Divine Law and Participation in God

Beginning with chapter eleven, in the rest of Book One Hooker moves from a consideration of law as it operates within human nature to the revelation of divine law. Hooker directs the reader to this topic by reiterating the view that highest good for humanity is participation in God: “If then in him we be blessed, it is by force of participation and conjunction with him. . . [A]lthough we be men, yet by being unto God united we live as it were the life of God” [I.11.2; 13-15, 19-20].

Despite being made to participate in God, humans cannot perfectly do so in this life. “For while we are in the world, subject we are unto sundry imperfections” (I.11.3, 24-26) so that humans are unable to keep themselves focused on God alone. That the fullness of participation cannot yet be attained does not diminish human desire for it. Hooker maintains that even now humans are “capable . . . of God both by understanding and will.” Humans can understand God as the ultimate truth at the foundation of all wisdom and they can attain God by the will since God is “that sea of goodness, whereof who so tasteth shall thirst no more” [I.11.2, 9-12].

This desire for perfection is not limited to Christians but is found in all people, meaning that this is a natural desire. Because God accomplishes all that God intends, this desire for participation in God can be fulfilled because it was placed in humans by God. Humans seek a triple perfection: a sensual perfection relating to acquiring that which humans need to physically sustain them, an intellectual perfection relating to the pursuit of knowledge that lower orders of creation cannot attain, and a spiritual and divine perfection “consisting in those things whereunto we tend by supernatural meanes here, but cannot here attaine unto them” [I.11.4, 23-25). While humans can be satisfied in regard to matters of the body or the intellect, when humans encounter the depths of the spiritual they are impelled to seek this perfection further and deeper so that “all other knowne deightes and pleasures are layde aside, they geve place to the search of this but onelye suspected desire”[I.11.4, 13-14).

For Hooker, salvation is the attainment of spiritual perfection, but it is something that can only be provided by God and made accessible in the form of revealed laws. “God him self is the teacher of the truth, whereby is made knowen the supernatuall way of salvation and law for them to live in that shalbe saved” [I.11.5, 117.9-12]. This law of salvation is revealed in the redemption of humanity from sin “by the pretious death and merit of a mightie Saviour” [I.11.6, 118.20-21). All that God requires from humans to arrive at spiritual perfection through Christ (and hence participation in God) is the response of the supernatural virtues of faith, hope and charity (1 Cor. 13:13). The knowledge of both the possibility of salvation in Christ and the required human response fall within the category of supernatural or divine law for Hooker “both in respect of the manner delivering them which is divine, and also in regard of the thinges delivered which are such as have not in nature any cause from which they flow, but were by the voluntarie appointment of God ordained besides the course of nature to rectifie natures obiliquitie withal” [I.11.5, 119.18-23].

Discerning the Good

In chapter 8 of Book One, Hooker returns to the question of how humans naturally discern the laws that govern proper behavior. He reminds the reader that humans are created to desire the good, so that human “felicitie therefore being the object and accomplishment of our desire, we cannot choose but wish and covet it” (I.8.1, 3-5). Reason enables humans to discern the good, but human reason itself is imperfect so that “If reason erre, we fall into evill, and are so farre foorth deprived of the generall perfection we seeke” (I.8.1, 7-9).

Hooker explains that there are two general ways to discern goodness. One is by the “knowledge of the causes whereby it is made such” (I.8.2, 28-29). This is the method of scholastic thought and Aristotelianism but Hooker observes that this approach is so mentally taxing that people rarely engage in it, making it less than useful for the public debate with Puritanism that Hooker has engaged. The other approach is the “observation of those signes and tokesn, which being annexed alwaies unto goodness, argue that where they are found, there also goodness is, although we know not the cause by force whereof it is there” (I.8.2, 29-1). This approach to discerning goodness rationally is more appealing to Hooker, especially when objects or concepts are deemed good by a broad consensus of humanity. Hooker summarizes this inductive approach to rationally discerning by expanding on the medieval English concept that the voice of the people is the voice of God: “The generall and perpetuall voyce of men is as the sentence of God him selfe. For that which all men have at all times learned, nature her selfe must needed have taught; and God being the author of nature, her voyce is but his instrument” (I.8.4, 1-4).

Hooker continues to build his argument about the law of nature by observing that this is something that all humans can observe and so be drawn to natural goodness for which all humans were created (I.8.6). Reason helps people to determine the goodness of their actions. This “sentence of reason,” as Hooker calls it, is “either mandatory, shewing what must be done; or els permissive, declaring onely what may bee done; or thirdly admonitory, opening what is the most convenient for us to be done” (I.8.8, 2-5). Here Hooker shows that there is a diversity of things that might be called good, but all good things share the quality of having been discerned by humans via rational insight to be in them good. In turn, although all people, whether Christian or not, can rationally discern the good, nonetheless this is not possible “without the perpetuall aid and concurrence of that supreme cause of all things” (I.8.11, 27-28).

Hooker’s reasoning here is itself a distillation of Artistole’s thought and common theme in humanist scholarship in the century preceding Hooker. For Hooker, there is a common ground of reasoning to draw upon here with which he will uses as a foundation to rebuff the biblicism of his Puritan opponents.

The Blogging of Richard Hooker: The Idea

I recently came in possession of the Folger Library edition of Richard Hooker's Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity. As I stood in my office hefting volume one in my hands, I thought, "When on earth will I actually read this?" In Anglican circles Hooker's work is like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time -- often referenced and rarely read. I have read my share of Hooker as a historian of Christianity and professor of church history at an Episcopal seminary. But I knew very few people who had ever read the whole thing.

So I stood in my office and thought, "I am only going to read this if I do it with someone." I thought of offering an elective course, but I doubted either that many students would register or that we could finish the entire work in a semester. An informal reading group seemed like the right vehicle for a project as daunting as reading all of Richard Hooker's Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity.

So this is the project that has been undertaken at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific this fall semester. We will gather as a group of faculty, staff, and students to read Richard Hooker from beginning to end. We will read him aloud, deciphering his Elizabethan prose and spelling one sentence at a time. We will begin with the preface and work our way through all eight books talking about his argument as a group. I have no idea when this project will end; it may take years. But it seems like a project worth doing.