THE
P RTAL
November 2011
Richard
Hooker
Page 7
Anglican
Luminary
by Keith Robinson
Richard Hooker
is undoubtedly one of the principal architects of Anglicanism. He had a
formidable mind coupled with a lucid style of writing, as he tried creatively to make sense of the complex
religious situation in England in the reign of Elizabeth I.
Richard was born into a
respectable Devon family in
Exeter in 1554, a time when
Mary was trying to bring
England back to Catholicism.
He was educated locally, and
then at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, where he was admitted
a Fellow in 1577.
Equally avoiding the Catholic
“magisterium”, he argued that
Scripture was to be interpreted
in the light of Tradition and
Reason.
This idea of a sort of
three-legged stool evidently
established adequate criteria for
the governing of the church’s
life, but left plenty of scope for
Two years later he was
development and adaptation.
appointed deputy professor
It is not surprising, then, that
of Hebrew. However, he was
Hooker’s principles have been
obliged to vacate the position
much employed in recent
in 1584, when he married Joan
Anglican
polemic,
where
Churchman (who “brought him
Scripture and Tradition have
neither beauty nor portion”),
and he became Rector of Drayton Beauchamp, and both greatly suffered at the hand of “Reason”, which
the next year, Master of the Temple. In London he sometimes seems to be indistinguishable from the
became not ed for preaching a way of being Christian spirit of the age.
which rejected the “extremes” of both Puritanism and
Pope Clement VIII
Catholicism.
That Hooker’s principles may have been abused in
In 1591 he was appointed to the Rectory of Boscombe recent times should not blind us to their very great
which he held in plurality with the sub-deanery of usefulness in the reign of the first Elizabeth. If it is
Salisbury Cathedral. In 1595 he moved to the living of true that he raised theology from the level of polemic
Bishopsbourne near Canterbury, where he died on the to serious learning, it is not entirely his fault that that
work should have been somewhat reversed in our own
3 November 1600, and where he is buried.
time.
Elizabethan Settlement
Queen Elizabeth was concerned to find a way of
avoiding the religious persecution of previous reigns,
and to draw as many of her subjects as possible into a
single ecclesial body. This produced what is generally
known as the “Elizabethan Settlement”, which was,
indeed, to a large degree successful.
Richard Hooker is probably to be credited with
devising the famous “Anglican Via Media” or middle
way between the two extremes. But it was not mere
pragmatism alone. He saw the inadequacy of the
Puritan’s “sola Scriptura” banner, yet agreed that
Scripture is foundational for the Church of Christ.
His work shone a light on the rather dark path of
Christianity in England at that time, from which
much good has come in subsequent centuries. For him
theology was always principally about our relationship
with God in prayer, and Pope Clement VIII said of his
writing that “it had in it such seeds of eternity that it
would abide till the last fire shall consume all learning”.
Of greatest importance is “The Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity” which continues to be a classic. He wrote; “God
is above, and we upon earth; therefore it behoveth our
words to be wary and few.” (A motto perhaps for the
General Synod?)