Richard Hooker

As the Protestant Reformation began to further develop, it became more radicalized, moving from the original intention of Luther to simply reform the existing Roman Catholic Church to movements that wanted nothing to do with the Papacy at all and considered Rome to be a false, counterfeit Church and the Pope to be the antichrist. One of the more radical offshoots of Protestantism was Puritanism, a movement which thought that other Protestant movements had failed to properly de-Romanize themselves and proposed a form of Christianity completely free from Catholic influence. Their attacks on the Roman Catholic Church as well as other already existing forms of Protestantism also lead to attacks on the existing social order. These attacks lead to many responses with Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican writers pointing out the many supposed errors of the Puritan system. Though many attacks were leveled, one of the most famous one belonged to Richard Hooker, who is the subject of Duncan B. Forrester’s second essay in History of Political Philosophy.

In Hooker’s most famous work, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, he argues that the Puritans had distorted the teachings of Calvin, despite their claims to be his faithful followers. Because of this distortion, the Puritans had produced a distinct political theology that had to be dealt with separately, rather than simply as another form of Calvinism. For Hooker, the Puritans had a far more radical conception of the authority of scripture than Calvin did, as now the scriptures were seen as totally infallible and were to offer perfect guidance on moral and political matters. The role of the Church was also changed to become seen as the guardian of God’s word. The shifts the Puritans caused in both how the Bible and the Church were to be seen also caused a great shift in how they saw the state. For the Puritans, as there were two covenants in the Old Testament, one between the king and God and another between the king and the people, the people then had, as John Knox argued a right to revolt against ungodly rule because king had broken one of the covenants. Though Hooker was not himself a Calvinist, Calvin was one of the many sources he would use against Calvin’s more radical interpreters.

Though Hooker’s Laws is divided into eight books, this essay will focus on the first book. In that book, Hooker turns to the use of metaphysics to show that the universe has a certain order to it that demonstrates God’s reason, a move that causes Hooker to reject the voluntarism of both the nominalists as well as the Reformers. What Hooker’s embrace of metaphysics also did was show that the universe has a type of “natural goodness” that can be used as a starting point for other types of goodness. It also showed that there are many types of laws to which man is bound by, which shows that if true, the extreme reading of sola scriptoria the Puritans had would be false. And just as there are many types of law, for Hooker there is also a distinction between changing and unchanging laws, thus meaning that it is possible for some laws to change. The changing of laws though must be guided by the unchanging, eternal law in order to give the changed laws proper justice.

Hooker also shows a high degree of Platonic and Aristotelian influence as he sees that man is able to come to perfection though the social life. Such an idea firmly cements the contention that people are by their nature social animals in that they need some form of social organization to better themselves. Furthermore, for Hooker both political power and political laws are rooted in human action, an idea that appears to require a good deal of participation in the body politic in order to influence how the system is to be run. Hooker furthered his attack on the Puritan conception of the state and the Church by arguing that both were guided by reason. Hooker also rejects the absolute separation of Church and state as Hooker wants the Church to be able to restrain both rulers and citizens from behaving unjustly. In Hooker’s view, the state and the Church are to be complimentary. This is not to suggest that Hooker is simply creating a revival of Thomist/ Catholic thought in England as he still thinks the Church should be firmly in control. It should also be noted that Hooker is willing to give religious groups a good deal of freedom for a man of his time and does not think the state should demand everyone to be a member of the same church as for Hooker, religious groups are allowed to believe as they wish as long as those beliefs do not threaten the established order.