Church, debated with the Medieval Church, and responded to the various religious currents of his time. In this process Hooker enriched the past theological formulations and offered several creative insights. However, while Hooker documented his patristic and medieval sources, he ordinarily did not provide footnotes to his contemporaries. It is usually assumed that he had read many of them. I shall follow this assumption and for the following reason. Pursuing three defining eucharistic motifs—sacramental instrumentality, the eucharistic presence of Christ, and the eucharistic ramifications of Christ’s ascension to heaven—Hooker quite clearly made use of the various insights of his Anglican predecessors and contemporaries, particularly taking up issues which they had dealt with but had not adequately solved. In this way Hooker, the traditionalist, nevertheless charted a new course which was both ancient and modern.
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Bryan D. Spinks, Two Faces of Elizabethen Theology: Sacraments and Salvation in the Thought of William Perkins and Richard Hooker, Drew University Studies in Liturgy No.9 (Lanham, Maryland and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1999), 142. For a seasoned but older overview, see Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England from Cranmer to Hooker, 1534–1603 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 76–123.
Horton Davis makes use of the older term, “virtualism,” defined as “the belief that while the bread and wine continue to exist unchanged after the Consecration, yet the faithful communicant receives together with the elements the virtue or power of the body and blood of Christ.” Davis thinks that this view was held by Martin Bucer, John Calvin, the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549, and Richard Hooker, 83. As will be seen from the subsequent analysis, I tend to agree with C. W. Dugmore, Eucharistic Doctrine in England from Hooker to Waterland (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,1942), who observed that Hooker “had already broken with the Virtualism of his predecessors, ”and affirmed the reception of Christ’s body and blood;“ see 19.
G.W. Morrel observes that Calvin limits the efficacy of the sacraments to the elect only, The Systematic Theology of Richard Hooker (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1970) 137. See John S. Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition: An Historical and Theological Study of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity (Sewanee, TE: The University Press at The University of the South, 1963) 143.
B.A. Gerrish, The Old Protestant and the New: Essays in the Reformation Heritage (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Limited, 1982), 119
Henry Bullinger, Decades, PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1852), V.280.
Thomas Cranmer, Writings and Disputations relative to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844), 11
Cranmer, Writings, 203. See Peter Brooks, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of the Eucharist: an Essay in Historical Development (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd, 1965); Stephen W.Sykes, Cranmer on the Open heart, 10–17, in Donald S. Armentrout, ed., This Sacred History:Anglican Reflections for John Booty (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1990); also see Horton Davis, Worship and Theology, 111–120.
Already in 1545 Ridley had read Ratramnus, a ninth century monk, who in his work On the Body and Blood of the Lord, offered a symbolic interpretation of the eucharist. Nicholas Ridley, Works, PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), 200; Horton Davis, Worship and Theology, 103–104
Hugh Latimer, Sermons, PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844), 127, 266, 269
John Bradford, Writings, PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 101
Edmund Grindal, Remains, PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843), 44.
Alexander Nowell, A Catechism, 1570,PS (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1853), 214
Edwin Sandys, Sermons, PS (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1842) 87, 88
G. R. Evans and Robert Wright, eds., The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources (London and Minneapolis: SPCK/Fortress, 1991), 165
John Griffiths, ed., The Two Books of Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 1859); Homily 416,442.24–25
John E. Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church of England (London: SPCK, 1963), 166–176
Lawes IV.1.3; 1:274.27–28 and IV.1.4; 1:276.14–16
Lawes V.50.1–2; 2:207.13–19, 27–30. The analogy was known not only to Calvin (see ftn. 4 above), but also to St. Thomas Aquinas, “The Church’s sacraments are ordained for helping man in the spiritual life. But the spiritual life is analogous to the corporeal, since corporeal things bear a resemblance to spiritual… food is required for the preservation of life…. Consequently… there needed to be the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is spiritual food.” Summa Theologiae Ia. q.3.art.75.1. Transl. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1946)
Marshall, Hooker and Anglican Tradition, 145: “Hooker’s doctrine of the sacraments rests on the philosophical doctrine of occasionalism. When the words of the sacrament are said and the elements are used, then God effects what the words and elements symbolize.”
Lawes V.67.2; 2:331.19. Marshall, Hooker and the Anglican Tradition, 140 has noted: “We are so made that we find the fruition of our highest desire through sharing God’s own life with him. This is the Platonic doctrine of participation; and it is essential for the Eastern Fathers, St. Thomas and Richard Hooker.”
Lawes V.67.7; 2:336.7–9. John E. Booty has carefully documented Hooker’s sources. A major discovery is Hooker’s error to regard De Cardinalibus Operibus Christi as a work of St. Cyprian of the third century, while it was actually written by Arnold, twelthcentury Abbot of Bonneval. After analyzing other citations as well, Booty declares, that the Fathers did not teach “Hooker’s doctrine.” See John E. Booty, ed., The Divine Drama in History and Liturgy: Essays in Honor of Horton Davis on his Retirement from Princeton University Pittsburgh Theological Monographs, New Series, 10. (Allyson Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1984), 139. Perhaps a case can be made for Hooker, nevertheless, if some cautious attention is paid to the development—and therefore the subtle influence—of the maturing of the doctrine of the holy eucharist. How the vivid (and symbolic) affirmation of the bread and the wine as the body and blood of Christ eventually becomes a confession of transubstantiation, has been often observed. But there is the other direction as well. St. Ignatius of Antioch in describing the eucharistic elements as a “medicine of immortality” (Eph. 2:20) points to a remarkable transformation of the self. St. Justin Martyr was more explicit, more obscure and more intriguing at the same time. While most often his “metabolism”- Apology 66.2 - is understood to refer to the change of bread and wine into the physical body of the partaker, Friedrich Loofs has applied the “metabolism” to the total self. (For a critique, see Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte: 1. Die Anfänge des Dogmas im nachapostolischen und altkatholischen Zeitalter (Basel: Benno Schwabe & Co. Verlag, 1953), 354, n.2. Even though the presence of Christ by way of the eucharistic change of the self was explicitly elaborated only centuries later, some of its beginnings are authentically patristic. In essence, Hooker was not in error.
Jewel, Works, 467; see also 1124. The reference is known not only to Calvin (see note 4 above), but also to St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae IIIa q.75 art.1, quoting Matt. 24.28.
Lawes V.55.3; 2:228.21–24. See E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966).
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Grislis, E. (2003). Reflections on Richard Hooker’s Understanding of the Eucharist. 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_13
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