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Hooker the Theologian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Rowan Williams
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Abstract

For Hooker's opponents, sacraments could only be human actions designed to further the homogeneity of that community of uniform spiritual achievement which is the holy congregation. Hooker, on the other hand, affirms the possibility of uneven, confused faith, even the confused ecclesial loyalties of the ‘church papist’, as something acceptable within the reformed congregation. This is entirely of a piece with the defence of a liturgy that is more than verbal instruction. Hooker traces these two issues to a Christology which is centred upon divine gift and ontological transformation, and a consequent sacramental theology which affirms the hiddenness but effectiveness of divine presence and work in the forms of our ritual action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , August 2003 , pp. 104 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) and The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2003

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References

1. Quotations from Hooker are taken from Hooker, R., The Works of That Learned and Judicious Divine Mr Richard Hooker (3 vols.; arr. J. Keble; 7th edn; rev. R.W. Church and F. Paget; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1870)Google Scholar. References are given in brackets in the text by volume and page number and in the case of the Lawes also by section.

2. ‘The pit is ordinarily the end, as well of the guided as the guide in blindness’ (pp. 499–500).Google Scholar

3. lv passim, II, pp. 238–45, lvi. 6–7, pp. 248–51.Google Scholar

4. Hutchinson, F.E. (ed.), The Works of George Herbert (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edn, 1945), pp. 200–201.Google Scholar

5. ‘[B]onds of obedience to God, strict obligations to the mutual exercise of Christian charity… warrants for the more security of our belief’ and so on.

6. ‘[T]he very standing, rising and falling, the very steps and inflections every way’ (pp. 159–60).

7. Shuger, D., ‘“Societie Supernaturall”: The Imagined Community of Hooker's Lawes’, in McGrade, A.C. (ed.), Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997), pp. 307–29.Google Scholar

8. Shuger, , ‘Societie Supernaturall’, pp. 324–25.Google Scholar

9. Shuger, , ‘Societie Supernaturall’, p. 327.Google Scholar

10. Shuger, , ‘Societie Supernaturall’, p. 323.Google Scholar

11. Condren, C., ‘The Creation of Richard Hooker's Public Authority: Rhetoric, Reputation and Reassessment’, JRH 21.1 (1997), pp. 35–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar