THE THEOLOGY OF GRACE OF RICHARD HOOKER BY WILLIAM DA YID NEELANDS Trinity College A thesis submitted In Conformity with the Requirements of The Department of Theology of the Toronto School of Theology In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Theology awarded conjointly by Trinity College and the University of Toronto March, 1988 Permission has been granted L'autorisation a ite accordee to the National Library of a la Bibliotheque nationale Canada to microfilm this du Canada de microfilmer thesis and to lend or sell cette these et de preter OU copies of the film. de vendre des exemplaires du film. The author (copyright owner) L'auteur (titulaire du droit has reserved other d'auteur) se reserve lea publication rights, and autres droits de publication: neither the thesis nor ni la these ni de longs extensive extracts from it extraits de celle-ci ne may be printed or otherwise doivent etre imprimes OU reproduced without his/her autrement reproduits sans son written permission. autorisation ecrite. 1 -J 5 8151- TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I Introduction: the Life and Writings of Richard Hooker 1 II Justification, Sanctification, Glorification 30 1. J ustifica tion 30 2. Sanctification 38 3. Glorification 47 4. Attitude to "the Papists" 57 III Nature and Grace, Reason and Revelation: Hooker's Scholasticism 64 1. Nature's two-fold need of grace 66 2. Human "Imbecility" and Adam's need for grace 81 3. The natural desire for an end beyond nature 87 4. Grace presupposes nature 91 5. Reason criticizes Scripture 96 6. The consonance of reason and revelation, nature and grace 97 7. Grace does not destroy, but perfects nature 105 8. The Adiaphora 110 9. Peter Munz on Reason and Revelation 120 10. Gunnar Hillerdal on Reason and Revelation 122 IV Predestination and Assurance: the Arminianism of Richard Hooker 134 1. Unconditional Election 137 2. The antecedent and the consequent will of God 148 3. Limited Atonement 156 4. Total Depravity 160 5. The Irresistibility of Grace 172 6. The Perseverance of the Elect 176 7. Assurance and Security 185 8. The Seed of God 204 9. Hooker's Protestantism 208 -1- -ii- V The Sacraments and the Participation of Christ 226 I. The Eucharistic Sacrifice 227 2. Hooker's Minimalism 237 3. The Definition of Sacraments and the Eucharistic Presence 240 4. Baptismal Regeneration 277 5. The distinction between the visible and the invisible church 287 VI Richard Hooker and the Theological Tradition: the Platonism of Richard Hooker 293 I. Attitude to Thomas 301 2. Hooker's Thomistic Christology 307 3. Hooker on Analogy 316 4. The sweet and amiable ordering: Wisdom 8.1 325 5. Exitus-reditus and the structure of theology 327 6. Conclusion 345 VII Bibliography 354 I Introduction: the Life and Writings of Richard Hooker Despite the fact that he is recognized on all sides as one of the most important literary and theological figures of the age of Queen Elizabeth I, Richard Hooker still awaits an adequate biography.1 He was, of course, the subject of one of the still most frequently read biographies of the seventeenth century, Izaac Walton's (1593-1683) 1. The case is different with the publication of Hooker's Works, at least after an initial brief period of neglect. Keble's excellent edition of 1836, in its seventh edition, revised after Keble's death by R.W. Church and F. Paget, remains the most complete and readily available text of the Works. Where possible, for this reason, references will be made to it, by volume and page number, e.g. (iii, 299). The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker, with an account of his life and death by Isaac Walton, ed. J. Keble, 7th ed., revised by R.W. Church and F. Paget, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1888). In progress is a remarkable new edition, incorporating original spellings, from the Folger Library. For minute textual purposes, it will, when it is completed, undoubtedly replace Keble's. W. Speed Hill, (general editor) The Folger Library Edition of The Works of Richard Hooker (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1977- ). Four volumes out of the proposed six have now been published. References to it may be made through the paragraph numbers from Keble's, which have been maintained. It makes use of some manuscripts unknown to Keble, and a considerable amount of work on the posthumous publications, particularly the three last books of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity. The title of this work, Hooker's principal legacy, has traditionally been abbreviated here as Ecclesiastical Polity, but this traditional abbreviation emphasizes the less significant part of the title; it will generally be abbreviated, throughout this discourse, using the sixteenth century spelling to avoid any easy and misleading associations, as simply Lawes. References to the Lawes will simply be by section or book, chapter and paragraph, e.g., V, xlviii, 3. Quotations will usually be taken from the 1888 edition, since it is still more complete than the Folger edition, and since its normalized spelling makes it easier to integrate into the text of this discourse. In quotations, italics are added without note, for emphasis. -1- Introduction -2- famous Life of Hooker.2 This biography, despite its significant literary value, was written more than sixty years after Hooker's death, and offers relatively little independent historical information about Hooker that is not also available in the sources that still remain. In fact, except for some rather dubious oral history derived from an aged relative of both Walton and Hooker, Walton appears to have had no sources that we lack. Walton's account of the hard facts of Hooker's life has been quite effectively discredited, in this century, by the amazingly thorough detective work of C.J. Sisson, relying on documents available in the Public Records Office.3 An even more recent study of Walton and his methods has shown the overwhelming amount of "art" that went into Walton's Life of Hooker, and into its subsequent revisions by Walton. This study makes clear that Walton's work was based on a small number of sources but was directed towards discrediting the last books 2. Izaac Walton, The Life of Mr. Rich. Hooker, The Author of those Learned Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1665). The second edition was published with the second complete edition of The Works of Mr. Richard Hooker (London, 1666). Speed Hill, no. 23. W. Speed Hill, Richard Hooker, a descriptive bibliography of the early editions: 1593-1724 (Cleveland, 1970), 99f. Walton published several more editions of his biography, and introduced quite a number of editorial changes in the subsequent editions, but the 1666 edition remained the one printed in all subsequent editions of The Works until Keble's edition in 1836 brought the text to the state of Walton's latest version. Beginning with the fifth edition of the Works in 1705, John Strype's three substantial additions to Walton' Life of Hooker, were invariably printed. Speed Hill, Bibliography, no. 27, 120ff. 3. C.J. Sisson, The Judicious Marriage of Mr. Hooker and the Birth of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Cambridge, 1940). Introduction -3- of Hooker's great work Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, which had been published long after Hooker's death, and just before Walton's Life of Hooker, and which must have proved some embarrassment to the Restoration government of Charles II, since they offered a view of episcopal authority and of the royal supremacy that was quite different from that favoured in the Restoration.4 Walton's Life of Hooker was, in fact, the second biography of Hooker, apparently deliberately composed, perhaps even commissioned, to replace the earlier biography of John Gauden (1605-1662), published as a 5 preface to the first complete edition of the Works, in 1662. Gauden had published, for the first time, the seventh and most unfortunate (from the point of view of the ecclesiastical ministers of the Restoration) of the books of the Lawes; in addition, his gossipy and circumstantial picture of Hooker was of a rather unattractive and shambling -- not to say stupid -- figure. Gauden had, apparently, even fewer hard facts to go on than Walton, but Walton's life was clearly intended, perhaps commissioned, to improve the portrait of Hooker, by making him an ideal parson of the Restoration church, simultaneously learned, charitable and pastoral, and opposed to the views of those who 4. David Novarr, The Making of Walton's Lives, (Ithaca, New York, 1958). 5. "The Life & Death of Mr. Richard Hooker, (The Learned and justly Renowned Author of the Ecclesiastical Politie.) Written by John Gauden D.D. and Bishop of Exon.," in The Works of Mr. Richard Hooker (London, 1662), 1-40. Speed Hill, Bibliography, no. 22, 88ff. Introduction -4- had dominated the Commonwealth period now over and whose pathetic current circumstances raised sympathy they had not commanded before they were ejected from their livings. This attempt to re-draw the portrait of Hooker undoubtedly produced many anachronistic details in the account of his theological views, as we shall see. There is, thus, a double defect in Walton's Life of Hooker from the point of view of factual biography: Walton introduced or exaggerated details to discredit the authenticity of the three last books of the Lawes, by giving an account of their "mutilation" at the hands of unsympathetic "puritan" ministers, with the connivance of his unthrifty wife, 6 and he introduced anachronistic theological explanations in his attempt to make Hooker into the model parson of the late seventeenth century.