The Canon of Wisdom:
An Introduction to Richard Hooker

“The divine law is unknown to the soul that folly and intemperance have rendered impure, but it shines forth in self-control and wisdom.”
- Porphyry, Letter to Marcella, §26

Introduction

Richard Hooker is often described as the founder of Anglican theology.  There are many good reasons for this.  If it may be said that Thomas Cranmer bequeathed to all later Anglicans a particular pattern of liturgical worship, then it may also be said that Richard Hooker bequeathed to all later Anglicans a twofold model for theological discourse.  On the one hand, he gave his theological writings a particular rhetorical shape by subsuming the sometimes-vehement passions raised by theological polemics to the weight of theological content.  On the other hand, he constructed his theology along a liturgical-political axis rooted in a distinct metaphysical vision.  His lengthy discussions of Anglican worship were articulated on a broad historical canvas punctuated by biblical, patristic, and to a lesser extent, scholastic insights; he envisioned the Christian pilgrimage playing out on a political stage positioned before the backdrop of a harmonious and hierarchically ordered cosmos.  The only way to glimpse Hooker’s theological vision is to patiently work through his sometimes poetic, frequently dense, Elizabethan prose.  Anything else can only be, at best, commentary upon the words of a genuine sage.

The purpose of this essay is to introduce the thought of Richard Hooker by way of his unfinished magnum opus, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie (hereafter, Lawes).  I do so by arguing that his concerns and inquiries can only be understood if we pay attention to his detailed considerations of law, which serve as the foundation upon which he constructs his expansive theological purview.  Law guides Hooker in two important ways.  First, and following St. Thomas Aquinas, Hooker uses law to set forth a distinctly teleological vision order.  Everything within nature, like everything within human society, has a particular telos – an end or a purpose – and insofar as things do not deviate from their respective ends, they are edifying and good.  What holds true for nature and the political realm, Hooker reasons, also holds true for the Church.  The building blocks of Christian identity, such as Scripture, tradition, and corporate worship, must be understood and used according to the ends that they were originally instituted for.  Anything else results in a distortion of revelation, and may also result in a violent rending of the social fabric.  This, then, is the second way that Hooker’s famous inquiry is shaped by his concern with law: human beings are easily deceived, and may therefore give themselves up to irrationality and, what is worse, violence.  Hooker’s theology of sin is never explicitly stated in the Lawes, but his understanding of its influence is given voice through his frequent reflections on self-deception, the effects of which sharply juxtapose with his vision of social order.  Hooker thus emerges in this essay as a political theologian animated by the Biblical conviction that because nature and revelation both manifest God’s wisdom, society should manifest the same.

This paper begins with a discussion of Hooker’s metaphysics, especially his entwined conceptions of law, nature, and wisdom.  These need to be outlined before I turn, in the second section, to his views on theology, particularly his understanding of Scripture, tradition, and their relation to reason.  Importantly, we will see that Hooker sets forth no systematic method for how to relate these to one another, and this only underscores the central importance of law, nature, and wisdom in his thought.  In the third and penultimate section of this paper, I look at Hooker’s proposed application of this to the political context of late Elizabethan England.  The conclusion, however, turns towards the Anglican tradition more broadly, and proposes that Hooker’s emphasis upon law must again become central to Anglican self-understanding.  If Anglican norms, standards, and values are going to be sources of strength and vitality for our church, then they must rest upon a foundation that upholds law as its guiding principle, for law exists to orient us toward that unique and particular end which reveals God’s own creative wisdom.  Such was Hooker’s vision, and we do well to reclaim it as our own.

I. Law, Nature, and Wisdom

In the preface of the Lawes, Hooker writes that his intent is to persuasively argue against his Puritan opponent Thomas Cartwright – and, by extension, all who agree with Cartwright – that “for the ecclesiasticall lawes of this land, we are led by great reason to observe them, and yee by no necessitie bound to impugne them.”[[Lawes, Preface, 7.1]]  The method by which Hooker lays out his apologetic is twofold.  On the one hand, the Lawes is a theological treatise, focused primarily on “what lawe is, how different kindes of lawes there are, and what force they are of according unto each kind.”[[Lawes, Preface, 7.2]]  Hooker deploys a broadly Scholastic understanding of law which is rooted in Thomas Aquinas, and he maintains Scholasticism’s dialectical mode of argument throughout.  On the other hand, but no less importantly, Hooker’s argument is also rhetorical: “my whole endevor is to resolve the conscience, and to shewe as neere as I can what in this controversie the hart is to thinke, if it will follow the light of sound and sincere judgment, without either clowd of prejudice, or mist of passionate affection.”[[Ibid.]]  In this statement, and in others like it throughout the Lawes, Hooker displays a humanist recognition that the facts do not simply speak for themselves; they must be presented in a persuasive manner.  Law, as the end of Hooker’s apologetic, governs the manner of his presentation by orienting it towards an end that illumines both the mind and the heart.

Hooker wastes no time before defining his central term.  “That which doth assigne unto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the forme and measure of working, the same we term a Lawe.”[[Lawes, I.2.1]]  All things, he writes, work according to law.  God works according to his own law; Hooker calls this the first eternal law, and writes that it serves as the basis for the second eternal law, which comprises those laws that direct all other things.[[Lawes, I.2.3]]  Five such laws come under consideration: natural law, “which ordereth naturall agents”; celestial law, which angels work by; the law of reason, “which bindeth creatures reasonable in this world, and with which by reason they may most plainly perceive themselves bound”; divine law, which also binds humans, but is not known without special revelation ; and finally, human law, which Hooker also calls positive law, is what human beings use to order their respective communities,[[Lawes, I.3.1]]  and comes “out of the law either of reason or of God.”  Insofar as objects or beings within any of these five categories of law are “as they ought to be,” they conform to the second eternal law.  Hooker writes, however, that even if something does not conform to its respective law, it is still ordered in some way by the first eternal law.  Nothing can ever be entirely set against or outside of this law, because it is “written in the bosome of God himselfe.”[[Lawes, I.3.4]] 

This symphony of legal distinctions indicates that Hooker’s theology is one of providential order, especially at the cosmological level.  Two points follow.  First, law witnesses to harmony; it does not exist for its own sake.  “They erre,” Hooker baldly states, “who thinke that of the will of God to do this or that, there is no reason besides his will.”[[Lawes, I.2.5]]  The laws which guide creation reveal something of God’s own nature – namely, the “wisedome set down within himself.”[[Lawes, I.8.4]]  At the very least, law implies – and, at most, it displays – the divine wisdom that orders its existence.  Second, and following from this, the revelatory nature of law gracefully dovetails with a thoroughly biblical anthropology.  Because humanity is made in the image and likeness of God, Hooker reasons, the process of creating human or positive law necessarily imitates the divine process of creating, for instance, natural law.  Hooker concedes that the reason for a law is not always known; nonetheless, “whatsoever is done with counsell or wise resolution, hath of necessitie some reason why it should be done.”[[Lawes, I.2.5]]  In both the divine and human processes, the reason for the law always precedes the creation of the law itself.

[Click to read Part Two of this essay.]
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