Richard Hooker

This article is about the Anglican theologian. For the author, see Richard Hooker (author).

Richard Hooker
Born	March 1554 Heavitree, Exeter, Devon
Died	3 November 1600 Bishopsbourne, Kent
Education	Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Spouse	Jean Churchman
Church	Church of England
Ordained	14 August 1579
Offices held	Subdean, Rector

Richard Hooker (March 1554 – 3 November 1600) was an Anglican priest and an influential theologian. Hooker's emphases on reason, tolerance and the value of tradition came to exert a lasting influence on the development of the Church of England. In retrospect he has been taken (with Thomas Cranmer and Matthew Parker) as a founder of Anglicanism in its theological thought.

Youth (1554-1581)

Details of Hooker's life come chiefly from Izaak Walton’s biography of him. Hooker was born in the village of Heavitree in Exeter, Devon sometime around Easter Sunday. He attended Exeter Grammar School until 1569. Richard came from a good family, but one that was neither noble nor wealthy. His uncle John Hooker was a success and served as the chamberlain of Exeter.

Hooker's uncle was able to obtain for Richard the help of another Devon native, John Jewel, bishop of Salisbury. The bishop saw to it that Richard was accepted to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became a fellow of the society in 1577. On 14 August 1579 Hooker was ordained a priest by Edwin Sandys, then bishop of London. Sandys made Hooker tutor his son Edwin, and Richard also taught George Cranmer, the great nephew of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. In 1580 he was deprived of his fellowship for "contentiousness" having campaigned for the losing candidate (Rainoldes, a life-long friend who would become a leader of puritan party and particpate in the Hampton Court Conference of 1604) in a contested election to the presidency of the college. However, he recovered it when Rainoldes finally assumed the post".

London & Marriage (1581-1595)

In 1581, Hooker was appointed to preach at Paul’s Cross and he became a public figure, more so because his sermon offended the puritans by diverging from their theories opf predestination. He was introduced to John Churchman, a distinguished London merchant who became Master of the Merchant Taylors Company. It was at this time, according to his first biographer Walton, that Hooker made the "fatal mistake" of marrying his landlady’s daughter, Jean Churchman. As Walton put it:^{[citation needed]}: "There is a wheel within a wheel; a secret sacred wheel of Providence (most visible in marriages), guided by His hand that allows not the race to the swift nor bread to the wise, nor good wives to good men: and He that can bring good out of evil (for mortals are blind to this reason) only knows why this blessing was denied to patient Job, to meek Moses, and to our as meek and patient Mr Hooker." However, Walton is described by Christopher Morris as an "unreliable gossip" who "generally moulded his subjects to fit a ready-made pattern." and both he and Booty give the date the marriage as 1588. Hooker sems to have lived on and off with the Churchmans until 1595 and, according to John Booty, he "seems to have been well treated and considerably assisted by John Churchman and his wife".

Hooker became rector of St. Mary's Drayton Beauchamp,Buckinghamshire, in 1584, but probably never lived there. The following year, Archbishop Edwin Sandys brought Hooker to the attention of Queen Elizabeth I, who appointed him Master (i.e. rector) of the Temple Church in London. There, Hooker soon came into public conflict with Walter Travers, a leading Puritan and Reader(Lecturer) at the Temple, partly because of the sermon as Paul's Cross four years before, but mainly because Hooker argued that salvation was possible for some Roman Catholics. The controversy abruptly ended when Travers was silenced by Archbishop in March 1586 and the Privy Council strongly supported the decision. About this time Hooker began to write his major work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a critique of the Puritans and their attacks on the Church of England in general and the Book of Common Prayer in particular.

In 1591, Hooker left the Temple and was presented to the living of St. Andrew's Boscomb in Wiltshire to support him while he wrote.. He seems to have lived mainly in London but apparently did spend time in Salisbury where he was Subdean of Salisbury Cathedral and made use of the Cathedral Library. The first four volumes of the major work were published in 1593 with a subsidy from Arch sandys and apparently the last four were held back for further revision by the author.

Last years (1595-1600)

Portrait of Hooker

In 1595, Hooker became Rector of the parishes of St. Mary the Virgin in Bishopsbourne and St. John the Baptist Barham in Kent and left London to continue his writing. He published the fifth book of "Of the Laws" in 1597. It is longer than the first four taken together. He died 3 November 1600 at his Rectory Bishopsbourne. and was buried in the chancel of the church being survived by his wife and four daughters. His will includes the following provision: "Item, I give and bequeth three pounds of lawful English money towards the building and making of a newer and sufficient pulpitt in the p'sh of Bishopsbourne." The pulpit can still be seen in Bishopsbourne church, along with a statue of him, and currently an exhibition about his contribution to the Church of England. Subsequently a monument was erected there by William Cowper in 1632 which described him as "judicious".

Works

Learned Discourse of Justification

The statue of Richard Hooker in front of Exeter Cathedral.

An important work was Hooker's sermon of 1585, A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and how the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown. In this he defended his belief in the doctrine of Justification by faith, but argued that even those who did not understand or accept this could be saved by God. This therefore included Roman Catholics, and emphasised Hooker's belief that Christians should concentrate more on what united them, rather than on what divided them. Hooker thus further articulated the Reformed nature of the English Church alongside its claim of belonging to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church founded by Christ and the Apostles. Sermons much like this one provoked a reaction that led to his greatest work. Walter Travers, for example, publicly attacked Hooker's extension of salvation to Roman Catholics and elsewhere critics complained that his support of reforms in the church did not go far enough. Hooker responded with his masterpiece, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie.

Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

Title page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie.

Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie is Hooker's best-known work, with the first four books being published in 1594. The fifth was published in 1597, while the final three were published posthumously, and indeed may not all be his own work. Hooker argued for a middle way or via media between the positions in his time of the Roman Catholics and the Puritans. In these books, it was argued that reason and tradition were important when interpreting the Scriptures, and that it was important to recognise that the Bible was written in a particular historical context, in response to specific situations: "Words must be taken according to the matter whereof they are uttered.".

It is a massive work, with its principal subject is the proper governance of the churches ("polity"). The Puritans, then known in England as the "Geneva Church" for John Calvin's influence on them, advocated the demotion of clergy and ecclesiasticism. Hooker attempted to work out which methods of organizing churches are best. What was at stake behind the theology was the position of the Queen Elizabeth I as the Supreme Governor of the Church. If doctrine were not to be settled by authorities, and if Martin Luther's argument for the priesthood of all believers were to be followed to its extreme with government by the Elect, then having the monarch as the governor of the church was intolerable. On the other side, if the monarch were appointed by God to be the governor of the church, then local parishes going their own ways on doctrine were similarly intolerable.

The Laws is remembered not only for its stature as a monumental work of Anglican thought, but also for its influence in the development of theology, political theory, and English prose (being one of the first major works of theology written in English).

Scholastic thought in a latitudinarian manner

Hooker worked from Thomas Aquinas, but he adapted scholastic thought in a latitudinarian manner. He argued that church organization, like political organization, is one of the "things indifferent" to God. He wrote that minor doctrinal issues were not issues that damned or saved the soul, but rather frameworks surrounding the moral and religious life of the believer. He argued there were good monarchies and bad ones, good democracies and bad ones, and good church hierarchies and bad ones: what mattered was the piety of the people. At the same time, Hooker argued that authority was commanded by the Bible and by the traditions of the early church, but authority was something that had to be based on piety and reason rather than automatic investiture. This was because authority had to be obeyed even if it were wrong and needed to be remedied by right reason and the Holy Spirit. Notably, Hooker's affirmed that the power and propriety of bishops need not be in every case absolute.

Legacy

King James I is quoted by Izaak Walton, Hooker's biographer, as saying, "I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language; but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason, and that backed with the authority of the Scriptures, the fathers and schoolmen, and with all law both sacred and civil." Hooker's emphasis on Scripture, reason, and tradition considerably influenced the development of Anglicanism, as well as many political philosophers, including John Locke. Locke quotes Hooker numerous times in the Second Treatise of Civil Government. In the Church of England he is celebrated with a Lesser Festival on 3 November; the same day is also a Lesser Feast in his honor in the Episcopal calendar of saints.

Further reading

• Brydon, Michael, The Evolving Reputation of Richard Hooker: An Examination of Responses, 1600–1714 (Oxford, 2006).
• Faulkner, Robert K., Richard Hooker and the Politics of a Christian England (1981)
• Grislis, Egil, Richard Hooker: A Selected Bibliography (1971)
• Hooker, Richard, A Learned Discourse of Justification. 1612.
• Hooker, Richard, Works (Three volumes). Edited by John Keble, Oxford, 1836; Revised by R. W. Church and F. Paget, Oxford, 1888. Reprint by Burt Franklin, 1970 and by Via Media Publications.
• Kirby, W.J.T. (1998). "Richard Hooker's Discourse On Natural Law in the Context of the Magisterial Reformation". Animus 3. ISSN 1209-0689. http://www2.swgc.mun.ca/animus/Articles/Volume%203/kirby3.pdf. Retrieved August 18, 2011. 
• A. C. McGrade, ed., Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian community (1997)
• Munz, Peter, The Place of Hooker in the History of Thought (1952, repr. 1971).

External links

• Hooker's works online
• Hooker's works online
• Entry on Hooker in Cambridge History of English and American Literature
• Biographical sketch
• Archbishop Rowan Williams' lecture on The Laws
• Exeter cathedral page
• Hooker at the Temple Church
• Hooker at Bishopsbourne Church including summary of his dates and writings
• Richard Hooker in Dictionary of British Philosophers
• This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.