The Laws of Richard Hooker, Part 2
The last few chapters of Book I give a glimpse into two matters not so unrelated as we may think. First, Hooker draws out the implications of natural law to civil society. Second, he gives a rationale for the necessity of Scripture. The latter provides the natural transition into the second book where he enters his controversy with the biblicists, though much of the matter is treated in a way similar to how any of the Reformed theologians of the day would handle it. The language, at any rate, follows along very well with those sections of the Westminster Confession on the Scriptures.
Hooker’s Application to Political Theory
In our turn to more explicit political theory, he says,
“There are two pillars which uphold public societies: first, a natural inclination towards sociable life and fellowship, and second, some arrangement, which implicit or explicit, governing the order of their public life together. This agreement is what we call the Law of a Commonweal and it is the soul of every political body, animated by laws which set it to work for the sake of the common good.”1
It is noticeably Thomistic, but all sorts of questions emerge for us. Law is rational. It is for the common good. It is made by one who has care of that community, and promulgated. It is all very standard. But what is primal—that “soul,” or the animating laws, or the end, that is, “the common good”? And, to move from the essence of law to its historical development in human law: If fathers are kings of homes by nature, yet no one man is by nature over the whole of men other than by (1) common consent or (2) the appointment of God (Laws, I.10.4), which does Hooker prefer and why? He does not get that specific here. Some fifty years later, Samuel Rutherford would show, in Lex, Rex, that true authority flowed both from God and through the people, in such a way that the commonwealth had a shared interest in prosecuting the magistrate who stepped out of that line of legitimacy.
While Hooker does not conclude (as Hobbes later would) that the constituent rights of man are relinquished with the emergence of the state, nonetheless, the premise is identical:
“as solitary individuals we cannot provide ourselves with all the things that we need to make a life fit for the dignity of man … The only way for men to prevent quarrels, injuries, and wrongs was to come to a general agreement, creating some sort of government and subjecting themselves to it.”2
Thus for both positive goods and to alleviate evils, man requires a rule over civil society. Does he further elaborate on the rationale of man at this stage of development toward the state? Here he does get specific. He treats man at this stage as a reasonable party.
But though men “always knew that they could defend themselves ... [and] that men must not be allowed to pursue their own gain at the expense of others,” they also “knew that no one should be the judge and defender of his own rights, since everyone is partial to himself and his closest friends, and therefore the conflict would never end until all agreed by common consent to appoint one man as their judge.”3
Three more questions immediately come to mind: 1. That “they could defend themselves” can refer to right or else ability. Does he mean the former, the latter, or both? 2. At what point is one man’s gain “at the expense of others”? and 3. Why “one man as their judge” rather than another form? On that third point, Hooker does speak of “the inconveniences of monarchy” causing “all the other kinds of government to be devised.”4 Then even more definitively, he adds, “nature does not obligate us to any particular form, but leaves it up to human decision.”5
Hooker clearly has a right regard for the voice of the majority. This governs him in his caution about matters civil and ecclesial. His modifier is not only custom or longstanding law, but “unless all agreed by common consent.”6 This can lead to many a contradiction. For instance, when does the agreement of “all” strictly mean “each and every one,” and when does common consent nullify that very principle? It is in this context that Hooker turns to Aristotle’s claim that some are fit to rule and others to be their slaves (Politics, I, 4). Did Hooker wrestle with the plain fact that a man who is born into a government has not consented and is therefore the slave of others if he is not permitted to leave?
Natural Law and Scripture Intersect
Hooker says, “When supernatural duties are required, natural duties are not rejected as needless. Even though the Law of God is principally delivered to teach us the former, yet it is suffused with the latter as well. Scripture is shot through with the laws of Nature.”7 What is meant by this rationale for natural law to be in Scripture, and, more basically, what can it mean for this law to be in it to begin with? This is a stumbling block for the past few generations of Reformed, following the cues of Barthian and Van Tillian thinkers who have portrayed natural law as if its defining characteristic is its extra-biblical status.
The first reason that Hooker gives for natural law to be in Scripture is epistemological, yet that is twofold:
“because they are either such as we could not easily have found out on our own, or because, in cases where they are obvious, the Spirit may set them down in Scripture in order to prove things more obscure, and this application of the laws of nature to difficult particular cases is of great value to our instruction.”8
He adds to this sin. We know first principles well, but specific application is another matter. Why? It is because “so far has our natural understanding been darkened that at times whole nations have been unable to recognize even gross iniquity as sin.”9
In this course, he picks up the distinction made also by many Reformed theologians between natural law and positive law. He maintains that positive laws made by God are those that pertain to “supernatural duties,” and which “cannot be deduced from the natural order.” Positive laws may be permanent—they don’t have to change—but only positive laws can change.10
A myriad of objections could be imagined. One is suggested by the spiritual versus natural dichotomy, which Hooker himself brings up. We could put it like this: If the whole of Scripture is spiritual, and the law is spiritual (Rom. 7:14), then how does Hooker account for natural law being a part of what is essentially spiritual? Are not the two made contrary principles by the testimony of Scripture? It is plain from the allusion to Hebrews 4:12 that Hooker uses, after speaking of natural law in Scripture, that its rationale is not only to make it more objectively clear, but also, “as sharp as a two-edged sword, piercing the deepest and most unsearchable corners of the heart, which the Law of Nature can scarcely reach, and human laws not at all.”11
A light bulb illumined is still the same bulb. A house that is inhabited does not change in the basic materials laid down by the builders; nor did the house’s vacancy make the house a swimming pool or a horse’s stable. So—if I may come to Hooker’s defense with my own limited analogies—in the same way, the natural law is not claiming to “be spiritual” in the same way that the Holy Spirit is spiritual, or in the same way as the regenerated mind with results from the new birth, is now spiritual. Rather, as the law which was once left etched on stone (2 Cor. 3:3, 7) is that same law that the Spirit promises to write upon the heart (Jer. 31:33), so the substance of the natural law is the divine obligation (Rom. 2:14-15) now more sharply perceived by the spiritual man. But that the natural law is “in” Scripture is no more an “intrusion of nature” as that camels and denarii and spears are in Scripture.
The Necessity, Benefits, and Limits of Scripture
Hooker reasons from the necessity of an infinite good, which is desire for no other, to the necessity of special revelation. This end both transcends this life and is impeded by sin. We know neither God nor ourselves rightly. The way must be supernatural and by grace. Of course even the desire to be happy is of natural law—“if this desire to be happy were not natural, why do all men have this desire?”12—so that even the necessity of Scripture is grounded in this law of nature.
In the course of defining the sufficiency of Scripture, Hooker stops to deal with the objection that which books count as Scripture is not found in Scripture. He replies, “that every field of study requires the prior knowledge of some things that lie outside that field of study properly speaking. Each kind of knowledge only goes so far and takes for granted many things supplied by other fields.” So with Scripture, he concludes, it “presupposes that we first know and are persuaded of certain rational first principles,”13 etc.
Now how does Hooker transition from these basic attributes of Scripture to his controversy with those he regards as biblicists? He moves from those basic distinctions about scriptural sufficiency (the limits of what is covered by Scripture) to the finer distinction between what is explicit and what is implicit, “whether ‘contained in Scripture’ means it is specifically mentioned or whether it simply means that we may clearly deduce from Scripture all things that are necessary.”14
Yet a shrewder biblicist will also be a dogmatician, and so not mind combining sets of Scriptures to form a deduction, so long as he doesn't have to examine his method. So Hooker continues, “On the other hand, when we define ‘contained in Scripture’ this way, still we must ask ourselves how far we can take this process of deduction before we leave the realm of 'things necessary.’”15
If the reader is the sort of person who wants to cut to the chase, he may demand, What does this have to do with the Bible’s rules for the church?
It is simply this. Supernatural laws may not be deduced from the natural order. Yet the church is, in one sense, “a temporal society,” arranging itself in many of the same ways that other societies do; yet in another sense the church is a supernatural society, and therefore
“has one unique feature: part of their bond of union is a supernatural law, which God has revealed concerning the sort of worship that His people should offer Him. Therefore, the elements of the worship of God, inasmuch as they go beyond what reason teaches, may not be invented by men, as it is with the pagans, but must be received from God Himself.”16
This sounds an awful lot like the Regulative Principle that would be in Westminster Confession of Faith, XXI.2. Perhaps there is a way to interpret it, and other parallel principles, in a way that follows Hooker’s logic against biblicism. I happen to think there is.
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1. Hooker, Laws, I.10.1.
2. Hooker, Laws, I.10.1, 4.
3. Hooker, Laws, I.10.4.
4. Hooker, Laws, I.10.4.
5. Hooker, Laws, I.10.5.
6. Hooker, Laws, I.10.5.
7. Hooker, Laws, I.12.1.
8. Hooker, Laws, I.12.1
9. Hooker, Laws, I.12.2.
10. Hooker, Laws, I.15.1, 2.
11. Hooker, Laws. I.12.2.
12. Hooker, Laws, I.11.4.
13. Hooker, Laws, I.14.1.
14. Hooker, Laws, I.14.2.
15. Hooker, Laws, I.14.2.
16. Hooker, Laws, I.15.2.
