The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Hooker's Doctrine of Law, Pt. 7)

Now I'm finally wrapping up this series, which has helped give me the first chapter of my dissertation--or more likely, the third chapter, but the first one written.  Congratulations to anyone who actually had the perseverance to read it.  Now I'll try to get back to Christology and to some less meaty matters, including hopefully some more concise attempts to apply some of this Hooker material to concrete questions of our own context.

Hooker has thus far established that all laws in the Church must be made in obedience to God, but this obedience does not preclude the use of reason and natural law--indeed, it requires it.  God, he has shown, is the author of all wisdom and truth, which comes to us through various vehicles, of which Scripture is the most important--in all things relevant, in many things of chief authority, and in some things of exclusive authority.  Even when we rely on Scripture alone in framing laws, reason will play an indispensable role.  

Hooker is now ready to parse out exactly how reason and Scriptural authority play out in the making of laws of ecclesiastical polity; but before summarizing this, it may be helpful to recap briefly some key points made earlier. 

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Visible v. Invisible, Necessary v. Accessory (Hooker's Doctrine of Law, Pt. 6)

Before moving on to Hooker’s detailed account of church polity and ecclesiastical law, we must lay one more brick in place--Hooker’s doctrine of the two kingdoms.  For Hooker inherits and expounds a bundle of crucial Protestant dualities--the two kingdoms, the two realms, the visible and invisible Church--dualities which, although shared by all the Reformers, admitted of several different mutations, which could lead in rather different directions.  One such mutation, which Hooker was convinced had led the Puritans grievously astray from genuine Protestantism, was the institutionalization of the two kingdoms.  Rather than identifying the two kingdoms with the two realms--internal/spiritual and external/civil--the Disciplinarians took them as two separate institutions within the same external realm.  In so doing, they imported much of the perfection, immutability, holiness, etc., of the invisible Church into the realm of the visible.  

Hooker’s response to this was not, of course, to drive a wedge between interior and exterior grace, between Christ and the visible Church, between the individual conscience and the corporate body--at least, not in the way we might think.  Hooker is after all fervently insistent throughout Bk. 5 of the Lawes on the reality of sacramental grace, on the deep connection between exterior means of grace and the inner reality of union with Christ, and on the spiritual power and necessity of the visible Church.  However, he is no less insistent on the importance of proper conceptual distinction--“The mixture of those thinges by speech which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.  To take away therefore that error which confusion breedeth, distinction is requisite.  Rightly to distinguish is by conceipte of minde to sever thinges different in nature, and to discerne wherein they differ” (III.3.1).  This passage functions almost as a mantra for Hooker, who is determined to rigorously distinguish where necessary, without separating.

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Harmonizing Reason and Scripture (Hooker's Doctrine of Law, Pt. 5)

We have already seen how Hooker is at pains to demonstrate continuity between natural and supernatural, the law of reason and the law of Scripture.  The two are not at odds, nor are they carved off into separate spheres, but they mutually depend on one another, and are mutually interpreting.  

Hooker elaborates this harmonious vision at much more length in Bk. II of the Lawes, in the context of a devastating polemic against the Puritan vision that is so determined to play Scripture and reason, divine and human, off against one another.  The effects of this antagonism, he perceives, cannot but be disastrous to the Church.  The denigration of human reason undermines any respect for the Church or her traditions, and leads to a stubborn, individualistic anti-intellectualism--it “hath alreadie made thousandes so headstrong even in grosse and palpable errors, that a man whose capacitie will scarce serve him to utter five wordes in sensible maner, blusheth not in any doubt concerning matter of scripture to thinke his own bare Yea, as good as the Nay of all the wise, grave, and learned judgements that are in the whole world” (II.7.6).

Much of this comes from a laudable desire to exalt Scripture by attributing to it exclusive and universal authority over all knowledge, but Hooker perceives that it is no honour to Scripture to claim for it attributes that it does not claim for itself; “Whatsoever is spoken of God or thinges appertaining to God otherwise then as the truth is; though it seeme an honour, it is an injurie.  And as incredible praises geven unto men do often abate and impaire the credit of their deserved commendation; so we must likewise take great heede, lest in attributing unto scripture more then it can have, the incredibilitie of that do cause even those things which indeed it hath most abundantly to be less reverendly esteemed” (II.8.7).

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The Revelation of Divine Law (Hooker's Doctrine of Law, Pt. 4)

So now we come to what has traditionally been one of the thorniest problems of theology--what is divine law, and how does it relate to natural law (or what Hooker calls “the law of reason”)?  Put in other terms, this is the question of the relationship between special revelation and natural revelation, or, even more broadly put, between grace and nature.  Any proper Christian doctrine of these two has to orient itself between two sets of two poles.  First, supernatural truth must be neither a separable tack-on to the natural, but nor must it be such an integral part of the natural, that it is merely subsumed into it as a natural component; nature must not be so complete in itself that it doesn’t need grace, nor so incomplete without grace that grace is simply a part of it.  Second, supernatural truth must not be a complete replacement for natural truth, but neither can it be a mere republication; special revelation must not render natural revelation superfluous, nor must natural revelation render special revelation superfluous.  Therefore, the supernatural must be intrinsically related to, yet independent of; continuous with, and yet transcendent of the natural.  Hooker’s challenge in chapters 11-14 of Book I is to successfully navigate this minefield in his doctrine of divine law.  

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The Realm of Mutabilitie (Hooker's Doctrine of Law, Pt. 3)

Thus far, I have explained Hooker’s general scheme of law and given particular attention to his treatment of the law of reason. Already from what we have seen above, it should be apparent that in Hooker’s scheme, there can be no neat division of the field between civil affairs governed by the law of reason alone, common ground for believers and unbelievers, and ecclesiastical affairs governed by Scripture, since the law of reason is sufficiently obscured by sin so as to render further revelation all but indispensable. It is in Hooker’s treatment of “human law,” however, that the untenability of such a schema is most clearly revealed. For, Hooker will argue, human affairs are rarely governed directly by the law of reason or the divine law, but are necessarily governed by human positive law, which mediates these immutable laws into the realm of mutability, a realm that embraces all human affairs, civil as well as ecclesiastical.

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