49. On Richard Hooker, The Church of England's Theologian.

Dearly Beloved,

Recently Dr Michael Carter of English Heritage challenged the Tudor centred view of the reformation and the disposal of the monasteries by Henry VIII set out by Hilary Mantel as - “a narrative which is somehow about saving England and putting it on an enlightened path to what will eventually become secular liberal democracy.” He emphasized instead the abbey, churches and art that had been lost during that period.

I then remembered Richard Hooker, my favourite theologian (or rather ecclesiologist, but you can't have sound ecclesiology without sound theology). He was the great builder of the middle way following the antics of the late middle ages in England. Henry VIII was greedy for the wealth of the monasteries and resented the interference of the Papacy in his personal and political life, then there was his very protestant son Edward VIth followed by Mary 1st who was strongly catholic. Finally there was the last of the Tudors, Elizabeth 1st. It was she who had to put the country back together again after all the disputes, trials, executions and exiles of the earlier years. Richard Hooker helped that reconstitution by writing his great work The Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity. Eight volumes, five of which were published in his lifetime. His works set out a new role and polity for the Church in England which eventually became the Anglicanism we know today.

When I did a degree in theology as a mature student I found Hooker's work extraordinarily attractive. That was partly because of the beautiful English in which it is written, he died in 1600 so his writings are contemporary with Shakespeare and he is a contender for the prize for writing the best English of the era. He was also attractive because he was influenced by Thomas Aquinas and endorses the elementary view that the objective of life is to be happy and that man finds happiness through being completed by God.

I liked his radical Eucharistic view that the Church did not exist for its own sake. It was there so that it could dispense the supernatural gift of grace bestowed by participating in the Eucharist. In a rather modern way he emphasised that man is a social creature, and although corrupt, he is not so corrupt that he cannot make laws to regulate his own behaviour.

“the corruption of our nature being presupposed, we may not deny but that the lawe of nature doth require of such necessitie some kind of regiment”

That differs from the view of Calvin in Geneva, who depended on scripture alone to make laws and Hooker repudiates that.

Richard Hooker is moderate in his views and emphasises the importance of reason. That was unusual at a time when people disagreed severely with one another. For example Thomas Cartwright (a Presbyterian and fellow of both St John's and Trinity College Cambridge, both a stone's throw from St Clement's) believed that Catholic priests should be killed in the way in which Azariah killed those who did not seek out God (Chronicles 15:13), but Richard Hooker, having mentioned their faults, wrote:

“...we gladly acknowledge them (the Catholics) to be of the familie of Jesus Christ, and our hartie prayer is that being conjoyned so faar foorth with them, they may at length (if it be his will) so yeeld as to frame and reform themselves, that no distraction remain in anything, but that we may all with one hart and one mouth glorifie God, the father of our Lord, and Saviour, whose Church we are.”

Inevitably of course his positive attitudes toward the Catholic Church on the one hand and the Presbyterians on the other, were generally rejected by both.

We also see the beginning of modern tolerance too, for Hooker says that we must accept any man's profession of faith as only God knows what is present in someone's heart. That was echoed by Elizabeth Ist's famous comment that she did not want a window into men's hearts. Nevertheless attending the Eucharist remained obligatory.

Hooker's work, especially the The Lawes, underpinned the Elizabethan Settlement giving a theological basis to both the Church and the state, and that has formed the basis of an increasingly diverse and wealthy polity, despite the nearly one hundred years of instability that followed Hooker's death, which ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the incompetent and cruel rule of James II was ended. The divine right of Kings, which Hooker had also promoted to support Elizabeth Ist, ended in 1688 too.

During my studies I wrote an essay on Hooker for a seminar, attended mostly by non-conformists. In my chaotic way, I lost the essay but I had given a copy to a friend and she was able to find it this week amongst her files and scan it and send me back a copy despite the passing of nearly twenty years! So thanks to Vicky Maltby of, ironically enough, Geneva, for allowing me to rediscover and reaffirm the fascinating writings of Richard Hooker which I first encountered all those years ago.

Richard Hooker was a real peacemaker and must not be forgotten.

Peace,

Paul.

Completed 30 October 2021

Photograph revised 18/11/22.


Photo: Paul Munton.
Peacock butterfly on cherry blossom, Cambridge Botanical Garden.

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