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Hooker on Divinization: Our Participation of Christ*

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Hooker on Divinization: Our Participation of Christ* Hooker on Divinization: our participation of Christ* David Neelands Trinity College, Toronto ABSTRACT: Richard Hooker took very seriously the significance of glorification in his account of Justification and Sanctification. In this he was, like some other Reformation figures, informed by the Patristic notion of theosis or divinization. Theosis also links Hooker’s account of God’s grace with his Christology. To ignore this aspect of his account of engraced human existence is to miss his use of the logic of theosis to confirm the anti- Pelagianism of the Reformation. Glorification For Richard Hooker, glorification is intimately tied to his account of Justification and to the sanctification that inevitably accompanies it. The connection, through the faith that is required as much for glorification as for justification, is described in one of the earliest of Hooker’s compositions: because the last of the graces of God doth so follow the first, that he glorifieth none, but whom he hath justified, nor justifieth any, but whom he hath called to a true, effectual, and lively faith in Christ Jesus, therefore S. Jude exhorting us to build our selves, mentioneth here expresly only faith, as the thing wherein we must be edified; for that faith is the ground and the glorie of all the welfare of this building.1 When Hooker came to write on justification, the surprising Reformation topos for his defence for the controversial view that many of our ancestors /138/ who lived and died in papist errors where nevertheless participants in God’s salvation, he offered a scholastic overview of God’s work of grace in the redeemed, work that includes both sanctification and glorification, as well as justification: * Published in From Logos to Christos: Essays on Christology in Honour of Joanne McWilliam, ed. Ellen M. Leonard and Kate Merriman (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010), 137-149. /146/ An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in St. Louis on October 25, 2008. 1 The Second Sermon Upon Part of S. Jude 14 (Folger Library Edition 5:44.15-21). Compare Romans 8.30; in the ordo salutis, faith is not mentioned, but justification, which implies faith, is. PAGE 1 OF 13 There is a glorifyinge righteousnes of men in the Worlde to comme, and there is a justefying and a sanctefyinge righteousnes here. The righteousnes wherewith we shallbe clothed in the world to comme, is both perfecte and inherente: that whereby here we are justefied is perfecte but not inherente, that whereby we are sanctified, inherent but not perfecte.2 As has been pointed out3, in this passage, Richard Hooker once again grafted a Reformation confessional branch onto a scholastic tree: in one paragraph, he summarized the Lutheran revolution on the meaning of “justification,” he acknowledged the Calvinist refinement on the sanctification that always accompanies justification, and framed both with the Augustinian account of the continuity between the beginning and continuation of this process and its consummation in blessedness in the world to come. For Hooker, the sanctification known in this life by the justified is connected in a continuum with the glory to be known in the world to come, and anticipates it. According to the medieval maxim, grace is the beginning of glory in us: by steppes and degrees they receave the complete measure of all such divine grace, as doth sanctifie and save throughout, till the daie of theire finall exaltation to a state of fellowship in glorie, with him whose pertakers they are now in those thinges that tende to glorie.4 In this continuum, the sanctified person will come to the perfection of the angels, who can no longer decline from loving God, but “being rapt with the love of his beauty, they cleave inseparably for ever unto him.” This glory by anticipation is the meaning of Jesus’ prayer that God’s will be done in earth as in heaven: our Saviour himselfe being to set downe the perfect idea of that which wee are to pray and wish for on earth, (Matthew 6.10) did not teach to pray or wish for more then onely that here it might be with us, as with them it is in heaven.5 2 A Learned Discourse of Justification, Workes, and How the Foundation of Faith Is Overthrowne (“Justification”) 3 (FLE 5:109.6-11). 3 See Neelands, “Justification and Richard Hooker the Pastor”, forthcoming, where this point is made, and where Hooker’s general accounts of both Justification and Sanctification are given, with references to Calvin and Luther. 4 Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie V.56.13 (FLE2:244.19-23) 5 I.4.1 (FLE 1:70.1-4). PAGE 2 OF 13 Theosis or Divinization This bold affirmation accompanied a revival in Hooker of the spirituality of deification or divinization, a pattern well established in the Patristic period, /139/ both among the Greek authors and in Augustine.6 Although this idea has occasionally been considered as showing the inherent Pelagianism of Greek Christian spirituality, it shows the very opposite: the emphasis in the Greek authors on divinization filled a role very much like that of Augustine’s insistence on the need for grace preventing, following and perfecting human agency. For Gregory of Nyssa, for example, divinization was a doctrine that showed precisely his anti-Pelagian bent: salvation in divinization is so far beyond the power of the human creature, that only God’s aid could make it conceivable, let alone possible.7 At first glance, this pattern of deification or theosis seems a pattern remote from most of the spirituality of the Reformation, which emphasized human solidarity with Adam in sin and the need for healing grace. Deification had, in fact, been suggested in certain passages of Calvin,8 and there has been a recent scholarly debate about the bearing of deification in Calvin’s thought.9 For his part, Hooker is never in doubt about the grievous consequences of our solidarity with Adam: we “participate Adam” in that we are causally connected 6 G.W.H. Lampe refers to sources in the philosophy of Plato and Plotinos, and examples of the use of the idea in Irenaeus, Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysios and Maximus among the Greek authors, and in Tertullian, Ambrose and Augustine among the Latins. Cunliffe- Jones, History of Christian Doctrine, 149ff. 7 For Augustine, see Henri Rondet, The Grace of Christ (Westminster, 1967), 91-95. 8 “Christ is not outside us but dwells within us. Not only doe she cleave to us by an indivisible bond of fellowship, but with wonderful communion, day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us, until he becomes completely one with us.” [1545 French version: “in one same substance”] Institutes 3.2.24 (1: 569-571). Francois Wendel, Calvin (London, 1963), 236f. Calvin addresses 2 Peter 1.4 at least twice in the Institutes. “Indeed, Peter declares that believers are called in this to become partakers of the ivine nature. How is this? … If the Lord will share his glory, power and righteousness with the elect—nay, will give himself to be enjoyed by them and, what is more excellent will somehow make them to become one with himself” Institutes 3.25.10 (2:1005) Calvin criticizes Osiander for twisting this text “from the heavenly life to the present state”; the heavenly state is interpreted as becoming “like” God. 3.11.11 (1:737-38) /147/ 9 Carl Mosser, “The greatest possible blessing: Calvin and deification,” Scottish Journal of Theology 55, no. 1 (2002: 36-57 at, 39-40. Jonathan Slater, “Salvation as participation in the humanity of the Mediator in Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion: a reply to Carl Mosser,” Scottish Journal of Theology 58, 1 (2005), 39-58. Marcus Johnson has offered a mediating view, noting that Calvin can speak of coniunctionem in a far more intimate sense that Slater allows, as in Inst. 3.11.10. Marcus Johnson,, Eating by Believing: Union with Christ in the Soteriology of John Calvin, (Ph.D. dissertation, St. Michael’s College 2007), 111-117, esp. fn 280. PAGE 3 OF 13 with him in a sinful human nature: “Adam is in us as an originall cause of our nature and of that corruption of nature which causeth death.”10 Hooker could have spoken of a sort of “divinization though creation” since he affirms that all creatures participate the Trinity as creatures,11 echoing a pattern of thought from Thomas and Augustine.12 He usually refrains, however, from using these terms, since our actual condition is one of corruption in our solidarity with Adam. The rational creature indeed desires naturally the bliss of glory, which can be expressed in terms of union with God and sharing the divine life: it cannot achieve it without further aid from God.13 And Hooker indeed speaks of a divinization of desire: Moreover, desire tendeth unto union with that it desireth. If then in him we be blessed, it is by force of participation and conjunction with them. Againe, it is not the possession of any good thing can make them happie which have it, unless they injoye the thing wherewith they are possessed. Then are we happie therfore when fully we injoy God, as an object wherein, the power of our soules are satisfied even with everlasting delight: so that although we be men, yet by being unto God united we live as it were the life of God.14 But the creature cannot achieve such union without further aid from God. Such a natural divinization would be by desire only, not by effect.
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