Theologian · Early modern
Richard Hooker
1554–1600 · Anglican via media; Thomist natural law
A priest of the Church of England who rejected the papacy and Trent's doctrine of justification, drew more on St. Thomas than any other Reformer, and gave Anglicanism its self-understanding as a reformed catholic church.
Master of the Temple Church in London and then a country parson, Hooker wrote Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Books I-IV 1593, V 1597, VI-VIII posthumously) to answer the Puritan claim that Scripture is the only rule for the church's government and worship. Drawing on Aquinas, he set out a hierarchy of laws, eternal, natural, human and divine, in which reason is itself God's gift, Scripture is sufficient for salvation but not for every question, and the church may ordain ceremonies and polity by reason and custom. Book V defends the Prayer Book, the sacraments as instruments by which Christ makes us partakers of Himself, and episcopacy; Book VIII argues that in a Christian commonwealth church and state are one society under a godly prince. His Learned Discourse of Justification (1586) held the Reformed forensic doctrine while insisting that Catholics who erred on it could still be saved.
Why he matters: He carried the Thomist doctrine of natural law and the hierarchy of laws into the English-speaking world, from which Locke and the American founders took it, and he is the ancestor of the Anglican claim to be catholic that Newman tested in the Via Media and abandoned; Catholic theologians of law and of the sacraments still read Books I and V with profit.
Where to be careful
He held forensic justification against Trent (Session 6), the royal supremacy that makes the prince head of the church's polity (against Unam Sanctam and Immortale Dei), and a sacramental presence he refused to define (against Trent, Session 13); he denied the papacy. Common ground is deep: natural law, the sacraments as instruments of participation in Christ, the goodness of reason and inherited custom, and a charity toward Catholics rare in his age.
Reading
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Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical PolityRichard Hooker · Book I on law and Book V on the sacraments and public worship.
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A Learned Discourse of JustificationRichard Hooker · The 1586 sermon on ‘the grand question’ between Rome and the Reformers.
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The Via Media of the Anglican ChurchJohn Henry Newman · Newman's Catholic notes of 1877 on the tradition Hooker founded.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.