authority and the interpretation of scripture in hooker’s of the laws of ecclesiastical polity

80 journal of religious history

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The Journal of Religious HistoryVol. 21, No. 1, February 1997

BRUCE KAY E

Authority and the Interpretation of Scripture inHooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

This essay is concerned with Richard Hooker’s interpretation of Scripture inthe light of modern hermeneutical debate. The intent is less to locate Hookerin his immediate context than to place him in a longer and still developinghermeneutical tradition.

It is widely said that the modern historical-critical study of the New Tes-tament began only as a result of the impact of the Enlightenment of theeighteenth century. Study of the New Testament in an independent and his-torical way is often associated with such a claim. ‘Since such a view beganto prevail only during the course of the eighteenth century, earlier discussionof the New Testament can only be referred to as the pre-history of NewTestament scholarship,’1 notes Werner Kümmel. In his very influential book,The New Testament, the History of the Investigation of its Problems, Kümmelgoes on to say that, ‘It is improper to speak of scientific study of the NewTestament or of a historical approach to primitive Christianity prior to theEnlightenment’.2

What is the truth of such a claim? Undoubtedly during the course of theeighteenth century a different approach to the biblical texts began to emerge.During this century people such as Hermann von Reimarus3 began to ques-tion the authenticity of Christianity because they believed that an independentand objective study of the New Testament texts led to the conclusion thatthe documents represented a fraud on the part of the apostles and their col-leagues. It is this precise historical sense which Gotthard Lessing tried tograpple with when he published the Reimarus Fragments in the second halfof the eighteenth century.4 Furthermore, it is these same questions whichwere taken up again by David Friedrich Strauss in 1835 in The Life of Jesus

Bruce Kaye, formerly Master of New College and Visiting Fellow in the School of Science andTechnology Studies at the University of New South Wales, is General Secretary of the AnglicanChurch of Australia, General Synod.

1. W. G. Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems,London 1973 (Eng. trans. of Das Neue Testament: Geschichte der Erforschung Seine Probleme,1970), p. 13.2. Kümmel, New Testament, p. 13.3. See Reimarus: Fragments, C. H. Talbert (ed.), London 1971.4. See Lessing’s Theological Writings, H. Chadwick (ed.), London 1956.

81authority and the interpretation of scripture

Critically Examined.5 In that book, Strauss tried to find an appropriate histori-cal method which would avoid what he considered were the errors of both asupernaturalist and a rationalistic interpretation of the New Testament.

The task of developing an historical approach which tried to come to termswith emerging philosophical attitudes in the early part of the nineteenth cen-tury and some sense of Christian belief fell to Strauss’s teacher, FerdinandChristian Baur. Baur was the principal person who forged the foundations ofthe modern historical critical approach to the New Testament within the fieldof biblical studies.6 In broad terms, the tools developed during the course ofthe nineteenth century, added to by particular techniques for the study of thehistory of the form of literary and oral material and the social context inwhich those traditions were transmitted, continue to be the tools of trade formodern New Testament hermeneutics. Furthermore, the picture of their char-acter and origins portrayed by Kümmel is still the prevailing view in NewTestament studies.

Having conceded all this, however, it has to be acknowledged that it issimply not true that before the Enlightenment there were not writers whodisplay some of the marks of what we regard as an historical awareness.Indeed, one could easily identify ancient writers who display an approach tohistory which is not lacking in a sense of the pastness of the material withwhich they are dealing.

In fact a number of modern scholars place the origins of the moderncritical method in the Renaissance, or even earlier. The development of con-cordances, critical texts and biblical commentaries in the twelfth and thir-teenth centuries certainly points in this direction.7 Beryl Smalley has said that‘if we are looking for a critical approach to interpretation in the twelfth andthirteenth centuries, we must go to the new religious Orders, Cistercians,Canons Regular, Friars, Preacher and Minor, all zealots for the faith and thepapacy. Their members held views which would have charmed Erasmus andannoyed his opponents.’8 This medieval tradition was enhanced by the im-pulse of humanist learning which we call the Renaissance.

Richard Hooker was confronted not only with these changes in the realmof ideas, but also with dramatic social and political changes in Europe follow-ing the Reformation. How could one believe that the world was always theway we now see it when the Holy Roman Empire was divided and westernChristendom irreparably divided?9 Political and social movements all overEurope spoke not of continuity, but discontinuity, not of sameness but ofchange. In such a circumstance it could easily be thought that history was an

5. For an account of Strauss’s life see H. Harris, David Friedrich Strauss and His Theology,Cambridge 1973, and of his philosophical and political significance, see M. C. Massey, ChristUnmasked: The Meaning of the ‘Life of Jesus’ in German Politics, Chapel Hill, NC 1983, andDavid Friedrich Strauss, In Defense of My Life of Jesus Against the Hegelians, M. C. Massey(ed. and trans.). See also, B. N. Kaye, ‘D. F. Strauss and the European Theological Tradition:“Der Ischariotismus unsere Tag”?’, Journal of Religious History, Vol. 17, 1992, pp. 172–93.6. See P. C. Hodgson, The Formation of Historical Theology, New York 1966.7. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Notre Dame 1978, p. xi.8. Smalley, Study, p. xx.9. See C. Dawson, The Dividing of Christendom, London, London 1971.


arena of difference, that the past was distant and different and that one’s ownplace was contingent in history and marked by relativity.

The late medieval, and certainly the Renaissance period, like the patristicperiod before, did not lack a sense of the passing of time, the distance thatexists between the ancient texts and the present reader, nor was it obliviousto certain key questions which concerned Hooker. The debate between Tyndaleand the scholastic philosophical method raised the question of a prior com-prehensive theological position which is so manifest in Hooker, just as Lutherand Calvin raised sharply the question of Christology in the interpretation ofScripture.

If we step back from the sixteenth century and the late medieval period,and ask what are the particular questions which contemporary twentieth-century biblical studies are concerned with, then we would note at least thefollowing in relation to biblical studies: the role of the historical, the role anduse of the historical critical method as honed in the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies, the relationship between Jesus and the New Testament, the socialbackground of the New Testament, language and meaning and the status ofthe canon. If we cast the net a little more broadly to general hermeneuticaltheological issues, modern theologians are concerned with questions of con-tinuity and discontinuity across culture and time, the role of tradition and thefunction of the hermeneutical circle, the role of prior assumptions and theirsignificance, church and community in interpretation and understanding, andthe character, function and role of authority in theological discourse.10

While the precise formulation of these questions may be somewhat different,they all find an echo in Richard Hooker. Furthermore, because Hooker comesfrom a period sitting between medieval scholarship and the Enlightenment,forged in the dramatic impulses of the Reformation, what he has to say onthese matters is peculiarly interesting for a modern theologian and may helpto provide a better perspective on the heritage of biblical hermeneutics.

For this purpose we will now approach Hooker from the standpoint of theinterests of current hermeneutics and enquire how Hooker sits in the historyof the hermeneutical tradition and what he might contribute to our under-standing of that tradition. The focus will first be on the question of authorityand then on the questions of prior assumptions, history, Christology andchurch and community.

I

At the forefront of the eighteenth-century controversies about the Bible wasits role as authority. Professor W. G. Kümmel commenced his account ofthe beginnings of the major disciplines of New Testament research with a

10. See Kümmel, New Testament; P. Henry, New Directions in New Testament Study, London1980; and F. Mussner, Geschichte der Hermeneutik von Schleiermacher bis zur Gegenwart, inHandbuck der Dogmengeschichte, Band I, Fas. 3C (2 Teil), M. Schmans, A. Grillmeier andL. Scheffezyk (eds), Freiburg 1970.


consideration of Johannes Semler. Semler’s most important book, Treatise onthe Free Investigation of the Canon (1771–5),11 called for a more liberal inter-pretation of the canon and of the canonical documents. Subsequent modernhistorical critical method has fundamentally challenged the status and characterof the canon. Not just questions about the authorship of canonical documentsbut also the significance of the diversity of expression and theological outlookwithin the canon, and even the very idea of a canon at all, were openly de-bated. Taking a lead from Semler and Walter Bauer, biblical interpreters havestruggled with the question of unity and diversity in the New Testament.12

Influenced by and running alongside this debate has been the question ofthe role of the Bible in theology. Scholars such as James Barr have constantlyraised this question. Rejecting the notion of authority as an adequate expla-nation for the role of Scripture, Barr came to see the significance of the NewTestament to reside in its representation of what came to be a classic doctrineof God for the purposes of the Christian tradition.13 Various models of theway in which the Bible operates in systematic theology have been developed.Is Scripture the account of the acts of God in history or the record of narra-tives about the experience of God by the people of God? Is the question ofscriptural authority really a matter of simply translating what the text said sothat it is able to say something in a subsequent generation which will advancethe Christian tradition? David Kelsey has argued at some length that Scrip-ture ought to be construed as having an indirect rather than a direct role insystematic theology.14 The theologian’s task is somewhat more broadly con-ceived than simply restating what Scripture says and the role that Scriptureplays is not simply to finish an argument, though some theologians tend totreat it that way, but rather to affect indirectly the way in which the argumentcan be developed.

In seeking to deal with the historical context in which Jesus and Paulspoke, interpreters have drawn attention to the context in which the utter-ances were made. As a result audience criticism has been developed as a toolin order to answer the question: When Jesus said something, what was hemeaning to convey to the audience to which he was addressing himself?15

This question had attracted the attention of Martin Albertz in his early devel-opment of form-critical methods. In his work on the conflict speeches in theGospels,16 Albertz sought to demonstrate that what was at issue was not so

11. D. Joh. Salomo Semler, Abkandlung von freier Unterseichung des Canon, Vols I–IV, Halle1771–5.12. Das Neue Testament Als Kanon, E. Kasemann (ed.), Gottingen 1970, especially the essaysin this volume by Herbert Braun and Willi Marxen. See also W. Bauer, Rechtglaubigkeit undKetzerei im altesten Christentum (Eng. trans., Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity,London 1972), Tubingen 1934; J. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, London1977.13. J. Barr, Explorations in Theology, 7, London 1980, and The Bible in the Modern World,London 1973.14. D. H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology, London 1975.15. See J. D. M. Derrett, Jesus’ Audience, London 1973.16. M. Albertz, Die synoptischen Streitgespräche — Ein Beitrag zur Formengeschichte desUrchristentums, Berlin 1921.


much the substantive content of the conversations that Jesus had with hisopponents as Jesus’ engagement with them in argument and the demonstra-tion by him in their own terms that he was a rabbi par excellence. So thequestion then became how to disentangle what Jesus intended and believedfrom this interplay with his opponents, not all the terms of which he himselfaccepted.

The development of the historical-critical method brought to bear not onlyquestions about the internal character of the documents and their collectiontogether in a canonical list, but also their status and reliability historically.This latter point was of some importance in terms of the authority which theythen could have in contemporary Christian religion. The point is well illus-trated in the response of Gothold Lessing to the claim of Herman von Reimarus.Reimarus claimed that an historical investigation of the New Testament docu-ments shows that they are fraudulent and that the establishment of the Chris-tian religion was based upon the ambition and fraud of the apostles. Lessingresponded by arguing that even if the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth didnot occur in the first century in Palestine, that did not in itself matter sincethe real miracle and the real resurrection that was important to the Christianin the eighteenth century was that which he believed in his heart. ‘What arethis man’s hypotheses, explanations, and proofs to the Christian? To him hisChristianity, which he feels to be so sure and in which he feels so blessed,exists forever.’17 The connection between that personal belief and the histori-cally doubtful was a central theme in Lessing’s theology. The divide betweenthe external historical and the internal and personal was for him a ditch whichhe could not traverse.18 In the nineteenth century David Friedrich Strauss19

took up Lessing’s question and answered it in broadly conservative terms bytrying to show that the connecting link between the historical, originating eventsand the ongoing personal experience of the church was itself the original ex-perience of faith of the apostles, of the disciples, and of the early church. WhileStrauss was condemned in his day by the Lutheran church for his book on thelife of Jesus, the general line of argument which he developed in handlingLessing’s problem has certainly persisted in New Testament scholarship.

This formulation of the question has meant that the question of the author-ity of Scripture has been seen as a church matter. It is a question of theauthority of Scripture within the church and to the church. The church has notbeen just a discrete community in society but a community shaped by adiscrete ecclesial tradition. This tradition and community has increasinglybecome a tradition and a community separated from the generality of society.

17. G. Lessing, Gesamelte Werke, P. Rilla (ed.), 10 vols, Berlin 1966, Vol. 7, p. 814 (the texthas been translated for quotation).18. ‘If on historical grounds I have no objection to the statement that this Christ himself rosefrom the dead, must I therefore accept it as true that this risen Christ was the Son of God’ . . . ‘Thatthen is the ugly, broad ditch which I cannot get across, however often and however earnestly Ihave tried to make the leap.’ From the pamphlet of 1777, On The Proof of The Spirit and ofPower, quoted from H. Chadwick, Lessing’s Theological Writings, London 1956, p. 55.19. See note 18 above, and David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined,Peter C. Hodgson (ed.), George Eliot (trans.), London 1973.


When we come to Richard Hooker the question is quite differently ori-ented. There are similar themes, but the general orientation is quite different.It is not so much a question of the authority of Scripture in and for the churchbut of the authority of Scripture for the church in human society. The churchand its tradition overlap, even coalesce, with society generally. In other wordsHooker’s conception of civic polity as a unified spiritual realm is reflected inthe way the question of the authority of Scripture is formulated. Just so alsowe may say the modern conception of society as ‘secular’ is reflected in theway the authority of Scripture is formulated.

Unlike his modern successors, Hooker is concerned with questions of provi-dence in the development of ecclesiastical order and the presumed authorityof that providence shows that he is well aware of the rhetorical value ofscriptural argument.20

The character of authority in theological argument can be clearly seen inthe preface to the Laws, where he explains why he has undertaken to writehis book and why it is important to deal with the Puritan attitude on theElizabethan settlement:

Surely the present forme of Church government which the laws of this land haveestablished is such as no lawe of God nor reason of man have hitherto bene allegedof force sufficient to prove they do ill, who to the utmost of their power withstandthe alteration thereof. Contrariwise The other which in stead of it we are requiredto accept, is only by error and misconceit named the ordinance of Jesus Christ, noone proofe as yet brought forth whereby it may cleerely appear so in very deede.(Preface 1.2)

Here Hooker clearly states the twofold character of the argument which hewishes to deploy. On the one hand the present ecclesiastical regiment, he says,does not ‘do ill’ according to any reasonable criticism from the law of Godor the reason of man. On the other hand no proof has been put forward bythe critics as to why one ought to accept their claim that what they offer is‘the ordinance of Jesus Christ’. In this polemical context of this aspect of theargument Hooker is well aware of the rhetorical value of scriptural argument.

However, the point which I wish to emphasize here is the significance ofthe providential argument presupposed by Hooker in this claim. He presumesthat providence has brought into being the laws which currently pertain inEngland. The argument therefore is whether or not valid criticisms can bebrought against them. If those criticisms can be sustained then the laws ought

20. One might illustrate this by noting the distribution of scripture references in the Laws:

Book 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total

OT 51 16 34 23 277 32 59 29 522Apoc 6 — — — 23 — 3 2 34NT 100 31 93 24 390 61 77 42 818Total 157 47 127 47 690 93 139 73 1,373

The high number of references in Book 5 is related to the specific scriptural character of thepolemic with the Puritans. One might note the higher proportion of references to the NewTestament as compared with the Old Testament.


to be changed. However, if the laws that currently pertain do not work ill thenthey can be regarded as providentially ordained by God. The human condi-tion is not bereft of the influence of God through the passage of time, thoughobviously all that happens is not simply a direct expression of the will ofGod, since it is possible that events may occur which do in fact ‘work ill’.

There is an interconnection between this acceptance of a providential au-thority by Hooker and his understanding and use of natural law and reason.When in Book 1 Hooker turns to the question of the ways in which laws areto be discovered by reason, he appeals to a notion of consensus which simi-larly relies upon the presence of God in the natural realm. ‘The most certaintoken of evident goodness is, if the general persuasion of all men do soaccount it’ (1.8.3). This is a natural implication of Hooker’s understanding ofthe law of reason as comprehending everything that men, by their naturalunderstanding, may do or may know. The universality of this law of reasonleads naturally to its identification by some kind of universal consensus.

Similarly, Hooker sees the foundation of civil polity as based on a univer-sal impulse to community. There are two foundations of the public society;the first is ‘a natural inclination whereby all men desire sociable life andfellowship, the other an order expressly or secretly agreed upon touching themanner of their union in living together’ (1.10.1). In Hooker’s argument, allthis is set under the general heading of the law of nature and of reason, whichis available to and apprehensible by all people. This universal law is theguide which indicates what is good or evil for the formulation of the moreparticular laws which constitute a particular social polity. This particularapplication of a general principle is grounded on Hooker’s conviction aboutthe continuing providential presence of God in the world.

Hooker is aware that not all people will act generously in regard to civilrelationships. Thus he makes a distinction between primary and secondarylaws; the former are grounded upon sincere intentions and the latter upon thedepraved nature of human beings. The laws which are available to all menare, in a certain sense, adequate to the framing of a satisfactory social politybut, ‘I nothing doubt but that Christian men should much better frame them-selves to those heavenly precepts which Our Lord and Saviour with so greatinstancie gave us concerning peace and unity’ (1.10.14).

In the balance between good and evil in the human condition, Hookerclearly gives more place to the beneficial presence of God than to malignforces. That theological judgment gives him more confident grounds to ap-peal to consensus and the authority of the universal law of reason.

It is also this balance which lies behind his arguments against what he sawas the subjectivity of the Puritan interpretation of Scripture. Hooker lookedfor open and public interpretation of Scripture as well as for debate aboutecclesiastical and social polity. He fortified this claim by appealing to judi-cious learning publicly deployed, and by a general consensus in the churchpresent and past. In the Preface he sought an open-minded hearing from hisPuritan opponents as he deployed his arguments (Preface 1.3). Who, of course,does not want one’s opponents to listen with openness and be persuaded by


sweet reason? Yet the repeated reference by Hooker to the ideal of ‘judiciouslearning’ and his preference for a ‘more judicious exposition’21 of Scripturereflects more than a merely polemical point. Such judicious learning is hardwon, and it takes time and labour to acquire. Hooker clearly had in mind thesort of scholarship pursued in the universities rather than the instant claimedlearning of religious enthusiasm (1.6.4). Because this judicious learning ispublicly accessible, Hooker suggests that the universities are the appropriateplace to debate the issues raised by the Puritans.

Placing the debate in the public arena is a natural implication of his de-velopment of the idea of natural law and the connection between reason andScripture. In Book 1, when Hooker develops his understanding of the basisof human society, he makes clear the character of the authority of Scripture.He speaks of a desire for all men to be happy. Humanity seeks a physicalperfection, an intellectual perfection, and also a spiritual and divine perfec-tion. This last can only come by divine reward, which man naturally cannotattain and apart from which he is lost. God has revealed a way which beginswith his compassion for the lost condition of humanity and then

redemption out of the same by the pretious death and merit of a mightie Saviour,which hath witnessed of himself saying, I am the way, the way that leadeth us frommiserie into blisse. This supernaturall way had God in himself prepared before allworldes. The way of supernaturall dutie which to us he hath prescribed, our Saviourin the Gospell of Saint John doth note, terming it by an excellencie, the worke ofGod. (1.11.6)

In this context Hooker develops two important points. On the one hand, theauthority of Scripture is contingent upon its relationship to the Incarnation;and on the other, its authority is demarcated in terms of the purpose for whichit was given. He speaks of ‘that eternal veritie which hath discovered thetreasures of hidden wisedome in Christ’ (1.11.6). Scripture stands as witnessto this great supernatural revelation. The emphasis here is in sharp contrastto the exalted and comprehensive place given to Scripture by the Puritans.

Hooker has argued for a conception of law which emphasizes continuitybetween that ideal law of nature and of reason which belongs in the founda-tion of things to God himself and those laws which are revealed in Scriptureand are more positive in character and which relate to our salvation.22 Fromthis point he argues that there are many natural or rational laws contained inScripture alongside the supernatural laws which relate to humanity’s salva-tion. This juxtaposition is in order that the natural laws might be clarified andconfirmed by their association with the supernatural laws, and that those

21. At 3.8.17 Hooker makes the additional point that a non-reasonable interpretation of scrip-ture will ultimately mean that scripture will not be able to assure us concerning the articles ofthe faith. He uses words in this section which John S. Marshall describes as a free translationof the words of Cajetan in commenting on the use of Psalm 116 by Peter in Acts 2.25–31 (quotedby Marshall p. 49), a point to which Hooker is referring in the context. See J. S. Marshall,Hooker and Anglican Tradition: An Historical and Theological Study of Hooker’s EcclesiasticalPolity, London 1963, p. 53.22. See R. Orr, ‘Chillingworth versus Hooker: A Criticism of Natural Law Theory’, Journalof Religious History, Vol. 2, 1962, pp. 120–32.


supernatural laws themselves might more easily be identified and recognizedas supernatural laws by their being associated with what had been alreadyperceived in the general consensus of human understanding as natural laws.

Clearly Hooker is operating within a different framework, socially andculturally, from that of the modern interpreter of the text of Scripture orindeed of the modern theologian. Furthermore, there are crucial points in hisargument which distinguish him from modern theology, particularly in itsProtestant form. The way in which he develops and uses a concept of naturallaw and reason which has continuity with the revelation in Scripture is acrucial difference. The acceptance of the authority of providence is a crucialdifference. He is aware of a certain historical relativity, but it is not soemphatic or so preoccupying as it is for his modern counterparts. He is awareof diversity within the canon of Scripture, but again it is based upon a dif-ferent foundation from that of his modern counterparts. The great distinctionintroduced into modern theology by Gothold Lessing has no real place inHooker’s thoughts at all. On the contrary, there is an emphatic continuitybetween the subjective and the objective aspects of all personal knowledge.

Sometimes the modern epistemology is expounded over against a medievalhierarchical epistemology by which all knowledge and truth was derivedfrom above. While in a certain sense that is true of Hooker, nonetheless thetruth is actually derived from the human and historical condition and thenatural laws and reasons which are part of that condition. The great dividebetween nature and the transcendent God of the Deists has not occurred inHooker’s thoughts and he is much more able to see the sovereign providenceof God in the natural order and operating in history. That fundamental ap-proach means that when Hooker comes to the authority of Scripture, heapproaches it in much more open terms in relation to authority generally andto the character of the human condition. He sees the authority of Scripture asnot only related to natural reason but also as having a specific and demarcatedpurpose in pointing us to salvation and in itself being contingent for thatpurpose upon its witness to the Incarnation which is the centre of revealingtruth in Christian faith. For Hooker, the community which constitutes the areaof operation for the authority of Scripture is the community of humanity. Ingeneral terms modern theologians have redrawn that community to refermore to the community of the church thought of as a discrete and distinctsubgroup of humanity.

II

While Hooker’s emphasis upon objectivity and judicious learning implies acertain distance from his own personal presuppositions and prejudices, thereis no doubt that when he comes to the question of the authority and interpre-tation of Scripture he comes with a clear theological understanding of thenature of Christianity and a precise understanding of how Scripture has itsforce and meaning.


23. David Kelsey, Use of the Bible in Theology, p. 212.24. Kelsey, Bible in Theology, p. 205.25. Kelsey, p. 159.26. See particularly D. E. Nineham, The Use and Abuse of The Bible, London 1976.27. Bultmann’s most famous statement of this point is the essay, ‘New Testament and Mythol-ogy’, in Kerygma and Myth, H. W. Bartsch (ed.), London 1953.28. R. Bultmann, ‘Is Exegesis Without Presuppositions Possible?’, in Existence and Faith,London 1961, (Eng. trans. of ‘Ist voraussetzungslose Exegesis Moglich?’, in TheologischeZeitschrift, Vol. xiii, 1957), pp. 409–17.29. See A. C. Thiselton, The Two Horizons, Exeter 1980, and his later work, New Horizons inHermeneutics, Michigan 1992.

A similar point has been argued by Professor David Kelsey in regard to themodern use of Scripture in theology. He argues that there is an important rolefor what he calls ‘discrimen’. By this he means ‘the imaginative construal ofChristianity’s central reality’.23 Or, ‘an imaginative characterization of thecentral reality of Christianity, what it is finally all about’.24 The theologian,in Kelsey’s view, approaches Scripture with such a discrimen in mind. It is‘the way in which he tries to catch up what Christianity is basically all aboutin a single, synoptic, imaginative judgment’.25

This question of presuppositions in modern theology, and especially inregard to the interpretation of Scripture, has been of considerable importance.Many interpreters of the New Testament characterize the modern age as onewhich is peculiarly self-conscious of its own historical position.26 RudolphBultmann undertook his famous demythologizing program essentially in orderto make plain in the preached word today what the word of God today reallywas.27 That program was needed because he perceived a radical differencebetween the world of the text of the New Testament and the world of themodern reader of the text. Presuppositionless exegesis, he argued, was impos-sible because it involved a denial of the reality in which the exegete himselflived.28 The demythologizing program was undertaken in order to preservethe gospel and to enable it to be preached in the church.

In New Testament scholarship, this program is typical of the way differ-ences between the age of the text and that of the exegete have been formulated.The idea of operating between two horizons, or in terms of a hermeneuticalcircle, is simply a refinement on the general problem.29 The issue of continuityis also discussed in terms of the enduring meaning of a text which is locatedin a particular cultural context.

This same question has been present in Christian theology for centuries.When Gothold Lessing said that miracles may have taken place in the timeof Jesus, or indeed in the time of Origen, but that they do not take place inthe eighteenth century and therefore he cannot believe the miracles as theyare described in the Gospels, he was pointing to the same kind of perceiveddiscontinuity. When Irenaeus in the second century highlighted the absencein his day of the apostles and the problem of establishing continuity betweenhis own generation in the second century and the gospel which the apostlesfirst preached, he also was pointing to the same question. Indeed, the discus-sion about the Hellenization of Jesus’ message by the apostle Paul, even ifone did not want to discuss that problem in precisely those terms, is also an


expression of the fundamental question about the discontinuity that arises ina tradition through the passing of time. In the modern discussion, presuppo-sitions of a cultural kind which the exegete brings to the text are emphaticallyunderlined. Also underlined, but not so emphatically, are the theologicalpresuppositions which are brought to bear by the exegete, what Kelsey hascalled the discrimen.

In the case of Richard Hooker, that kind of cultural self-consciousness isnot as apparent as it is in the modern debate. In the matter of the theologicalpresupposition, the discrimen, Hooker is clearly aware of that question andhe comes with a whole theology which has a place within it for Scripture andfrom which he writes with some confidence. The modern mentality is moreself-conscious of what is brought to the text of Scripture and hence of thepolyglot character of Christianity. Hooker, writing with a particular purposein mind, is much more univocal on that point.

III

In modern hermeneutics, historiographical issues refer primarily to the pre-history of the New Testament document, and the historical distance betweenthe text and the exegete. In the nineteenth century literary critical studiesaimed at trying to identify the relationship between the text and its prehistory.The literary analysis of D. F. Strauss’s Life of Jesus was aimed at identifyinghow the myths in the gospels came to be attached in the stories of Jesus. Inother words, the task he set himself was to identify how the life of Jesus, aspresented in the text, arose in its historical context. In the twentieth centurythe history of the form of the literature (Formgeschichte) was a further de-velopment of this quest for the prehistory of the texts of early Christianity.Redaction criticism, while taking a more general approach than form criti-cism, had the same basic purpose in mind. All of these techniques werepreoccupied with the history which led to the formation of the text in its finalform.30 The work of Ernst Troeltsch, Gothold Lessing, F. C. Baur, RudolphBultmann and D. E. Nineham, amongst others, all are concerned with thehistorical distance between text and interpreter.

One caveat in this discussion which has been, until recently, a pre-eminentlyProtestant question, has been the role of tradition. Amongst Roman Catholicstradition has maintained a more accepted and prominent role than has beenthe case with Protestants. But there has been a growing interest in the questionof tradition amongst Protestants, most notably illustrated in Professor Pelikan’srecent book, The Vindication of Tradition.31 The interest in tradition arisesbecause the historical approach to the origins of Christianity has led to adivide emerging between the first and the twentieth centuries and theologianshave been concerned to ask how that divide may be bridged. Is it to be

30. For a summary account see J. Rohde, Rediscovering the Teaching of the Evangelists,London 1968 (Eng. trans. of Die Redaktionsgeschliche Methode, Hamburg 1966).31. J. Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition, New Haven and London, 1984.


bridged by a continuity between cultural entities through that period of 2,000years? Is it to be bridged by a notion of human nature or the human conditionwhich is continuous throughout that period? Or are there pointers to patternsof continuities such as may be embodied in traditions which transcend par-ticular generations?

In recent decades the investigation of the social background of the NewTestament and the application of sociological and anthropological models tothe interpretation of the emergence of Christianity has led to a further height-ening of the distance between the twentieth and first centuries, between con-temporary Christianity and the originating events of the religion.

The consequence of this historical critical approach to Christian history isthat the New Testament is seen as very firmly embedded in its own. Further-more, the formation and development of the text has shown discontinuitiesbetween the originating events and the final form of the text.

It is striking that Richard Hooker does not discuss historiography overtlyat great length. Nonetheless, his appreciation of history is a direct implicationof his acceptance of natural reason and natural law, and also of his emphasisupon the Incarnation as revelatory authority in Christianity. It also naturallyflows from the humanist learning which formed his education.32

His attitude towards history can be seen in relation to his attachment totradition. Tradition has a distinct value. Where traditions do not tend to anyparticular ill, then it is appropriate for traditions within the church to remain.There is a sense in which the church and its institutions are witness to theprovidential directing of God in the history of his people and of humanitygenerally. Conversely Hooker’s insistence on the value of Scripture written,against the authority claimed for tradition by Roman Catholics in his day,indicates that he has a more particular commitment to the historical Incarna-tion as recorded in Scripture. Hooker’s acceptance of natural reason andnatural law necessarily gives him a certain perspective on the place and valueof history which is only qualified by his central Incarnational commitment.

Hooker’s double commitment can be seen in the way in which he regardsthe apostles as, in one sense, having no successors, and yet in another senseas being succeeded by the bishops:

The apostles were sent as special chosen eye-witnesses of Jesus Christ, from whomimmediately they received their whole Embassage, and their Commission to be theprinciple first founders of an House of God, consisting as well of Gentiles as ofJews: In this there are not after them any other like unto them; And yet the apostleshave now their successors upon earth, their true successors, if not in the largeness,surely in the kind of that episcopal function, whereby they had power to sit asspiritual ordinary Judges, both over laity and over clergy, where Churches Christianwere established. (7.4.4)

Hooker’s sense of history derives from three important theological andphilosophical points. First, his conviction about natural law and natural reason.

32. Studies in Richard Hooker: Essay Preliminary to an Edition of his Works, W. Speed Hill(ed.), Cleveland 1972, pp. xxiv f.


Peter Munz claims that ‘Hooker, as no other thinker, save Burke, has helpedto make Englishmen conscious of the continuity of their history which hastranscended all revolutions’.33 Munz goes on to claim that whereas Burke’ssense of history had essentially irrational elements in it, Hooker’s was fun-damentally rational. The rationality of Hooker’s sense of history derives fromhis commitment to the orderliness of the creator’s activity.

Second, Hooker’s sense of history is an outworking of his conception ofthe relationship between God and the world. On a number of occasions Hookersays things which so emphasize the immanence of God in the natural orderas almost to suggest that he has lost sight of the transcendence of God. This,of course, is not the case, as is highlighted by his emphasis, especially inBook 1, on God being the ultimate ground and cause of all things. However,this transcendence is not such as to place God beyond the natural order in anyradical or fundamental sense. The critical role of the Incarnation in Hooker’sthought precludes both radical immanence and radical transcendence.

Third, the natural order, while orderly, is not, however, static. The creativeprovidential lordship of God is not static either, in contrast to the Puritanswho have little sense of development in the natural order. At the politicallevel, Hooker has clearly perceived that societies cannot and do not remainstatic.34

In many ways this whole scheme of understanding in terms of law, faith,goodness, the natural and political order, could be read in fairly straightfor-ward Aristotelian philosophical terms. However, the great and fundamentallyChristian element in Hooker’s perception of reality is the central place hegives to the Incarnation. Here, for Hooker, is the central focus for his under-standing of God’s relation to the society of mankind and to the natural order.It is the basis for his criticism of Roman Catholic tradition, his own ‘judi-cious’ approach to interpretation and his high estimation of the nonethelesscontingent and demarcated authority of Scripture.

Hooker uses historical arguments against the Puritans in a number of ways.In chapter four of the Preface, he counters the claim that learned people havebeen persuaded to accept the Puritan church polity because it is taught inScripture. But, says Hooker, this church polity has not before been seen inGod’s word by the Church throughout the world for many centuries. Thishistorical consideration must raise a question about the claim made by thePuritans.

Hooker makes use of John Calvin on a number of occasions during hisargument with the Puritans. This obviously has great polemical force for himsince the Puritans looked to Calvin as a model and exemplar, but it alsoreflects Hooker’s willingness to draw attention to the actual teaching of Calvin.Professor Cargill Thompson has argued that Hooker’s account of Calvin’swork at Geneva is ‘a calculated piece of misrepresentation, a deliberate attempt

33. Munz, Place of Hooker, p. 195.34. For an elaboration of Hooker’s theological conception of change applied to the proposalto ordain women as priests see S. Sykes, ‘Richard Hooker and the Ordination of Women to thePriesthood’, Sewanee Theological Review, Vol. 36, 1993, pp. 200–14.


to undermine Calvin’s reputation among his readers’.35 This interpretation ofthe Preface has been criticised in detail by P. D. L. Avis, who claims that thePreface represents Hooker’s attempt to distance himself from Calvin, whomhe greatly admired and respected. Hooker seeks to ‘stand back and make animpartial evaluation of an episode in recent history that was often regardedwith uncritical reverence by his contemporaries’.36 From the perspective ofour own day, Hooker’s account does not immediately strike one as impartialand detached. Yet there is a certain truth in Avis’s point, in the sense thatHooker does not show the reverence widely accorded to Calvin in England aswell as on the continent. More particularly, Hooker suggests that the Genevachurch polity introduced by Calvin was initially put in place for fairly prac-tical and pragmatic reasons. It was not the result of reading off from Scripturea commanded and necessary church order. Hooker describes this processwithout criticism of Calvin’s theological basis, save that the authority ofScripture was brought to bear only after the polity had been established.

This, however, is the precise point at issue between Hooker and the Puri-tans: that Scripture commands a church polity, and that that polity is presby-terianism. Hooker’s Preface is a polemical introduction to a polemical work,but the polemic is against the Puritans, not Calvin. The Preface has the effectof driving a wedge between Calvin and the Puritans, and by implication ofmaking a connection between Calvin and Hooker himself. It may also be thecase that in the Preface Hooker is seeking to set the discussion of Englishchurch polity in its own English context. This would fit in with Hooker’sslight reference to continental reformers generally, including Calvin, as sug-gested by Richard Bauckham.37

Dr Bauckham draws attention to Hooker’s scant reference to Calvin out-side the preface: ‘Hooker cites Calvin only nine times, six times in his sup-port and three times in order to disagree with him.’38 Aside from the Lawsthere are six references, all in support of Hooker’s argument. The referencesare all in polemical contexts and Calvin is quoted against Hooker’s oppo-nents. Two references to Calvin by Hooker illustrate the point. First, Hookeris able to quote Calvin in regard to episcopacy. ‘Mr Calvin himself, thoughan enemy unto regiments by bishops, doth notwithstanding confess that theearly church elected bishops to exercise oversight’ (7.6.9). Hooker was awarethat Calvin had a more open view as to the necessity of a particular churchorder than some of the other reformers, such as Beza, and the English Puri-tans. Secondly, in responding to Cartwright’s claim that Scripture lays downprecepts for every action, however insignificant, Hooker refers him to Calvin’sview that the church has power to make rules and regulations for its own life(3.11.13).

35. W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, The Philosopher of the Politic Society, in Studies in RichardHooker, Speed Hill (ed.), p. 14.36. P. D. L. Avis, ‘Richard Hooker and John Calvin’, Church History, Vol. 50, 1981, p. 9.37. Richard Bauckham, ‘Richard Hooker and John Calvin: A Comment’, Church History, Vol.50, 1981, pp. 29–33.38. Bauckham, ‘Hooker and Calvin’, p. 29.


Clearly, there is polemical advantage to Hooker in quoting Calvin againstthe Puritans. Nevertheless, on the more foundational question of the relationbetween natural law and the authority and interpretation of Scripture therewere certain similarities between them. Calvin declined to interpret the Psalmsin messianic terms unless there was good reason given in the text. This desireto see the Psalms as Jewish hymns earned him the criticism of ‘Judaizing’.He was disinclined to regard apocalyptic, such as is found in the book ofRevelation, as an appropriate expression of the gospel, and almost certainlyfor that reason did not write a commentary on it and very seldom quoted fromit.39 These all point to similarities in historical approach to what we find inHooker.

Elsewhere Hooker quotes Augustine against the Puritans in favour of hisparticular interpretation of scriptural texts (2.4.7). He also deals with theclaim of the Puritans that their point of view is that of the early ChurchFathers. He is able to show that this is not the case and that their use ofTertullian is not entirely satisfactory. The arguments put forward by the Puritansrefer to references in Augustine, Jerome, Hilary, Cyprian, and especiallyTertullian. Hooker goes to some trouble to show, in the case of Tertullian,that the work cited, De Corona Militis, contains many other references posi-tively pointing to the opposite conclusion from that drawn by the Puritans.‘Tertullian therefore undoubtedly doth not in this book show himself to beof the same mind with them by whom his name is pretended’ (2.5.7). J. K.Luoma puts the point this way: ‘Hooker advances beyond Whitgift becausehe can define a method that is historically critical and yet consistent withtalking about the activity of the Holy Spirit.’40

Hooker clearly has an historical sense in that he is aware of the past asbeing distant from, and potentially different from, his own situation. He iswilling to use historical arguments against the Puritans by appealing to par-ticular historical figures as well as by arguing that an historically unpre-cedented view is a priori likely to be incorrect. The crucial foundation forHooker’s view of history, however, is to be found in his acceptance of aparticular formulation of natural law.

Later in the seventeenth century English Deists were to develop the themeof orderliness in the natural realm so that the natural order was thought to bealmost autonomous. Once granted that autonomy, history derived its signifi-cance from within the natural order, rather than from any sense of orderliness

39. See T. H. L. Parker, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, London 1971, pp. 77–8: ‘Forhim the Old Testament proclaimed Christ in an obscure manner, but in the New Testament Christhad appeared in complete clearness. It was like the difference between twilight and noontide. . . .But just as allegory was out of place in interpreting the Gospels, so apocalyptic is foreign to theNew Testament’s complete revelation of Christ.’ Parker suggests that it is for this reason thatCalvin did not write a commentary on the Revelation to St John.40. J. Luoma, ‘Who Owns the Fathers? Hooker and Cartwright on the Authority of the Primi-tive Church’, Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 8, 1977, p. 59. See also W. Haugaard, ‘Renais-sance Patristic Scholarship and Theology in Sixteenth-Century England’, Sixteenth CenturyJournal, Vol. 10, 1979, pp. 36–60, and ‘The Scriptural Hermeneutics of Richard Hooker: His-torical Contextualisation and Teleology’, in This Sacred History: Anglican Reflections for JohnBooty, D. Armentrout (ed.), Cambridge, Mass. 1990, pp. 161–74.


of divine action as the ground and cause of that natural order. That Deisticframework, developed and expounded in late-seventeenth-century England,became in the eighteenth century the basic presupposition for the develop-ment of much modern historical thought as it applies to the historical criticalinterpretation of Scripture.41

This is not the framework with which Hooker was working. His point ofreference is the continuing interaction of a transcendent God with the naturalorder and the focusing for salvific purposes of that interaction on the Incar-nation. This gives, for Hooker, a sense of the significance of the continuinghistory of mankind but also an overriding and controlling importance for thehistoricality of the Incarnation. That very particular sense of history is anadumbration of the fundamental theological position which he laid out inBook 1.

IV

The Incarnation is a central and controlling element in Hooker’s theology.42

It affects the way in which he understands the authority of Scripture, historyand church life. It is, for him, a focus and a secure point of reference. On theother hand, in modern theology the Incarnation and Christology are locatedin a sea of historical relativity. Christology in modern theology is marked byhistorical scepticism and by the ambiguities of metaphysics in the modernepistemological framework.43

The twentieth-century discussion of these matters opened with the endur-ingly important book on the history of nineteenth-century Jesus research byAlbert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus.44 Schweitzer set out toshow that the search for the historical Jesus in the nineteenth century had ledinto a dead end. He offered a new way of interpreting the New Testamentmaterial by setting it against the backdrop of apocalyptic Judaism. He tookup earlier attempts to interpret Jesus in an eschatological tradition, and under-lined and reinforced them. That quest, and the question represented by thequest, has persisted in New Testament studies throughout the century. It hassuffered various diversions and has been restarted on a number of occasions,most famously by Ernst Käsemann.45 Throughout, the question has had vari-ous aspects to it. In part it has been an attempt to identify what might rea-sonably be said on historical grounds about the historical Jesus of Nazarethas distinct from the Christian church’s picture of the Christ of faith. A good

41. For a development of this point see Kümmel, New Testament, pp. 51–61.42. J. S. Marshall, Hooker and Anglican Tradition, p. 122: ‘Hooker’s is an Incarnationaltheology’.43. For example, in English theology see Christ, Faith and History, S. W. Sykes and J. P.Clayton (eds), Cambridge 1972; The Myth of God Incarnate, J. Hick (ed.), London 1977; Incar-nation and Myth: The Debate Continued, M. Goulder (ed.), London 1979.44. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, London 1910 (Eng. trans. of VonReimarus zu Wrede, Tubingen 1906).45. See E. Käsemann, ‘The Problem of the Historical Jesus’, in Essays on New TestamentThemes, London 1964, pp. 15–47.


deal of literature in the middle of this century was preoccupied with thisquestion. So, Jesus and the gospel tradition, the origins of Christianity and thequest for the founder of Christianity have been important issues in moderninterpretations of the New Testament.

As well as trying to identify what might be said about the historical Jesusof Nazareth, New Testament scholars have investigated the origins of theChristology of the early Christians. As a result, the various motifs and imagesused in the New Testament to describe and address the Christ of the churchhave been investigated in minute detail.46

These investigations inevitably were conducted according to the terms ofthe historical critical method and raised for the modern theologian an impor-tant and fundamental question. Even when one has looked at this process asa whole and come to some conclusion about information regarding the his-torical Jesus of Nazareth and the processes whereby a Christology emergedin the New Testament and in the early church, what might one reasonably sayin the twentieth century about the divinity or uniqueness of Jesus Christ?47

Answers to these questions have been much more varied.These considerations were not so ambiguous for Richard Hooker. The

Incarnation forms a criterion for Hooker in a number of respects. It is thefoundational point of the divine revelation and it therefore provides the au-thority by which all other revelatory authorities are to be judged. Thus Scrip-ture’s authority is contingent upon the authority of the Incarnation as arevelation of God. Egil Grislis has suggested that Christology provides acriterion for Hooker’s distinction between central and peripheral truths inScripture. There is much truth in this claim, though it is also clear thatHooker sees reason and natural laws, which are intermingled with supernatu-ral laws in Scripture, as important means to distinguish those things whichare essential from those which are not. It is also important to Hooker thatwhat is essential or central must refer fundamentally to that which is ‘neces-sary for salvation’.

One can see the central place which Christology has for Hooker in hisdiscussion of the sacraments in Book 5.50–57. In Book 5 Hooker is dealingwith the criticism of the Puritans that there is a great deal of superstitionretained in the various public duties of the Christian religion as they arepractised in the Church of England. After preliminary discussion he dealswith the question of places of public service, of public teaching or preachingand of prayer. Then he comes to the question of the sacraments. Beforediscussing the sacraments and their necessity, Hooker provides an extendeddiscussion of Christology in order to demonstrate that God is in Christ by thepersonal Incarnation of the Son who is Himself very God. The logic is en-tirely consistent with the framework which has been set out in the first twobooks.

46. See R. H. Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology, London 1965, and J. D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, London 1980.47. See the recent survey by Scott Cowdell, Is Jesus Unique? A Study of Recent Christology,New York 1996.


The use of sacramentes is but only in life, yeat so that here they concerne a farrebetter life then this, and are for that cause accompanyed with grace which workethsalvation. Sacramentes are the powerfull instrumentes of God to eternall life. Foras our naturall life consisteth in the union of the bodie with the soule; so our lifesupernaturall in the union of the soule with God. And for as much as there is nounion of God with man without that meane betwene both which is both, it seemethrequisite that wee first consider how God is in Christ, then how Christ is in us, andhow the sacramentes doe serve to make us pertakers of Christ. In other thinges weemay be more briefe, but the waight of these requireth largenes. (5.50.3)

The Christology which Hooker outlines is entirely consonant with the credalformularies of the Church of England and in particular with the AthanasianCreed. It is, nonetheless, particularly important to his argument at this point.Hooker traverses well-known Christological heresies of the early Church andconcludes that it is fundamentally necessary for Christ to be the central pointof connection between humanity and God. This statement of the centrality ofChrist has certain nuances for Hooker which we should note. It reflects aconcentration on the Incarnation as the point in history of revelation andredemption. The person of Christ is the focus rather than his redemptive workthrough the Crucifixion. This emphasis affects his formulation of the doctrineof justification. That formulation is not only in line with the Reformationthrust, but moves close to John Calvin’s formulation of the doctrine.48 Hook-er’s emphasis has been carried on in a good deal of traditional Anglicantheology. So much so that the typical Anglican theology is often regarded asincarnationalist.49

The emphasis on Christology is also important for Hooker in terms of hisepistemology. The way in which he sees reason and revelation interacting isconsistent with the way he now approaches the Incarnation. The revelation inChrist is cast within the same framework of the relation between God and thenatural order which stood behind Hooker’s discussion of natural and super-natural laws. The precise meaning of the Incarnation derives from the histor-ical interpretation of the life, teaching and death of Jesus. That interpretativeactivity is itself a procedure set within this same epistemological framework.

The sacraments are the symbol, statement and effective agents of thisconnecting:

Thus wee participate in Christ partlie by imputation, as when those thinges whichhe did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousness; partlie by habitual

48. See L. Gibbs, ‘Richard Hooker’s Via Media Doctrine of Justification’, Harvard Theologi-cal Review, Vol. 74, 1981, pp. 211–20, and P. E. Hughes, Faith and Works: Cranmer andHooker on Justification, Wilton 1982. The point is put quite crisply by A. McGrath, Iustitia Dei:A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Cambridge 1986, Vol. 2: ‘The strength ofCalvin’s understanding of justification thus becomes apparent, in that it is evident that justifica-tion is now conceived Christologically, thus permitting the essentially moral conception ofjustification associated with Zwingli and Bucer to be discarded’ (p. 37); ‘It will thus be clear thatHooker’s understanding of the nature of justification is similar to that of Calvin. Man is justifiedper fidem propter Christum’ (p. 105).49. Marshall, Hooker and Anglican Tradition, p. 122. For a discussion of the character oftraditional Anglican theology according to this theme see A. M. Ramsey, From Gore to Temple,London 1960, and for a critical discussion see S. W. Sykes, The Integrity of Anglicanism,London 1978.


and reall infusion as when grace is inwardlie bestowed while wee are on earth andafterwardes more fullie both our soules and bodies made like unto his in glorie.(5.56.11)

For Hooker the sacraments are the means whereby this infusion of gracemay take place:

This is therefore the necessitie of sacraments. That savinge grace which Christoriginallie is or hath for the generall good of his whole church, by sacramentes heseverallie deriveth into everie member thereof; sacramentes serve as the instrumentesof God to that end and purpose, morall instrumentes, the use whereof is in ourhandes, the effect in his. (5.57.5)

Just as the Scriptures are the written account of the Incarnation, so the sac-raments are the living experience in the church of the presence of the Incar-nate Son of God. Hooker’s position here is centrally Incarnationalist andso, within the general framework of his epistemology, does the Incarnationprovide a theological point of reference for questions of Christian life andpractice.

It is in the context of this Incarnationalist theology that the authority ofScripture is thought of as contingent upon the greater revelation in the Incar-nation of the Son of God in Christ. It is the Scripture’s witness to thatrevelation which gives it authority. That witness is not simply the witness ofcasual observers, but the inspired witness of apostolic people. Yet the Scrip-ture has a demarcated authority in terms of purpose, namely to offer salva-tion. Thus the Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation, for that isthe divine intention for Scripture.

The central importance of the Incarnation also illuminates the authority ofthe church, particularly in its relation to Scripture. The apostolic character ofthe church is important because this gives it an historical connection with thefoundational revelation of Christ. Tradition develops from that revelation, butis not necessarily a perfect, or always satisfactory, expression of that revela-tion. Hence tradition has a passive authority. There is a presumption in itsfavour. Scripture does not answer all questions, and in such circumstances thechurch has authority to decide, as for example in the disputes of the CatholicFathers with the Donatists and Arians in the early church (2.7.6) or in thevalue of concilia decisions (1.10.14). The formulation of canons by the churchhas the added force of inspiration by the Holy Spirit (3.18.8). It is in thisbroad epistemological framework that we should place not only Hooker’sunderstanding of the authority of Scripture, but also his understanding anduse of the idea of consensus in interpreting Scripture.

For Hooker, therefore, Incarnation is not only a central theological motif,it is the fulcrum of the revelation which is testified to by Scripture. Hence theChristological focus in interpreting Scripture and in placing scriptural author-ity is fundamental to Hooker’s understanding. It informs every aspect of histheology. While Christology has been a certain kind of focus in the twentiethcentury, it is nonetheless an ambiguous element in theological debate. This


is because it is set in the framework of the historical relativity of its originsin and before the New Testament, and in modern theology is marked byhistorical scepticism and the epistemological rigidities induced by the im-pulses of the Enlightenment.

V

When David Friedrich Strauss sought to resolve the problem created for himby Lessing and Reimarus from the previous century, he used a notion of thecreative activity of the early apostolic church in order to establish a bridgebetween the New Testament and the historical Jesus. The church, the com-munity of faith, that Strauss referred to is used regularly in New Testamentscholarship in relation to the development of attitudes which have come tofinal expression in the text of the New Testament. Indeed such a Gemeindetheologie (‘community theology’) focuses upon the church as a communityof revelation. It performs an important role in the development of the tech-niques of form criticism and of redaction criticism. In hermeneutical debatethe church has had an important role in influencing the way in which the textof Scripture as a church text is interpreted in and by the church.

The role of the church and its authority in the use and interpretation ofScripture has been a paradigm not only in continental theology but also inAnglican theology and in Roman Catholic theology. In Anglican theology ithas been a subject of debate insofar as authority in the church is said to bedispersed because of the accessibility of Scripture to the generality of thechurch community.50 In the Roman Catholic tradition the role of ecclesiasti-cal authority in the interpretation of Scripture is an increasingly importantissue not least as it relates to the task of the Magisterium in the interpretationof matters relating to Christian behaviour and political action. CardinalRatzinger has recently declared that the hermeneutical question in relation tothe role of the Magisterium is the central question for the church today.51

David Kelsey argues that ‘Theology is done as one of the activities compris-ing the life of the Christian community. Hence, given certain concepts of“church”, it necessarily uses Scripture to help authorise its proposals.’ Oragain he says that Scriptures ‘are normative precisely in that they are to beused in the context of that self-critical reflection in which the church tests theforms of her common life and seeks to correct them where the need for thatis apparent’.52 While, of course, the common life of the church can clearlyhave an external social dimension to it, Kelsey’s remarks reflect a shift inemphasis in ecclesiology. The church in the modern debate is distinct fromsociety and at critical points is closed to that society. Hence a church theologyis concerned not with the truth which might be the truth in the common realm

50. See S. W. Sykes, Integrity, Ch. 6.51. Biblical Interpretation in Crisis, R. J. Neuhaus (ed.), Grand Rapids 1989.52. Kelsey, Use of the Bible in Theology, p. 208.


of humanity, but with the church truthfulness of proposals. Scripture has itsauthority in, by and for the church.

For Hooker, however, church and society are one, and open to each other,and operating in a common domain. Hence theology is public and the inter-pretation of Scripture is public within this society. Hence there is an impor-tant role of consensus in that society and theology is about truth in its variegatedforms within that society. Of course Hooker is writing in a very distinctpolitical and social situation. He is seeking to defend the Elizabethan Settle-ment in which church and society were coextensive. One might be temptedto say, therefore, that the difference between Hooker and the modern discussionof ecclesiology simply reflects a different political and social position for thechurch. These issues have been raised sharply in two different contributionsto the interpretation of Hooker. John S. Coolidge has sought to defend thePuritan position precisely on the point of ecclesiology and the interpretationof Scripture. Egil Grislis, in analysing the dynamics of Hooker’s theologicalmethod, has argued for a significant ecclesial role in the interpretation ofScripture by drawing attention to Hooker’s use of the principle of consensus.But the way in which Hooker relates his basic philosophical and theologicalposition to his understanding of church and church order means that a shiftinto another social or political relationship for the church, such as we exper-ience in modern plural societies, would raise for Hooker certain importantquestions which we ought to try and identify.

For Coolidge, the real dispute between Hooker and the Puritans concernsa habit of listening to the word of God in order to obey it. This, he claims,is the Pauline perception and while in a formal sense, according to the termsin which the debate was conducted, Hooker may have had the better of thePuritans, essentially their case was more truly Christian.

Coolidge examines the exchanges in the debates between the leading pro-tagonists. Puritanism, he claims, originates as a response to elements in Paulinetheology which are pertinent at a time of cultural change. He also claims thatEnglish separatism and congregationalism are a further development of Paulineecclesiology. The Puritans, historically, are to be defined ‘in the first instancein contra-distinction from Anglican conformity’.53 The chief ground of thedifference between them concerns the nature of the appeal to scriptural au-thority. Thus ecclesiology and the interpretation of Scripture are at the heartof the matter. In his debate with Whitgift, Cartwright, he says, is right in hisclaim that ‘many things are both commanded and forbidden for which thereis no express mention in the word’.54 There are four general rules in regardto ecclesiology and these general rules have to be obeyed even though theremay be variations according to time and place. Whitgift challenges Cartwrightto say what is the real difference, then, between the phrase ‘not contrary to’and ‘commanded by’? Cartwright responds by claiming that not repugnant to‘is not enough because it must be grounded by the Scripture’.

53. J. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible, Oxford 1970,p. 2.54. Quoted by Coolidge, Pauline Renaissance, p. 4.


According to Coolidge, Hooker takes this distinction and develops it on thebasis that there is a continuity between reason and revelation. Things whichare not explicitly commanded in Scripture may be said to be ‘agreeable andnot contrary to the holy word of God’ so long as they are framed accordingto general axioms of reason. The crucial issue, according to Coolidge’s analy-sis of Hooker’s argument, is the principle that nature accords with Scripture.But according to Coolidge, the Puritans had not doubted this, and thereforeHooker’s argument is not to the point.

Hooker’s triumph is logically well founded. Cartwright has made a careful, explicitacknowledgment of the basic principle upon which the claim of the Anglican Churchto scriptural authority rests, that positive and negative formulations of the meaningof obedience to God’s word are logically equivalent; yet he persists in requiring apositive statement.55

Coolidge claims the apostle Paul in support of the Puritan position. He seeksto show that in addressing the question of natural reason, the apostle wasbringing into tension the particularist Jewish approach to history and themore universal Greek notion of history and consequently of reason and truth.That those without the law do what the law requires is only one side of adialectical pattern in Paul which, if taken on its own, does not fully meet thewhole measure of Pauline theology. Coolidge claims that Hooker and theAnglicans have missed this dialectic which the Puritans have grasped.

What is at issue, then, is not so much the formal argument which Coolidgeconcedes the Puritans have lost, but rather an attitude of mind which sees theChristian as obliged constantly and at all times to ‘attend to the word of God’.Hence, the Puritans’ persistent requirement of a positive statement of theauthority of Scripture. Coolidge concludes that,

the syntax and vocabulary of thought in which the discussion is cast accommodateone element of the Puritan concept of scriptural authority so completely as to leavethe other — that which distinguishes the Puritan from his opponent — almostinexpressible. The apparatus of logical demonstration, developed out of the Greekinterest in discovering abstract truth, itself implies that preoccupation and tends totransform all others into it. The Puritan is trying in effect to make that system ofdiscourse convey motives of thought other than those which, by its very nature, itpresupposes, while still remaining faithful to its own.56

Against Coolidge it has to be said that the conformist, or the Anglican, alsoundoubtedly seeks to obey the word of God but hears that word of God, orthat command of God, in a variety of ways, in the Church, tradition, reason,and so on. The Anglican, while granting freely the authority of Scripture,does not give to it that all-comprehending, exclusive position in practicewhich the Puritan wishes to insist upon. In reality Coolidge is suggesting thatwhat cannot be shown at one level can be claimed at the level of intuition.Coolidge first claims that a positive role for reason is acknowledged byPuritans but then clearly implies that reason is defective and dismissible by

55. Coolidge, p. 10.56. Coolidge, p. 21.


invoking a dichotomy between reason and intuition (to which the Puritansactually give priority). He has clearly two tiers in his understanding, whereasHooker has a much more integrated epistemology.

Moreover, the categories used by Coolidge to interpret the apostle Paul’stheology are open to significant doubt. The Greek/Jewish contrast is not asclearcut as he suggests and the interaction of Pauline theology with both Jewishand Greek modes or tendencies of thought is significantly more integratedthan Coolidge allows.57 Certainly the first three chapters of Romans have acertain polemical preparatory style about them. But the fact remains thatunless the terms of that polemic are actually accepted, then the force of thepolemic is evaporated. One cannot say that those without the law may do theworks of the law and be justified as a piece of concessionary rhetoric in anargument if that ‘concession’ cannot be taken up. But this particular sectionof Romans need not and should not be interpreted in this fashion at all.58 Theway in which the terminology of these opening sections of Romans is relatedto the different terminology of the later sections of the letter leaves one todoubt very seriously whether Romans is as rhetorically apologetic as Coolidgethinks.59 A more thoroughgoing interpretation of the text of Romans as awhole yields quite a different picture from that presented by Coolidge.

Coolidge seems almost unaware of the fact that Paul is the apostle to theGentiles and is preaching not Jewish particularism but a universal Christianreligion. That he was doing this in a Hellenistic context has led interpreters ofPaul to focus upon the Hellenization of Christianity in the Pauline communities.That Hellenization, however, is but an example of the movement from a par-ticular national religion to a universal revelation in the Incarnation. The veryterms of the particularity are transformed in the gospel which Paul proclaims.60

In modern New Testament scholarship almost no-one would argue thatPaul’s ecclesiology would lead one naturally and necessarily to presbyterian-ism or some form of congregationalism.61 The recent investigation of the

57. For a recent discussion of the general theme see M. Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus,Tübingen 1973 (Eng. trans., Judaism and Hellenism, London 1974).58. See E. Käsemann, An die Römer, Tübingen 1974, and The Romans Debate, K. P. Donfried(ed.), Minneapolis 1977.59. See S. K. Stowers, The Diatribe and Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chico, Calif. 1981,Hans-Jürgen van der Minde, Schrift und Tradition bei Paulus, Munich 1976, and B. N. Kaye,The Thought Structure of Romans with Special Reference to Chapter 6, Austin, Texas 1979, and‘ “To the Romans and Others” — Revisited’, Novum Testamentum, Vol. 18, 1976, pp. 37–77.60. See, e.g., J. Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, Eng. trans., London 1959, J.Ritches, Jesus and the Transformation of Judaism, London 1980, W. D. Davies, The Gospel andthe Land, Berkeley, Calif. 1974 and B. N. Kaye, Using the Bible in Ethics, Bramcote, Notts. 1976,but especially the recent and significant analysis by J. D. G. Dunn, The Parting of the Ways,London 1991.61. An interesting sidelight from a different ecclesial tradition is the experience of the Tagungder deutschsprachigen katholischen Neutestamentler in 1969 and 1971. The topic for these twomeetings was church and office in the New Testament. The meeting in 1971 formulated fourtheses, the first and last of which were as follows — 1: The New Testament does not yet speakof church office in the later sense of permanent and legal. The office appears more as a ‘servicefunction’ of the church. 4: From a purely historical point of view the New Testament shows agap in the succession of the office of apostle, which does not allow a view of a direct succession.However, it is not possible to exclude an actual context between the later office and the originalapostolic office. See Bruce Kaye, ‘Recent German Roman Catholic New Testament Research’,The Churchman, Vol. 89, 1975, pp. 246–56.


social background of the Pauline communities and the way in which theyintegrated with the social environment in the formation and structuring oftheir groups has made it clear that Paul’s ecclesiology is not defined byspecific particular structures. Rather it has to do with the achievement ofcertain goals, as a result of whatever pattern of associating Christians ar-ranged for themselves.62 Coolidge has managed to misconstrue Hooker’sargument and to give every impression of having misunderstood St Paul.Nonetheless he has clearly demonstrated the important relationship in Hookerbetween the interpretation and authority of Scripture and ecclesiology.

Egil Grislis approaches Hooker from a quite different perspective. He ispre-eminently concerned with the role of subjectivity and the mode by whichScripture is interpreted. Grislis argues that Hooker is profoundly wary ofsubjective arguments because of the role he perceives they have in the Pu-ritan position. This caution can be seen in Hooker’s analysis of the Puritanposition in the Preface of the Laws. Hooker demonstrates real concern aboutthe Puritans’ appeal to seeing the truth by special illumination and their claimto be guided by the spirit and to be a particular ‘elect’. Hooker had a genuinepassion for objectivity. This can be seen, according to Grislis, in his hope ofbeing understood by the Puritans and in his high evaluation of judiciouslearning.

According to Grislis, Hooker’s objectivity included reason and revelationwithin an integrated sense of truth deriving from its single origin in God.Hooker was optimistic that truth will not perish from the earth because menhave been created with a desire for the truth. This reason, to which Hookerappealed, was the wisdom of those who ‘are of God’, it is reason redeemedby grace. This grace-redeemed reason operated for Hooker alongside revela-tion at three levels; of intuition, of invincible demonstration, and of greaterprobability. Hooker could not, and, according to Grislis, did not wish toescape from an element of personal contribution. There are problems in lifewhich are not dealt with by Scripture and in relation to which reason mustbe employed. Even Scripture is understood with the help of reason. Hence itis not possible to escape the issue of subjectivity. Grislis concludes ‘there issimply no theological method, however correct, that can itself ensure its owninfallibility’. 63

According to Grislis it is not the case that Hooker applies an approach totheology which is entirely objective and the Puritans one which is entirelysubjective. Rather, there is a significant place for subjective elements inHooker’s understanding of Christian faith and his interpretation of Scripture.The question then becomes what are the constraints which Hooker wished toapply in the interpretation of Scripture and in the defence and articulation ofChristian faith, vis-à-vis the Puritan emphases?

62. H. C. Kee, Christian Origins in Sociological Perspective, Philadelphia 1980; U. Brockhaus,Charisma und Amt, Wuppertal 1972.63. E. Grislis, ‘The Hermeneutical Problem in Richard Hooker’, in Studies in Richard Hooker,Speed Hill (ed.), p. 179.


In dealing with interpretation of Scripture, Grislis places Hooker betweenCatholicism and Puritanism. He claims that Hooker maintained a constantposition, though with different emphases depending on whom he is address-ing. Hooker correlates ‘sufficiency’ and ‘appointed use’ in his approach tothe authority of Scripture. He argues that the Puritans have taken the principleof Sola Scriptura in a narrow sense, never intended by Luther or Calvin.

According to Grislis, therefore, Hooker’s approach to the role of Scriptureis not totally comprehensive as in the case of the Puritans but rather it existswithin a broader framework of authority. Given this context it is clear whythe role of the interpreter is particularly important in Grislis’ understandingof Hooker’s position. Three important presuppositions are operative. Scrip-ture is the Word of God and absolutely necessary for salvation; Scriptureconsists of supernatural laws and laws of nature; and the authorship of Scrip-ture is divine. To this is added the belief that Scripture has been providen-tially preserved intact. According to Grislis, Hooker accepted the commonview that Scripture was verbally inspired but in a way which enabled him tomaintain a distinction between peripheral and centrally important matters.These were to be distinguished on Christological grounds.

In the interpretation of Scripture, reason plays a crucial role; it can serveas a ground of assurance and it can prepare the way for the acceptance ofScripture as the Word of God. The initial reason, however, for people accept-ing Scripture as the Word of God is the authority of the church. It is givento them as authority. According to Grislis this role of the church in commendingand interpreting Scripture is a central way in which Hooker restricts the scopeof subjectivity.

Both Coolidge and Grislis manifest different aspects of the ecclesiologicalquestion in Hooker in relation to the interpretation of Scripture. They remindus of the specific context to which Hooker wrote his Laws. Hooker wasdirectly concerned with refuting the Puritan claim that their particular churchpolity is necessarily required by Scripture as the only one commanded byGod. However, from a more general theological point of view, the notion ofthe church in the area of authority and interpretation of Scripture is importantin three respects.

First of all, it is important in terms of the use of the principle of consensus.He appeals to the Church Fathers as he appeals to the generality of learnedhumanity. However, because the Church Fathers represent the continuingperceptions of Christian people in the light of the salvation which they haveand continue to experience because of their knowledge of God through JesusChrist in the Incarnation, that particular continuing consensus has a specialvalue for Hooker. Thus where Scripture is silent, the institution, patterns andtraditions of the church may properly be continued. In this context, there-fore, the interpretation of Scripture occurs in the first place within the frame-work of the community of the church. True, of course, there is reference tonatural reason available to people at large, but the interpretation of Scriptureoccurs in the first instance within the church and in the light of the church’stradition.


Second, because the church is a saved community, built upon the Incarna-tion and the grace bestowed through that, it is a community committed to thecentrality of those things which are necessary for salvation, and the non-centrality of those things which are secondary and not necessary. The ques-tion of church order, therefore, as not being necessary for salvation, is criticallyimportant for Hooker in his argument with the Puritans. For what is at stakeis not just a question of practicality or propriety, but of what may be regardedas necessary for salvation.

Third, the church is in a line of continuous development from the apostles.Strictly speaking, the Apostles had no successors, yet in terms of their roleof judging, the Apostles’ successors were the bishops. Episcopacy is a centralissue for Hooker and the bishops’ authority is customarily indicated as fromthe Apostles.

Hooker’s position my be illuminated by way of contrast with the historicalargument for apostolic continuity used by Bishop J. B. Lightfoot in the nine-teenth century. His essay on the ministry is directed against a sacramentalistChristianity, but yet is also opposed to the claims of nonconformists.64 Lightfootargues for an origin of episcopacy of such close proximity to the circle of theapostle John, and thus to Jesus, that for all practical purposes it can beregarded as having a divine institution. Hooker’s argument, however, is moreradical and more open-ended. Bishops are apostolic by similarity of rolerather than by precise historical commission or succession. His sense of his-tory is much more dynamic. Thus Hooker has a more open-ended foundationalso for his ecclesiology and a greater role for judgment and decision inparticular historical situations.

Hooker’s argument is that, over time, such a church order has been estab-lished that one ought to regard it as being providentially established by thehand of God unless good arguments and reasons can be brought against it toshow that it causes some ill. This argument is a combination of belief in theprovidence of God in the process of history and a pragmatic argument aboutthe value of particular arrangements as to whether or not they work for thegood or the bad.

One might, by contrast, return to the way in which Hooker critically ac-counts for the establishment of the Puritan church polity in Geneva as a resultof the activities of John Calvin. This is of some importance in Hooker’sargument since the Puritans looked to Calvin and Geneva for inspiration andexample. Having given an account of the emergence of Calvin’s influence inGeneva, Hooker then asks, in the Preface of his work, how it is that so manypeople were persuaded to accept this church discipline. He offers a numberof considerations which help us to understand his perception of the Puritanposition.

First of all, he refers to the importance of a person’s individual judgmentin such matters. It is a matter, he says, of the ‘force of their own discretion’

64. See B. N. Kaye, ‘Lightfoot and Baur on Early Christianity’, Novum Testamentum, Vol. 26,1984, pp. 193–224.


(Preface 3.1). He quotes from Scripture in support of this and then goes onto say that, of course, some things are so familiar and plain that the distinc-tion between good and evil is easily discerned by all kinds of people. Thequestion is to what extent issues of church polity are in fact so clear and socentral. Things necessary for salvation are plain in Scripture, but others aresomewhat more obscure. Is it not proper, he asks, for private citizens to formtheir own judgment on ecclesiastical polity if they are expected to do so inregard to civil polity. The question of ecclesiastical polity is a matter for opendiscussion within the community. Hooker here reflects his unwillingness tosee issues of ecclesiastical polity argued on a sectarian basis and with atightly demarcated epistemology. He much rather wishes to see human reasonamongst the considerations which are appropriate in any discussion of eccle-siastical polity in a given community.

In the very important Section 5 of the Preface Hooker sets out why somany people have come to accept the opinions of the Puritans. Not by clearand rigorous analytical argument but rather, he says, ‘certain general induce-ments are made to make saleable your cause in gross’ (Preface 3.5). Themethod whereby people have been won to the Puritan cause is as follows:

1. Faults of the existing system, particularly of higher callings, are fas-tened on and highlighted with great severity and sharpness.

2. All faults in society generally are ascribed to the kind of ecclesiasticalgovernment established.

3. The Puritan church polity is proposed as the only sovereign remedy ofall evils.

4. By influencing the ‘very notions and conceits of men’s minds in suchthought, that when they read the Scriptures, they may think that every-thing sounded towards the advancement of that discipline and to theutter disgrace of the contrary’. This point is important in Hooker’sanalysis and reveals again the critical question of the impact of theperceptions which are brought to Scripture and which influence the waythe meaning and authority of Scripture are received.

5. Having accepted the Puritan ecclesiastical polity as having the authorityof Scripture, people are then persuaded that they have seen this truth bythe illumination of the Holy Spirit.

6. Because of this such people are said to be specially sealed as God’sown. Hence in order to identify God’s own true children one ought toobserve the church polity which they observe. Those holding to a Pu-ritan church polity may be regarded as God’s own true children andthose who do not are not God’s children.

7. Therefore, the Puritans use only teachers who are similarly inclined onthe question of church polity.

8. People thus persuaded refuse to hear any teacher who is of a differentopinion from their own.

This analysis of the growth and spread of the Puritan church polity issufficiently important to Hooker for him to repeat these points in summary


form in Section 16 of Chapter 3 of the Preface. Indeed, how could thisquestion not be important for Hooker? Could it not be argued that this pro-cess in Geneva was a result of the providential action of God? Could thisnot be said to be a change, the possibility of which Hooker envisages? It isimportant also for Hooker to make this point, given the political way inwhich the Reformation was effected in England.

What we have then with Hooker is an ecclesiology which sees church andsociety openly interacting in the Elizabethan Settlement. The church is effec-tively coterminous with society. Hooker’s fundamental theological commit-ment to natural law both within the church in judging questions which are notnecessary for salvation and, indeed, in shaping one’s understanding of thosethings which are necessary for salvation, inevitably means that any ecclesiologybuilt on such a foundation must remain open to the generality of humanitywho also have access to that common natural law and human reason. Thereis an emphatically underlined continuity between church and humanity.65 Thechurch’s theology and its role in interpreting Scripture is subject to publicopen judicious debate such as might take place in the universities. A quitedifferent note is struck by the ecclesiology used in modern theology in theinterpretation of Scripture. This theology tends to emphasize the discontinu-ity between church and society and to emphasize the church as a communityof faith over against the rest of humanity.

VI

In reviewing Hooker’s approach to the authority and interpretation of Scrip-ture and the five themes which we have identified in that connection, a numberof things have become apparent. Hooker does not discuss to the same extentas modern theologians the question of the status and content of the canon ofScripture. In his day the application of historical critical tools to the under-standing of the originating events of Christianity had not developed to suchan extent as might have enabled him to do that. Furthermore, the status of thecanon was not at issue in the debates. Having said that, however, the differ-ence between Hooker and the moderns on the question of historicality is notabsolute but one only of degree. Hooker is aware of the relativities of historybut he emphasizes more importantly the continuities through time of thehuman experience and perception. By contrast, in the modern approach toscriptural interpretation the discontinuity between the first and the twentiethcenturies is emphasized and underlined.

So also in the relationship between church and society. The continuities inHooker are underlined and made much of, particularly in his debates with the

65. See A. S. McGrade, ‘The Public and the Religious in Hooker’s Polity’, Church History,Vol. 37, 1968, pp. 404–22 for a defence of the coherence of the Laws, and the particular placeof Book 5 in this. This article follows an earlier contribution by McGrade, ‘The Coherence ofHooker’s Polity: The Books on Power’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 24, 1963, pp. 163–82.


Puritans on the nature of church order. By contrast, in the modern debate thediscontinuities between church and society are underlined and are significant,not only in terms of theology generally, but also in terms of the way in whichScripture is received as authoritative and interpreted in the life of the church.

These differences of emphasis, however, are not simply matters of degreearising from the particularities of the circumstances in which Hooker wasoperating as compared with the circumstances in which twentieth-centurybiblical scholarship is operating. Behind the differences of emphasis lies anepistemological difference which has continued to be a matter of consider-able debate and discussion within the church and beyond. The issue is theway in which we may understand the relationship between nature and grace,between revelation and wisdom, between natural law and divine law. Bultmannbegan much of his hermeneutical work in the conviction that we are the sonsof the Enlightenment, by which he intended to convey, not that we weresimply the sons of historical optimism about progress in human affairs, butrather, that we lived in an age in which it was no longer possible to think ofthe supernatural and the transcendent as being expressed in the rational,concrete and public aspects of human affairs. The transcendent therefore wasto be sought in the personal, the private, the belief of the individual and ofthe withdrawn Christian community. Hooker does not share this fundamentalepistemological emphasis. He underlines the access to reason and naturallaw. The actual content of that natural law may be ambiguous and difficultto describe, but the point of Hooker’s emphasis is not to establish the contentof that natural law so much as to underline the unity of the human conditionin its relationship to God in history.

What we find then is that Hooker shows many of the qualities of historicalunderstanding which Kümmel wishes to attribute to the Enlightenment.66 YetHooker bases his historical attitudes upon a theology which is in sharp con-flict with that of the Enlightenment. What are we to say then to the claimmade by Kümmel that the historical critical method in biblical scholarshipfinds its foundation in the Enlightenment and in the mental framework estab-lished by the Deists of the seventeenth century? If Hooker in the sixteenthcentury displays some of these so-called modern historical attitudes on thebasis of a theory plainly at odds with that of the Enlightenment, then theclaim of Kümmel, and of the Enlightenment, must fall to the ground.

Furthermore, this historical attitude identified in Hooker was not novel inhis time. His predecessors, particularly in the late medieval and Renaissanceperiod, display a practice of scriptural interpretation which was not lackingin an historical perspective. True, they may have put the matter somewhatdifferently, but the sense of the past was clearly present, as was a sense ofthe distance between the ancient text and the later reader.

This situation, however, raises quite important questions about the percep-tion of the Enlightenment which has been so powerful in the community ofbiblical scholarship, as illustrated by Kümmel. One might respond by saying

66. See p. 80, above, and note 1.


that that perception of the Enlightenment was not adequate; the Enlighten-ment was not really like that. Comparing the image of the Enlightenmentwhich is so influential in modern biblical interpretation with wider historicalinterpretations of the Enlightenment might suggest that this image should berecast. Certainly that image, so pervasive and influential in the community ofbiblical scholars, and elsewhere, is challenged by our comparison of Hooker’sinterpretation of Scripture with modern hermeneutical approaches. Indeed itis shown to be an emperor with no clothes.

Whether or not one accepts the need for such a recasting, a study ofHooker’s approach to the interpretation of Scripture in comparison with theconcerns of modern biblical hermeneutics certainly challenges the Enlighten-ment rhetoric used in the tradition of the modern form of historical criticalmethod in biblical studies. Given that that rhetoric has played, and continuesto play, such a significant role in theology the very least that can be said isthat our enquiry has opened up to inspection the claimed force of authorityin an important aspect of the shaping of the Western religious tradition.

authority and the interpretation of scripture in hooker’s of the laws of ecclesiastical polity

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