The Laws of Richard Hooker, Part 1

Richard Hooker (1554 - 1600) was arguably the greatest theologian of the early Anglican Church, and his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was the masterpiece of its foundational thought. Hooker wrote this work in the 1590s during the closing years of Elizabeth’s Golden Era. The work was at least partly in response to Thomas Cartwright whose Admonition to Parliament (1572) called for a Puritan-esque full reform, including a Presbyterian form of government in the English church. However, it was a much more broad attempt to carve out that “middle way” as a high road above Romanism and Radicalism. In his introduction to the recent Davenant edition of the Laws, Brad Littlejohn describes the difference between Hooker and the Puritans in hermeneutical terms, specifically “Prudence vs. Biblicism,” which lay behind the controversies over ecclesiology in general and worship in particular.

However that may be, my own focus in reading Hooker is, first, on his conception of natural law and how it relates to all of the other dimensions of law; second, his criticisms of a biblicist hermeneutic. Many no doubt will not stomach reading Hooker because he aims this criticism against Puritan views on worship and Presbyterian church polity. All I can offer to the hesitant reader is this challenge: Can we not gain from the criticism against biblicism and still retain our more fully Reformed position? If our view is not guilty of biblicism, then surely the best case against that method would never touch the substance of our real position.

The work may be divided into this fourfold summary:

Book I. Law and its Kinds
Book II. Scripture as Norm
Book III. Polity not Uniformly Fixed
Book IV. Defending Anglican Form

Outside of Anglican circles, he is often known only as an echo in a Russell Kirk, or as “the judicious Hooker,” in C. S. Lewis or some other admirer. As one goes to the source himself, the influence on the latter thinkers becomes clear. What follows are a few of my own reflections in reading, and nothing more.

Concerning Law and its General Kinds

How does Hooker define “law” to begin with? Hooker defines “a Law as that which determines what kind of work each thing should do, how its power should be restrained, and what form its work should take.” This is intentionally expansive, as “ALL THINGS that exist work in a way that is neither unnatural nor random. Nor do they work without a preconceived end or goal.”1 So all things are law-like. 

Of the traditional kinds, Hooker begins with eternal law; and he places it first in God. In this he follows the Thomist tradition. However he does give two unique nuances. 

First, he divides the other kinds into expressions of the eternal law and in so doing, adds two—1. natural law when applied to natural agents, 2. celestial law when applied to the elect angels, 3. the law of reason over thought, and then the more familiar 4. divine law in Scripture and 5. human law in the civil sphere.2 

Second, he more strictly defines eternal law as that “by which God has from the beginning determined to do all things.” So it is not merely “those operations that begin and continue by voluntary choice of God.” Hooker was clearly holding a realist position over a voluntarist position when it comes to metaphysics; and he cites Ephesians 1:11 to recall that it is not simply God’s will by which all exists, but “the counsel of his will.”3 That may strike the reader as a distinction without a difference. However, when one thinks it through, the thought may occur that God could not base any decision upon anything outside of Himself (there is no such thing affecting the First Cause), nor upon nothing at all (a nothing cannot cause a something). Hence to assert divine sovereignty apart from the whole essence of God is to talk nonsense.

Proper conceptions of eternal law ground one’s realism in God. Hooker writes,

“The very being of God is a sort of law to His working, for the perfection that God is, gives perfection to what God does.”4

So this eternal law is indeed the decree. It is exhibited in lesser laws communicated to the created order by the free will of God; but this will is never according to no nature, but entirely in accord with God's eternal nature. And because this nature is orderly, law-like, and rational, it is fitting to call this a real law and the form of all law.

Now what does Hooker mean by a “first” and “second” eternal law? The footnote in the Davenant edition acknowledges this to be “idiosyncratic,” but that he is “seeking to answer the question of why God sometimes permits things to happen, through his eternal decrees, which are at odds with his revealed will for rightly-ordered creatures. The former Hooker calls the ‘first eternal law,’ the latter the 'second eternal law.’”5 It seems to me that the typical Reformed designation of permissive and prescriptive will (each being sub-sets of the decretive will) would have done just fine.

Even more out of the ordinary, what is this “celestial law” and why discuss it here? According to Hooker, this law to angels is threefold: 1. individually, so as to praise; 2. corporately, so as to fight; 3. in communion with us, so as to minister. Not that Hooker would necessarily disagree with this, but within that third category ought to be included their role in mediating God's revelation at key points in redemptive history. Perhaps it is not mentioned because it is not regular in all ages.

We then come to natural law. Hooker defines natural law as “The law by which natural agents work.”6 He then distinguishes between that “law of nature,” by which we speak of merely natural agents, in describing what they do, versus a “law of reason,” by which we speak of voluntary agents either obeying or disobeying that which they ought to do. 

He then shows, by God’s example in Genesis 1, two things: “first … that God was not bound by necessity to work … second … that God instituted a natural law which His creatures would obey.”7 In explaining how the nature of things and the divine will are harmonious, Hooker builds his case on reasoning similar to any teleological argument. We might say that it is nature-plus-reason that makes natural law in humans different from the aforementioned “law of nature” so often used and abused in modern scientific vocabulary.

There is a lone prerequisite of man’s obligation to such natural law. He says, “The law which we have discussed so far obligate all men, by virtue of their humanity, to obey them, even if they never form any social ties or solemnly agree about what to do or not to do.”8 Hooker is doing more than recycling old formulations or quoting pagan, or even Christian, sources. He wanted to argue—as a principle for how to order our moral thoughts in general—from the goodness of things to the law which binds man. It is customary to interpret the early Reformed tradition on natural law in a minimalist way. There are principles and there are conclusions. Natural law concerns the former, and the latter is, well—if not a “free for all,” at least, such a broad thing so as accommodate the most pluralistic of modern societies. This is a great mistake in my judgment. And it gives natural law a bad name among those already predisposed against it as if it were some “law of the jungle” or “law of the nations” or “law of one’s nature” (i.e. the fallen and sinful nature).

Well, does Hooker ever move from principle to conclusion, or to a plurality of principles? In other words, is his conception of natural law one of specificity? I think so. He gives two relevant principles,

“From this basic human equality, our natural reason deduces several laws by which to direct our lives, of which no man is ignorant, such as: since we wish not to be harmed, we must not harm others, and since we do not wish to be dealt with harshly, we must not deal with others harshly, and we must abstain from all violence and wrong, and so on.”9

Notice that at some inferential level, there is a universally right way to conclude about many matters. And yet not all philosophies of law and society would agree about these things. One of a few conclusions can be drawn in response,

Response 1: So much for natural law!

Response 2: Natural law yields a fundamental right rule of society and judges those who ought to know better.

Response 3: Natural law is what all hold in common, and as such is not in the business of excluding too many wrong views.

Barthians and Van Tillians settle for the first option. Reformed Classicalism (indeed, the majority Christian tradition) embraces the second option. Van Drunen and advocates of the Radical Two Kingdom View opt for the third.

Natural Law and Our Reasoning About the Good

Hooker sees man at birth “like a book in which nothing is written, but in which anything might be.”10 He then takes for granted that proper instruction in logic begins an exponential growth in knowledge, so that by “forming habits and teaching principles, we make our faculty of reason more apt to judge rightly between truth and error, good and evil.”11 It might be thought that Hooker’s reflections here are midway between Plato’s and Calvin’s; but it is important to note that some psychologizing is required to factor the fallen nature into any study of nature, and how reason is both the sine qua non of the moral actor and yet can go wrong. If baser things stimulate appetite, apart from reason, is the will toward them involuntary? His answer is No. The will is still voluntary in this. He uses the analogy of a ruler who acts in things "too trivial for his subordinates to consult him about," and concludes that "the will gives assent by silence.”12 We may agree with this, but it raises the question of the deception of the sinful nature, and the enslaving process of the will by deception's habituation: “For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (2 Pet. 2:19).

After relating mind and will, Hooker adds that, “Appetite seeks whatever goods are perceived by the senses and then wished for, while the will seeks whatever good reason points out.”13 Two readings may be anticipated: 1. Hooker’s classicalism retains the good mind and will (ala Plato) against the lower emotions and senses; 2. Hooker only means by “reason” its objective sense, and in that sense is still Pauline (cf. 2 Cor. 4:18, Col. 3:2, 5).

Here we get the clearest picture of Hooker as a bridge between Augustine and Lewis—influenced by the former and an influence on the latter:

“Man’s will has the natural freedom to take or refuse anything put before it, and whatever good it may seek might always be accompanied by something difficult or unpleasant, which might make the will shrink back and give up. On the other hand, whatever is evil may yet have an appearance of goodness, drawing us after it. For nothing evil is desired as such, and is only chosen because of a goodness which is or at least seems to be attached to it. Likewise, it is not the existence of goodness, but the appearance of it that provokes us to action; therefore many precious things are neglected, simply because their true worth is hidden.”14

If Augustine’s analysis of evil as privation of good (both in the object desired and in the inclination) could still lay the blame at the sin nature, where is Hooker’s similar analysis vulnerable? Hooker tends to lay the stress on the pitiable (and thus, a short step to excusable) condition of the moral actor. For instance, “Since there are so many duties to be done, and so few where the reason can easily and certainly discover the right course, it is no surprise when men choose evil, even when the contrary is knowable ... Reason may therefore discern the good, and yet the will refuse it, as long as we are slaves to our sense experience.”15 Yet Hooker seems aware of the way that this can go wrong, and immediately addresses it:

“However, this does not give any man a legitimate excuse for sin. For no sin has ever been committed without some lesser good being willfully preferred to a greater good, which would disgrace our nature and overturn the divine order that commands us to always choose the highest good.”16

If natural law is not some rationalism of nature—not reason devising its own morality—then what is meant by it being known by reason? The simplest way to put it is that while reason never determines the truth, it does discover it. But in what way? Hooker says, "There are only two ways to recognize goodness: knowing the causes that make something good, or looking at the signs and marks which always accompany things that are good, even if we cannot see right away why they are good in and of themselves. The first way is the best method, but it is so difficult that everyone avoids it and would rather talk aimlessly as if in the dark than tread such long and intricate mazes for the sake of knowledge.”17

So Is Hooker’s definition more narrow, or more subjective, than “God’s law in the nature of things”? In one place, it would seem so. He says,

“Now, the saying is true that ‘every wrong action violates the law of nature and reason.’ For although transgressions against supernatural laws do not violate the law of reason as such, they do inasmuch as they are evil and thus violate the principle that we must always flee from evil. However, we do not want to define the law of reason so broadly that it includes all the laws which we as creatures are obligated to obey, but we restrict it to those which all men with their natural understanding might recognize as their duties.”18

The "saying" he alludes to comes from Augustine, City of God, XII.1 and Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 94, art. 3. It is not yet clear to me why he wants to narrow the circle, except perhaps a clue in his preference to call this “the law of reason” over “the law of nature.” While both may have objective connotations, the former can more readily be conceived wholly in terms of what man tends to know.

In all of this, the Reformed reader who is new to all of this may still want to ask: What place does Hooker have for the doctrine of sin in social order? In one place, at least, he speaks like a Calvinist: “Political laws, established for the sake of public order, are never properly devised unless they presume that man's will is obstinate, rebellious, and completely opposed to obeying the sacred laws of his nature. In other words, laws are not sound unless they assume that man in his depravity is little better than a beast, and they moderate his actions to prevent any hindrance to the common good.”19

Next Hooker begins to delve more specifically into human laws in political societies, and then the larger section on the relationship between such a law of nature and the Scriptures.

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1. Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: Volume 1: Preface-Book IV (Lincoln, NE: Davenant Press, 2019), I.2.1; cf. 1.8.4.

2. Hooker, Laws, I.3.1.

3. Hooker, Laws, I.2.1, 2, 5.

4. Hooker, Laws, I.2.2.

5. Hooker, Laws, cf. footnote on 54.

6. Hooker, Laws, I.3.

7. Hooker, Laws, I.3.2.

8. Hooker, Laws, I.10.1.

9. Hooker, Laws, I.8.7.

10. Hooker, Laws, I.6.1.

11. Hooker, Laws, I.6.5.

12. Hooker, Laws, I.7.3.

13. Hooker, Laws, I.6.5.

14. Hooker, Laws, I.7.6.

15. Hooker, Laws, I.7.6.

16. Hooker, Laws, I.7.7.

17. Hooker, Laws, I.8.2.

18. Hooker, Laws, I.8.10.

19. Hooker, Laws, I.10.1.