Driven to the Internet, I see Richard Hooker described as the “closest counterpart in the Anglican-Episcopal denomination to Luther for Lutherans or Calvin for Presbyterians or Wesley for Methodists.” His books on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity explain every aspect of Anglican doctrine, and I’m sure the vicar of my little church in Roxboro, North Carolina, has read them all.
Hooker defined the essential character of our early church as broad, tolerant and inclusive at a time when it was threatened by Roman Catholicism on one side and Protestant extremism on the other. He’s credited with defending the Anglican cause against the Puritans who wanted to get rid of bishops and turn us into Presbyterians. When Hooker died in 1600, the pope said that his ideas would remain until the end of the world.
Even though I just met Richard Hooker and hardly know him, I’m struck by the way he acknowledged the diversity of ideas within the church as a strength, saying, “Carry peaceable minds, and you may have comfort by this variety.” I can’t help but think of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was recently quoted in TIME as saying that God intends that our church members “have something to learn even from the people we most dislike or instinctively mistrust.” The reporter said it’s a nice thought, but will it be enough to stop a split?
Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve been finding myself less and less willing to talk about controversial topics, including this one. Most people tend to rant these days, and I just don’t want to listen. I’m getting to be a lot like Dogbert who says in the Dilbert cartoon, “There’s really no point in listening to other people. They’re either going to be agreeing with you or saying stupid stuff.”
This is an example of how important it can be to dig into context in order to understand what Hooker has in mind when he talks about “via media” and being tolerant of variety… He never confuses style with substance.
The author is proof-texting Hooker in a rather post-modern manner, if she -as it appears – is twisting the words of the apologist for Anglicanism to advocate for pluralism.
Hooker was never an advocate for believe anything you want.
It says a lot about this particular defender of what she thinks is Anglicanism that she never even heard of Hooker until now, and that she feels comfortable writing about him after reading one brief piece on Wikipedia. (Of course, this also says a great deal about the lamentable state of education in our church). ECUSA has advertised itself as “the church where you dont’ need to leave your brain at the church door”, but increasingly, it’s “the church where you don’t need a brain.”
I wonder why she’s so sure that her vicar has read all of the Laws – it is rather long and I’m not sure that it is required ready at all pecusa seminaries. Saying one is sure is certainly different than saying, “my vicar told me so…” I wouldn’t personally feel sure at all unless I asked. Given the many misreadings of Hooker (including hers), I’m not sure many pecusa priests have read much Hooker let at all. I think they’ve gotten some Hooker in lectures but not dealt with the original source.
Ditto to all the above concerning the state of Christian formation these days. Seminarians rarely read more than snippets of Hooker because so much of the curriculum for an M.Div. is really just remedial education for those who arrive knowing almost nothing about Christianity beyond their own personal devotion and their experience with a limited number of parishes. That is the fault of the last generation of clergy not providing serious opportunities in adult education.
Most of the seminary graduates leave with appropriate professional skills, but some have really no more insight into genuine theological thinking than I got from my 6th-grade Sunday School teacher in 1961. They then go and share their ignorance with a parish, creating a rising generation that is even less familiar than their own with Christian history, theory, and practice.
It is sad that any Anglican doesn’t even recognize the name of Richard Hooker, I knew of both Hooker and Jewel when I was yet a Baptist. Not knowing of Hooker as an Anglican would be like a Baptist not having heard of C. H. Spurgeon.
But did not Hooker in his say regarding communion:
[blockquote]”The example of our fathers may not retain us in communion and fellowship with that church, under hope that we, so continuing, might be saved as well as they.” [/blockquote]
and contra the views of the Presiding Bishop,
[blockquote]”For touching the principal object of faith, longer than it holdeth that foundation whereof we have spoken it neither justifieth, nor is, [i]but ceaseth to be faith when it ceaseth to believe that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour of the world[/i].”[/blockquote]
leaving us with:
[blockquote]We must therefore put a difference between them who err of ignorance, retaining nevertheless a mind desirous to be instructed in the truth, and them who, after the truth is laid open, persist in stubborn defence of their blindness.”[/blockquote]
#4: At least that slogan would make the choice of theme song for the GC rather easy.
Well at least she didn’t mention the “three legged stool”.
I recently bought one of three volumes of [i] The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. [/i] I have been reading some as I am able — and it is very good stuff. The style, however, is so remarkably dense that it requires a great deal of thought to wrap one’s mind around it.
I am reading a section where Hooker is discussing Scripture. It is plain that he takes Scripture to be fully inspired and fully reliable, for he takes a number of passages from the Gospels where the same story is related and shows how the variations are not contradictions but simply small differences of perspective. I have not yet reached the place where he speaks of the three authorities for what we believe, but I am looking forward to seeing the wider context for that passage. Even simply knowing what he says in those brief sentences, it is plain that Hooker does not make the three anywhere near being equal; reason and “the voice of the Church” are to be used when what Scripture says is not clear, or perhaps where what one is wondering about is not spoken to in the Bible.