Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology : A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace

Abstract

For many years, Richard Hooker (1554–1600) has traditionally been seen as the first systematic defender of Anglicanism, setting out in Elizabeth I’s reign the English Church’s position as a via media between Roman Catholicism and Reformed Protestantism. In the last twenty years, however, the old consensus has crumbled and revisionists have argued with increasing strength that Hooker should be viewed as a thoroughly Reformed theologian – a defender of the Elizabethan Reformed consensus against radicals like the puritans. Dr Voak takes issue with this interpretation, arguing that although Hooker started out in the Reformed mainstream, in his later writings he became highly critical of a wide range of fundamentally Reformed positions.

Taking as his starting point philosophical principles underlying Hooker’s theology, such as the freedom of the will and the concomitant resistibility of grace, Dr Voak moves on to consider Hooker’s views on such matters as original sin and human nature, justification and sanctification, the doctrine of merit and the religious authority of scripture, reason, and tradition. The book ends with an examination of Hooker’s manuscripts written shortly before his death, in which he defends his theology from the charge that it is contrary to the Thirty-Nine Articles.

Throughout, Hooker’s writings are carefully placed in the context of contemporary Reformed theology, and Dr Voak accounts for how Hooker was able to advance criticism of this religious tradition in Elizabethan England under the cloak of an attack on puritanism. Hooker emerges as a conservative who paradoxically came to occupy a remarkably individual, innovative position at a time of transition in the English Church.