Christology, Ecclesiology, and Sacramental
Theology
in Richard Hooker
in Richard Hooker
In asking any theological question
in the Anglican tradition, as with many theological traditions, it is best to
go back to the source. The Anglican
Church was formed in the middle part of the 16th century, and
instead of one great theologian being at the center of its formation it is
better to think of three early theologians as marking out the contours and
borders of Anglican thought. Thomas
Cranmer was Archbishop of Canterbury at this point in history, and his primary
impact was on the common prayer of the church.
Cranmer oversaw the translation of the liturgy into English, and
instituted reforms in the clergy and laity.
John Jewel was an apologist for the new church, defending reformation of
the English church against objections from traditional Roman Catholics. Richard Hooker was a priest and theologian
who defended the church against Puritan objections, seeking to justify the
retention of traditions and practices that the church had inherited from the
Great Tradition of the past 1500 years.
It is to this last theologian, Richard Hooker, which I want to look for
an Anglican position on the relationship between Christology, ecclesiology, and
sacramental theology. In summation,
Hooker believed that through the sacraments, believers are united to the
divine-human Christ, through his presence in his church.
Richard Hooker was born in 1554 and
educated at Oxford. He first taught
Hebrew before being ordained and serving in a number of different
churches. Unlike Thomas Cranmer and John
Jewel, Richard Hooker never became a bishop.
Hooker’s most famous work is his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. “Hooker set out to defend the ideas and
practices the Church of England had retained from its catholic past, primarily
questions of church government…and worship.”[1]
Through the course of this book, Hooker sets out definitions of many areas of
theology which have served as authoritative guides to Anglicans for the last
four centuries.
The key for understanding Richard
Hooker’s theology is the idea of participation.
As one scholar has noted, “Hooker cries aloud for a Christianity which
saves the whole man.”[2] This salvation came through participation
with Christ through the sacraments; specifically through baptism and Eucharist,
humanity is supernaturally restored to its true nature. This occurs through the power of the Holy
Spirit, in communion with Christ’s body, which is the church.
Essential to Hooker’s view of
salvation is his Christology. Hooker,
who in this and many other areas is following in the tradition of Aquinas, sees
the problem of humanity to be in its nature, that is, the common elements which
make human beings so. Whereas at
Creation, part of human nature was the ability to commune with God, that part
was lost in the fall, thus making fallen humanity less than human, less than
that original nature which was created.
However, through Christ being both divine and human, the possibility of
communion with God is restored. Hooker
writes, “[W]hen Christ sanctified his own flesh, giving as God and taking as
man the Holy Ghost, he did not this for himself only but for our sakes, that
the grace of sanctification and life which was first received in him might pass
from him to his whole race as malediction came from Adam unto all mankind”
(V.xix.10). Christology is so essential
for Hooker’s view of salvation, he writes, “That gift whereby God hath made
Christ a fountain of life is that conjunction of the nature of God with the nature
of man in the person of Christ” (V.liv.3).
The stress here on the ontology of Jesus as salvific may seem strange to
our ears, as we in the West have tended to emphasize the work of Jesus as that
by which we are saved. However, for
Hooker, as for many in the Eastern churches, salvation is based on the being of
Jesus. It is by “sharing in his humanity
we are redeemed, because we are brought again into communion with God.”[3] Christ serves as the bridge between humanity
and God because in him the two meet.
As with classical definitions of
Christ’s being, Hooker retains a differentiation between the natures of
Jesus.
The
very cause of His taking upon Him our nature was to change it, to better the
quality, and to advance the condition thereof, although in no sort to abolish
the substance which He took, nor to infuse into it the natural forces and
properties of His Deity…God from us can receive nothing, we by Him have
obtained much. For albeit the natural
properties of Deity be not communicable to man’s nature, the supernatural gifts
graces and effects thereof are. (V.liv.5)
Although
in Jesus human and divine meet, they are not mixed, and the divine is not
altered. Rather, the human is restored
so that it can receive from God the supernatural gifts, graces, and effects.
Thus far we have shown how central
the being of Jesus is to Hooker in terms of salvation. In Him, human and divine meet, thereby
bridging the eternal separation wrought in the Garden. However, the question remains as to how human
beings enter into this union, that they might be redeemed and brought into
communion with God. Hooker’s answer is
that this occurs in the Church.
We
are therefore in God through Christ eternally according to that intent and
purpose whereby we were chosen to be made His in this present world before the
world itself was made, we are in God through the knowledge which is had of us,
and the love which is borne towards us from everlasting. But in God we actually are no longer than
only from the time of our actual adoption into the body of His true Church,
into the fellowship of His children. (V.lvi.7)
Our
salvation is based upon God’s eternal decree, however, in time this adoption as
children of God occurs through fellowship with His Church. For Hooker, the Church is no mere association
of the like-minded; his words are too strong for that. No, it is in the Church that our actual adoption
takes place. In another place, he
writes,
Christ
is whole with the whole Church, and whole with every part of the Church, as
touching His Person, which can no way divide itself, or be possessed by degrees
and portions. But the participation of
Christ importeth, besides the presence of Christ’s Person, and besides the
mystical copulation thereof with the parts and members of His whole Church, a
true actual influence of grace. (V.lvi.7)
In
reference back to Genesis 2, Hooker writes that “The Church is in Christ as Eve
was in Adam. Yea by grace we are every
one of us in Christ and in His Church, as by nature we are in those our first
parents…So that in Him even according to His manhood we according to our
heavenly being are as branches in that root out of which they grow” (V.lvi.7). Hooker speaks of this as the “mystery of our
coherence with Jesus Christ” (V.lvi.7). In
each of these pictures, the presence of Christ in his church is stressed, and
to be in Christ is to be in the Church. Hooker goes on to specify that the link which
binds us to the Church, and thus to the God-man, Jesus, is the Holy Spirit. “That which quickeneth us is the Spirit of
the second Adam, and His flesh that wherewith He quickeneth” (V.lvi.7). By sharing the same Spirit we are united to
our Lord in His Body, made to be the Church.
Fallen humanity is brought back into
communion with God through participation with Christ, the one in whom divine
and human meet, and this occurs in the Church.
The instruments through which this occurs are the sacraments. It is through baptism and Eucharist that we
participate in the life of Christ. “Life
being therefore proposed unto all men as their end, they which by baptism have
laid the foundation and attained the first beginning of a new life have here
their nourishment and food prescribed for continuance of life in them”
(V.lviii.1). Baptism is the commencement
of participation with the life of God as the sacrament of new birth. Baptism “is the sacrament of regeneration,
the giving us a new nature by ingrafting us into Christ. Its importance to Hooker was crucial and of
the highest significance. It is the way
of entrance into the Christian life.”[4]
Through baptism, we are united with Christ, the God-man through whom we can
again have fellowship with God. As
baptism is the beginning of new life, Eucharist is the nourishment. “Such as will live the life of God must eat
the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man, because this is a part of that
diet which if we want we cannot live” (V.lviii.1). The elements of this meal can rightly be
called Christ’s body and blood because of what they enact, “they are causes instrumental
upon the receipt whereof the participation of his body and blood ensueth…So
that his body and blood are in that very subject whereunto they minister life
not only be effect or operation…but also by a far more divine and mystical kind
of union, which maketh us one with him even as he and the Father are one”
(V.lviii.5).
The effect of this union is a change in us which Hooker describes in terms of transubstantiation, “[the sacraments]
really work our communion or fellowship with the person of Jesus Christ as well
as in that he is man as God, our participation also in the fruit, grace and
efficacy of his body and blood, whereupon there ensueth a kind of
transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alteration
from death to life” (V.lviii.11). The
divine Son of God took on human nature in order to change it, to redeem it to
that point where union with God was possible.
Here, in the sacrament of Christ’s body, is where that transformation
occurs in the life of the individual believer, as they are united with Jesus. This mystical transaction occurs because of
the operation of the Spirit of God, who was in Christ Jesus and words within
the recipient of the sacrament, through the instrument of that sacrament. All of this takes place in the Church, which
is the earthly, visible presence of Jesus.
In looking to Richard Hooker for an example of a link between
Christology, ecclesiology, and sacramental theology, one finds a well-developed
theology of participation. Hooker saw
the worshipper being drawn up into the being of Jesus, in whom is true human
nature meeting divine nature. This
redemptive event occurs through the sacraments which take place in the Church,
the meeting place between fallen humanity and the Risen Lord.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Marshall, John S. Hooker and the Anglican Tradition. London
Schmidt, Richard. Glorious
Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
[1] Richard
Schmidt, Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 23.
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