What’s Wrong with the Regulative Principle?

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After two weeks of hibernation (well, excluding the comments thread on the most recent post), the lights will be slowly flickering back on here.  And where better to re-start than with S&P’s patron saint, Richard Hooker?  In this post, I want to look squarely at a question that has been dancing around in the background of many of my Hooker and Puritanism posts, and much of my research on those topics: What did Hooker think about the so-called “regulative principle of worship”?  

The RPW, as any self-respecting Presbyterian knows, runs something like this: “In its worship, the church is to be so guided by Scripture that it must include only those elements for which there is a Scriptural basis, whether it be by way of command or example.”  There are of course looser and stricter applications of this rule, and many of the stricter ones seem to reach bizarrely unbiblical conclusions, such as excluding all musical instruments (um, ever read the Psalms, fellas?).  In principle, though, regulativists agree in denying the so-called “normative principle,” viz., that the Church may worship in any way that is not forbidden by Scripture.  

In reality, of course, the practical difference between the two parties—at any rate with mature, intelligent, and theologically sensitive representatives of them—turns out to be rather less than that bald opposition implies.  For both sides can usually recognize that Scripture offers much more than merely commands and prohibitions; for the most part, it offers principles and historical examples that can and should inform our worship, but in indirect ways that do not necessarily admit of one-to-one application.  Both sides usually draw upon historical precedents as well in forming their liturgies.  The difference then often reduces to one of emphasis, so that regulativists say, “We need to let our worship be always guided by Scripture, always mindful of course of history and common sense” and normativists say “We need to let our worship be guided by history and common sense, always mindful of course of Scripture.”

In particular, the differences are blurred by a key qualification that advocates of the regulative principle have, since their earliest days, had to make: we must distinguish, they say, between “elements” and “circumstances” of worship.  The former are perpetual, essential, commanded by God in Scripture, and must be justified out of it; so we cannot add any additional elements not given in Scripture.  The latter are variable, accidental, not necessarily given in Scripture, and open to improvisation within the general rules of Scripture.  The first consist of the basic building blocks of worship, the latter of the particular ways in which they are manifested in a particular congregation.  It is not hard to see how such a distinction could admit of enormous elasticity.  So, for instance, a loose regulativist might well say merely that “songs of praise” are an “element” whereas the selection of what to sing, how to sing it, and how to accompany it, are “circumstances” that may vary a great deal, and for which we need not seek detailed Scriptural justification.  Stricter regulativists, however, might well contend that the use of musical instruments constitutes an “element,” not a “circumstance,” or that, if singing is an “element,” only Scriptural words must be sung.  A thoughtful non-regulativist, on the other hand, if pressed, could justify many liturgical practices, whether traditional (e.g., a liturgical procession) or contemporary (e.g., a skit) as a “circumstance” or a form of embodying one of the basic elements—prayer, praise, proclamation, offerings, and sacraments.

Moreover, not only must it be conceded that some things may clearly be done in worship that are not prescribed in Scripture, but it also seems clear that not all things prescribed in Scripture for worship must be done in our worship.  Most regulativists today tend to also be cessationists, maintaining that the gift of tongues has ceased and therefore was not intended as a permanent fixture of Christian worship.  

On these basis, some critics have suggested that the terminology of the regulative principle vs. the normative principle isn’t all that useful.  

 

So if we asked, “Was Richard Hooker—or is Anglican worship—opposed to the regulative principle of worship?” the answer is not that simple.  The Puritan critics of Prayer Book worship were insistent that a matter of basic principle was at stake—Are we going to be ruled by God’s Word or not?  Thriving on dualistic oppositions, they saw the entire debate as hinging upon the clash between this regulative principle—worship *according to* the Word of God—vs. the normative principle—worship *not contrary to* the Word of God.  At the end of Book III of the Lawes, however, Richard Hooker disarmingly dismisses this dualism.  In point of fact, he says, they share the same basic principles regarding worship; they just differed over the particular applications:

“For our constant perswasion in this point is as theirs, that we have no where altered the lawes of Christ further then in such particularities onely as have the nature of things changeable according to the difference of times, places, persons, and other the like circumstances.  Christ hath commanded prayers to be made, sacraments to be ministred, his Church to be carefully taught and guided.  Concerning every of these somewhat Christ hath commaunded which must be kept till the worldes ende.  On the contrary side in every of them somewhat there may be added, as the Church shall judge it expedient.  So that if they will speake to purpose, all which hitherto hath been disputed of they must give over, and stand upon such particulars onely as they can shew we have either added or abrogated otherwise then we ought, in the matter of Church-politie. Whatsoever Christ hath commanded for ever to be kept in his Church, the same we take not upon us to abrogate; and whatsoever our laws have thereunto added besides, of such quality we hope it is, as no lawe of Christ doth any where condemn.” 

In other words, we too stick firmly to all those things that Christ has commanded us to keep, omitting those things that were merely temporary ordinances, and all those things we add are mere matters of changeable circumstance.  The real debate is simply which particular matters fall under which heading, and whether, in the matters of changeable circumstance, the Anglican orders be beneficial or not—it is not whether or not Scripture is to be authoritative for our worship:  

“they must agree that they have molested the Church with needless opposition, and henceforward as we said before betake themselves wholly unto the trial of particulars, whether every of those things which they esteem as principal, be either so esteemed of, or at all established for perpetuity in holy Scripture; and whether any particular thing in our church polity be received other than the Scripture alloweth of, either in greater things or in smaller.”

Hooker will therefore occupy hundreds of pages in Book V working through these particulars one by one.  Does this mean, then, that Hooker accepts, ultimately, the regulative principle, but merely applies it in a very different way?  In the end, no.  The clever rhetorical move of reducing the whole debate to one over particulars comes only after Hooker has dismantled the principle in the form stated by the Puritans, leaving them as the only valid logical interpretation of the principle the watered-down version that Hooker will “agree” with.

Hooker’s preference, however, would be to reject the principle as a useful starting-point, and not only because it proves so useless and ambiguous when pressed, but on the basis of two underlying assumptions that taint the Puritans’ invocation of it.  First, it proceeds on the assumption that, as Cartwright says, “it is the virtue of a good law to leave as little as may be in the discretion of the judge,” so that the most specific form of a law is the most perfect.  So while it may be that a moderate and judicious use of the regulative principle would be unproblematic from Hooker’s standpoint, he recognized that the impulse that led to the advancing of the principle in the first place militates against such moderation.  All Protestants, after all, had always maintained that Scripture must guide our worship, but faced with the uncertainty and diversity that this general commitment left unresolved, the Puritans proposed the regulative principle as a more precise rule.  The goal from the beginning then was to attempt to restrict the scope of what might be considered “changeable circumstance.”

Second was the Puritan conviction that it was only because it had been set down in Scripture that any element of worship could be legitimate.  According to the reasoning of the regulative principle, public prayer would not be an acceptable element of Christian worship had it not been prescribed in Scripture.  But this was to mistake the uniqueness of Christian worship, which consists not so much in its elements as in its object, not so much in form as in content.  Of course, this is not to deny that the distinctive content of Christian faith does shape the form of our worship in many ways, or that Scripture provides plenty of guidance in that distinctive shape.  But consider that prayer, singing, praise, penitence, offerings, instruction, reading from Scripture all may be found in other world religions.  Indeed, Scripture itself teaches that the instinct to worship is natural to mankind.  On consideration, it is really only the sacraments that constitute truly unique elements of Christian worship, though even here it is the content—Christ Himself—that makes them unique more than the forms, which have parallels in other religions (washing rituals, sacraficial meals).  In this, as in so much else, Hooker insists that grace restores and perfects nature, rather than replacing it.

Of course, we do as a matter of fact find justification for these elements in Scripture, so why does it matter whether we could theoretically justify them from nature as well?  Because it affects our view of the purpose of Scripture.  Scripture, Hooker argues, presumes us already instructed by nature of the propriety of certain matters of liturgy and polity, rather than seeking to offer a complete blueprint starting from scratch.  But if we approach it assuming that it is only by being first set down in Scripture that an element of worship becomes valid, and assuming that the most precise instruction is the best, then we will find ourselves sifting the Scriptures in vain for detailed teaching on matters they simply do not address.  The result will be a stretching and warping of the Scriptures, a dishonor to them rather than an honor:

“As for those marvellous discourses whereby they adventure to argue that God must needs have done the thing which they imagine was to be done; I must confess I have often wondered at their exceeding boldness herein.  When the question is whether God have delivered in Scriptrue (as they affirm he hath) a complete, particular, immutable form of church polity, why take they that other both presumptuous and superflous labour to prove he should have done it, there being no way in this case to prove the deed of God, saving only by producing that evidence wherein he hath done it?  But if there be no such thing apparent upon record, they do as if one should demand a legacy by force and virtue of some written testament, wherein there being no such thing specified, he pleadeth that there it must needs be, and bringeth arguments from the love or good-will which always the testator bore him; imagining, that these or the like proofs will convict a testament to have that in it which other men can no where by reading find.  In matters which concern the actions of God, the most dutiful way on our part is to search what God hath done, and with meekness to admire that, rather than to dispute what he in congruity of reason ought to do.”

“A word of God for all things we have to do”

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The long-promised discussion on Elizabethan theonomy, although it turns out to be a rather short one, developed amidst a discussion of Puritan biblicism more generally—adapted from the draft of ch. 3 of my thesis.

Unfortunately, Cartwright does not rest content with asserting the supremacy of our duty to God’s glory and our brethren’s salvation over civil concerns.  Indeed, how could he, after long battles in the Vestiarian controversies had ended indecisively, with conformists earnestly insisting that God’s glory and the salvation of the brethren was not in fact at stake?  A more certain rule for resolving the doubtful conscience and adjudicating clashing loyalties was needed—Scripture.

“No man’s authority . . . can bring any assurance unto the conscience,” Cartwright concluded.  Perhaps in “human sciences” the word of man carried “some small force” but “in divine matters [it] hath no force at all.”  Of course, whether the matters in question were “divine matters” or “human sciences” was precisely the point at issue between him and Whitgift.  Whitgift would concede that in divine matters, Scripture alone was our guide, but if the disputed orders and ceremonies were merely civil ordinances, Scripture did not necessarily have much to tell us.  When pressed, then, Cartwright would go so far as to insist that in all actions of moral weight, Scripture was our guide: unless we “have the word of God go before us in all our actions . . . we cannot otherwise be assured that they please God.”  Recognizing the boldness of this claim, Cartwright offers a syllogism to back it up: “But no man can glorify God in anything but by obedience; and there is no obedience but in respect of the commandment and word of God: therefore it followeth that the word of God directeth a man in all his actions.”  Whitgift, breathless at such a declaration, answers that this would make not merely the matters in question, but all civil matters as well dependent on the Word, indeed, any action whatsoever, even “to take up a straw.”

Cartwright happily swallows the reductio, acknowledging that the guidance of Scripture is needed for the taking up of a straw.  Why?  Because although a class of action may be indifferent in itself, any particular action takes on the moral quality of goodness or badness based on the motive, and the motive, says Cartwright, must always be a desire to please God; since he has already argued that no man may be confident he pleases God except when acting in adherence to the Word, Scripture must in some sense go before us even in the most trivial of actions.  Cartwright has thus, under pressure to find some certain rule for guiding the Christian amidst doubtful and disputed moral decisions, collapsed any distinction between indifference epistemologically construed and morally construed, with the result of rendering the concept largely meaningless.  Since no action is morally neutral, and since the Christian must have guidance in all moral matters, and since Scripture is the Christian’s surest guide, Scripture must be taken to pronounce positively or negatively on all matters.

Even the relative indifference of the adiaphora, it would seem, would have to come from the positive permission of the Word.  And indeed, when Whitgift expresses concern on this score, Cartwright confirms that this is his meaning: “For even those things that are indifferent, and may be done, have their freedom grounded of the word of God; so that unless the word of the Lord, either in general or especial words, had determined of the free use of them: there could have been no lawful use of them at all.“  This is a remarkable transformation of the doctrine of adiaphora; no longer is Scriptural silence regarding a matter demonstrative of its moral lawfulness, but it is constitutive of it, so that this silence is to be construed as a positive act of  permission, without which the matter would have remained morally illicit. 

 

The fundamental difference between the conformist and the precisianist, then, is not merely that the precisianist considers that fewer matters have been left indifferent than the conformist does, although that is certainly the case; nor is it merely that the precisianist considers Scriptural guidance on matters that are indifferent to be more detailed and constraining than the conformist does, although that is certainly the case; rather, it is that the precianist considers all the relevant moral criteria to derive from Scripture, rather than merely being expressed in it.  We may see what this difference of approach entails by considering the role of the Mosaic judicial laws in Cartwright’s system.  Whitgift, worrying that the precisianist principle of Scriptural direction for every action would lead not merely to the abridgement of the magistrate’s freedom over ecclesiastical matters, but over strictly civil matters as well, was met with a curious waffling on the part of his adversary.  On the one hand, Cartwright and other precisianists would frequently insist that as ministers of the Gospel, they disclaimed all interest in merely civil and political matters, leaving those to the lawyers; moreover, they denied that the principles they advanced regarding ecclesiastical polity necessitated a similar reconfiguration of civil polity.  On the other hand, however, they at times forthrightly admitted that the laws of England ought to take the laws of Moses as their guide, and were to be condemned as unjust whenever they failed to do so.

This emphasis on the abiding validity of the Mosaic judicial laws has frequently attracted the interest of scholars for its idiosyncrasy among the Protestant Reformers (with the exception of the Scotch Presbyterians, who were in this of a similar mind as their English brethren), and its lasting influence on later Puritan theonomic/theocratic aspirations.  Paul Avis, in his instructive article “Moses and the Magistrate,” has shown that even where they used similar language, there was a compelling difference between a Calvin and a Cartwright on this issue.  The former, although much more emphatic about the positive uses of the law than Luther was, took a fundamentally similar tack on the judicial laws.  Luther believed that the while the Ten Commandments summed up the natural law, the latter temporally and logically preceded this formal expression, and the same principle applied to the rest of the Mosaic laws.  They were expressions and applications of natural law in a particular polity, and so, although its accuracy as a good application was, by virtue of its divine revelation, more assured than that of the law of Solon, it was not intrinsically more binding.  Only inasmuch as our own circumstances were the same as those of the Hebrews should we expect our own judicial laws to be similar to theirs.  Calvin’s argument is similar, viewing the natural principle of equity, perfected in the gospel principle of charity, to be instantiated in the Mosaic judicial laws, but to exist independently of them, so that it might and often should be instantiated quite differently in a contemporary Christian polity.  Cartwright, however, while he will use Calvin’s term of the “general equity” of the law, understands this as something posterior, rather than prior, to the particular positive law, extracted from it, rather than instantiated in it.  Accordingly there is some room for flexibility in application, but not a great deal:

“And as for the judicial law, forasmuch as there are some of them made in regard of the region they were given, and of the people to whom they were given, the prince and the magistrate, keeping the substance and equity of them (as it were the marrow), may change the circumstances of them, as the times and places and manners of the people shall require.  But to say that any magistrate can save the life of blasphemers, contemptuous and stubborn idolaters, incestuous persons, and such like, which God by his judicial law hath commanded to be put to death, I do utterly deny.”

 

This is because, for Cartwright, as Joan O’Donovan says, “the particular command . . . is the perfect form of law because it ‘leave[s] as little undetermined and without the compass of the law as can be.’”  Accordingly, we ought never to rest content with a mere general moral intuition if a clear Scriptural directive can be found; indeed, the latter is the only basis upon which the former can be valid.  This conviction leads Cartwright to a preposterous dependence on Scriptural prooftexts at many points in his debate with Whitgift where mere common-sense would have more than sufficed.  For instance, when complaining that in the Prayer Book service, the minister cannot be clearly heard by the congregation when he stands at the far end of the chancel, Cartwright feels the need to allege a Scriptural positive law for the principle, and resorts to Acts 1:15: “Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples.”  When Whitgift raises his eyebrows, Cartwright holds his ground: “The place of St. Luke is an unchangeable rule to teach that all that which is done in the church ought to be done where it may be best heard, for which cause I alleged it.”  At another point, discussing the requirements for elders, he says “The holie Ghost prescribing by Jethro what officers are to be chosen doth not only require that they should fear God . . . be wise and valiant, but also requireth that they be trusty.”  Jethro’s counsel to his son-in-law can no longer be read merely as prudent counsel, the prudence of which ought to be obvious in similar situations, such as the choosing of church officers, but must appear as a specific prescription of the Holy Spirit, intended for use as a positive law for the church.

This style of reasoning permeates the writings of Cartwright, Travers, and other precisianists, and is undergirded by two syllogisms that we find frequently repeated.  The first finds perhaps its most amusing expression when Whitgift queries the Admonition’s statement that in the Apostles’ time, there was always a careful examination of communicants before they were permitted to receive the Supper—how, he asks, do they prove this in Scripture?  “After this sort,” replies Cartwright: “all things necessary were used in the churches of God in the apostles’ times; but examination of those whose knowledge of the mystery of the gospel was not known or doubted of was a necessary thing; therefore it was used in the churches of God which were in the apostles’ time.”

It should not surprise us to find this sort of reasoning given the precisianist obsession with finding certainty; for the Christian convinced that he must please God in all actions, it was clear that the Church needed detailed guidance in all its practices, and since God must love and favor His church, it stood to reason that he must have provided such guidance in Scripture.  Moreover, since the most specific form of law was the most perfect, the more God loved his Church, the more detailed legislation we should expect.  Accordingly, we frequently find the following form of a fortiori syllogism:

“To prove that there is a word of God for all things we have to do: I alleged that otherwise our estate should be worse, than the estate of the Jews.  Which the Adm. confesseth to have had ‘direction out of law, in the least thing they had to do.’  And when it is the virtue of a good law, to leave as little undetermined and without the compass of the law as can be: the Answerer in imagining that we have no word for divers things wherein the Jews had particular direction: presupposeth greater perfection in the law, given unto the jews, then in that which is left unto us.  And that this is a principal virtue of the law may be seen not only by that I hade showed that a conscience well instructed and touched with the fear of God seeketh for the light of the word of God in the smallest actions.”

In a remarkable early passage of his Full and Plaine Declaration, outlining the Scriptural plan of Presbyterian polity, Walter Travers manages to combine both syllogisms side-by-side.  God’s care for his people, he says, is apparent in the precise and detailed legislation for the building of the tabernacle in the Old Testament; even though Scripture describes David and Solomon’s changes to the worship and building of the temple without narrating God’s prescription of them, we may safely conclude, given the obvious approval of their actions, that they would have only made such changes by express divine command.  “And,” concludes Travers, “how absurd and unreasonable a thing is it, than especially to think the love and care of God to be diminished towards his Church” that he would omit such express commands in the New Covenant?  

 

In their quest to safeguard Christian liberty, then, the precisianists have so hedged it in with unchangeable divine law that even Whitgift’s cold call to submission seems a charter of freedom by comparison.

Puritanism: A Guide for the Perplexed

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Readers of this blog hear a lot about Puritanism, most of it bad.  But what on earth is Puritanism?  What do we mean by the term?  It means a dozens of different things to different people, and in fact always has.  In hopes of helping clear the waters a bit and establishing the context for my own use of the term (which I am toying of discarding in favor of “precisianism,” for reasons you will see below), I’ve adapted the following introductory discussion from my chapter draft on Puritanism, and I hope it is of some use and interest to those who have been scratching their heads all this time:

Between 1567 and 1572, the Elizabethan Church enters upon a decisive new stage, engendering a movement which was to leave a wide and lasting legacy on the Reformed world, particularly in Britain and America, over succeeding centuries, a movement traditionally known as “Puritanism.”  Although a number of scholars have quite helpfully traced lines of development for the Puritan movement back to the Marian exile, or the Edwardian reform, or even the Henrician period, there is wisdom in the preference among contemporary scholars to confine the term to the Elizabethan era and beyond.  While the Elizabethan Vestiarian controversy is quite frequently narrated as the first chapter in this new movement, and is undoubtedly central to its development (as recognized in the previous chapter), there are good reasons for drawing a caesura between its conclusion in 1567 and the outbreak of the Admonition Controversy in 1572, when young radicals John Field and Thomas Wilcox, frustrated by the lack of official response to Puritan complains, published and disseminated a scandalously rancorous Admonition to Parliament.  

The document, clearly intended (despite its name) as a piece of public propaganda, ignited a firestorm of controversy: Field and Wilcox were imprisoned, an official Answere by John Whitgift was commissioned, and battle lines were drawn as pamphlets and counter-pamphlets, treatises and counter-treatises, began to multiply.  The immediate literary controversy, in which Whitgift emerged as the spokesman for the establishment, and Thomas Cartwright as the spokesman for the Puritans, lasted until 1577, but the movement that the Admonition called into being lasted in organized form until the early 1590s, when it had grown so militant that dramatic steps were taken by the bishops and Elizabeth’s Privy Council to quash it.  The personnel of this new movement, however, were rarely the same as those who had fought it out with the bishops over vestments in 1565-67, most of whom had grudgingly submitted when it was clear the policy was inflexible.  Of the twenty scrupulous Protestants who presented a supplication to the bishops over vestments in 1565, only three, says Patrick Collinson, “remained staunch to the radical cause until their deaths,” and most “at once dissociated themselves from the new extremism.”  So much so, in fact, that from 1572 on, “we are evidently witnessing the beginnings of a new movement rather than the conversion of the old.”

And indeed, the issues at stake in the Admonition Controversy are far different, and broader, than those in the Vestiarian.  No longer is the question one of the legitimate scope for resisting imposition of certain ceremonies that troubled scrupulous consciences, a dispute on the margins of the Elizabethan settlement, but it concerns the basic validity of that settlement across the board.  “We in England are so far off from having a church rightly reformed, according to the precscript of God’s word, that as yet we are not come to the outward face of the same,” the Admonition fulminates, throwing down a gauntlet to the bishops and the government.  At stake now is not whether the bishops should enforce strict conformity, but whether the bishops have power to govern the church at all; not whether civil law should presume to bind ministers to wear the cap and surplice, but whether civil authority has any place in the church.  A fundamental platform of the Admonition is the presbyterian doctrine of church government, which, aside from a general sense that lower clergy ought to have more authority in determining church affairs, had been nowhere on the radar in the earlier controversy.  This system of polity is not presented as a suggestion, as that best suited to the edification and good government of the churches, but as a biblical requirement.  This emphasis reflects a shift in attitudes toward adiaphora across the board, with the new Admonitionists suggesting not so much that indifferent ceremonies were being used unedifyingly, but that they were not indifferent in the first place.  As Collinson puts it, the “presbyterians replaced pragmatism with dogma.”  Earlier protests against tyranny in adiaphora, and suggestions that only Scripture could guide us to their right use, hardly seem to provide a basis for these aggressive new claims.

The reasons for such a dramatic shift in the tenor of protest, it must be confessed, remain something of a mystery.  The faultlines in the doctrines of adiaphora and Christian liberty, as we have argued in the previous chapter and shall explore further here, lead rather naturally to the biblicist mutation we find in the Admonition.  The adoption of Presbyterianism, however, appears more surprising, though it can be largely explained by two factors.  The first was the bishops’ complete loss of credibility during the Vestiarian controversy.  While in fact most of them were sympathetic to the concerns of scrupulous ministers, they were called upon to act as enforcers of a policy demanded by their sovereign, who discreetly recused herself from controversy, refusing to lend any official support, or civil enforcement, to the policy she had asked Archbishop Parker to promulgate.  Parker and his colleagues, then, were left in the unenviable position of justifying a policy which they had not crafted, unable to appeal to the sovereign for backing, and thus sure to appear to their opponents like arbitrary, power-hungry clerical tyrants of the sort that the Reformation had meant to rid England.  This, and the passionate attachment of most Englishmen to their sovereign, led those unsatisfied with the resolution of the controversy to focus their animus on the bishops, and begin calling into question the validity of the office in the first place, given its obviously (to them) tyrannical tendencies.  Second, the fact that Beza in Geneva had written sympathetically on behalf of the anti-Vestiarians, while Bullinger in Zurich had sided largely with the bishops meant that dissidents (many of whom had been exiles in Geneva under Mary), began to look exclusively to Geneva to find resources for their cause.  Beza’s presbyterian doctrine, a hardened and doctrinaire version of that which Calvin had pioneered, was taken up by some of these dissidents, particularly Thomas Cartwright, who made a name for himself by expounding the Presbyterian system in a series of lectures on Acts at Cambridge in 1570.  However, it is not enough to explain Cartwright’s Presbyterianism simply as the application of Genevan ideas to England, as has been customary among many historians.  On the contrary, with Cartwright and his associate Walter Travers, we find a systematic development of Presbyterianism, along with a distinctive version of the two-kingdoms doctrine, that went beyond anything Beza had yet articulated and indeed likely exerted an influence on his own crystallization of Presbyterian doctrine.  Certainly, Cartwright’s views on adiaphora, law in Scripture, and the two kingdoms go well beyond those of his hero Calvin, with whom he has too often been simply equated.

 

Of course, it will not do to let Cartwright speak for all so-called Puritans.  When Collinson speaks of a new movement beginning with the Admonition, he does not intend by this to imply the extinguishment of the old.  On the contrary, the more moderate style of nonconformity, and the more measured calls for the reform of obvious abuses in the administration and preaching ministry of the church, continued well beyond the Admonition Controversy, and indeed outlasted the demise of the hard-line Presbyterian movement in the 1590s.  Collinson and Peter Lake have succeeded in the last few decades in reconfiguring our concept of Puritanismso that no longer is the extreme rhetoric of the Admonition Controversy normative in defining the movement.  Rather, the moderate noncomformity and zealous Protestantism of a Laurence Chaderton (the Master of Emmanuel College at Cambridge from 1584 to 1622), they have argued, is more representative of the ethos of Puritanism, which is thus close to the mainstream, rather than on the dissident fringe, of Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism.  

This study can thus not avoid the extraordinarily vexed question of defining “Puritanism,” a question disputed for four centuries and now it appears further from resolution than ever.  Contemporary historians have vied with one another in expressing frustration with the elusiveness of the concept.  Patrick Collinson likens it to an elephant whose shape and attributes are debated by a group of blindfolded men, Christopher Hill to a “dragon in the path of every student of the period,” and W.J. Sheils to a “protean beast.”  If I might add my own metaphor to the discussion, we might say that Puritanismis like an impressionist painting, which appears luminous and distinct from a distance, but dissolves into a chaos of incongruous colors upon closer inspection. 

This ambiguity is perhaps not surprising in view of the fact that the term “puritan” originated as a term of abuse by its conformist opponents, and thus it was naturally long before any puritan acknowledged the term for himself.  As is usual with protest movements, puritanism had far more unity in the eyes of its opponents than of its various advocates, who quarrelled with one another, each denouncing others as either extremists or time-servers, and claiming his own platform as a moderate middle ground.  Elizabethan puritanism combined conformist, reformist, and separatist impulses, which created faultlines not merely between different “puritans” but often within one and the same puritan leader.  So it is that at different points in his career, we find Thomas Cartwright denouncing the Church in England as one that can scarcely lay claim to the title, having denied the kingship of Christ over it, and defending it against Rome as a true and pure church, authentically reformed; Presbyterianism is presented at times as a sine qua non for a church of Christ, at times merely as a desirable ornament.   Peter Lake has thus sought to undermine any attempt to draw a clear and fixed dividing line between “moderate” and “radical” Puritanism, mere conscientious nonconformity and Presbyterianism.  Amid the shifting rhetorical contexts in which Puritan principles were advocated, and the at times turtuous attempts of Puritan leaders to resolve the warring impulses within their own platform, it is no wonder that many modern historians have thrown up their hands in resignation at the attempt to describe a coherent theological or practical agenda for the movement.

A number of a generalizations attempting to define the heart of Puritan doctrine, many rooted in the earliest conformist polemics, have been offered, refuted, and counter-offered in variant forms.  For instance, it has been common to summarize the essence of Puritanism as biblicism; as Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales put it, “for the puritan the Bible was elevated to the status of the sole and complete repository of doctrinal and moral truth.”  They go on to quote William Bradshaw that Scripture was “the sole canon and rule of all matters” and Jacobean Puritan Robert Harley’s description of a Puritan as “one that dares do nothing in the worship of God or course of his life but what God’s word warrants him, and dares not leave undone anything that the word commands him.”  Of course, as others have pointed out, a high view of Scripture was not at all unique to Puritans, but was shared by their conformist adversaries; the difference, then, can be identified when it comes to the question of adiaphora.  Puritanism, it has been declared, consists in the rejection of the concept of adiaphora: “the Puritans’ extreme reliance on scripture led them . . . to denounce the whole idea that certain religious observances were ‘adiaphora’—‘things indifferent’—and that the leaders of the church and government had the right to decide whether they were valid and binding.”  Yet this stereotype has been categorically denied by John S. Coolidge in his detailed study of Puritanism and adiaphora, The Pauline Renaissance in England: “The Puritan categorically denies that he means what Conformists nevertheless persist in suspecting that he means: ‘to exact at our hands for every action the knowledge of some place of Scripture out of which we stand bound to deduce it . . .’ .  On the contrary, Puritans sometimes make a point of insisting that there is no precise scriptural directive for Church ceremonies, and that these should therefore not be the same in all times and places.”  And indeed, Peter Lake’s study Moderate Puritans in the Elizabethan Church not only reveals moderates like Chaderton extensively employing the adiaphora concept, but even Thomas Cartwright himself in his critiques of separatism during the 1580s.  Indeed, even in the Admonition Controversy, Cartwright repeatedly grants the validity of the concept, and either contends simply that a particular matter under dispute (e.g., Presbyterian church government) does not happen to be an adiaphoron, or else falls back upon the earlier insistence that adiaphora must be used to edification.  On this basis, Lake and others have denied that a rejection of adiaphora should be understood as part of even the Puritan platform.  Stephen Brachlow, on the other hand, cautions against disposing too readily of this stereotype, noting that harder-line Puritans were subject to intense cross-pressures when it came to this question, unable to do away with the adiaphora concept in certain settings, but hardly comfortable with it.

Another common but unstable stereotype is the idea, loudly and frequently repeated by their conformist opponents, that Puritans were seditious, against the royal supremacy over the Church, ready to “spoil him [the magistrate] of the one half of his jurisdiction.”  Puritan opposition to the royal supremacy, and indeed revolutionary tendencies more broadly, has been a popular subject among modern historians, always eager to find political implications to old theological controversies.  And yet here too the “protean beast” proves elusive, with Puritans of all stripes vying with one another in the fervency with which they affirm their loyalty to the Queen and even her supremacy over the Church.  John Penry, a radical if there ever was one, executed for sedition in 1593, calls the charge “plaine slandering” and protests “Looke whatsoever prerogative in ecclesiastical or civil causes hee or any man livinge can truly attribut unto the civil magistrate, wee do the same.”  Cartwright also never loses an opportunity, in his interchange with Whitgift, to denounce Whitgift’s charges on this score, and insists that on the Presbyterian platform, the Queen would still have wide jurisdiction over religious matters.  Confronted with these protestations of innocence, some historians have suggested that this is a point which tends to divide Presbyterians, who still favor an established church, from separatists, who seek a “reformation without tarrying for the magistrate.”  Yet as the example of Penry, on the verge of separatism when he wrote the tract quoted above, shows, this generalization too falters.  Brachlow’s treatment of the issue in Communion of Saints conclusively shows even hardened separatists doing homage to the concept of the royal supremacy.  Again, however, he suggests that this does not mean that the stereotype is altogether wrong; instead, we find strong cross-pressures which led more radical Puritans to continue making affirmations that they had great difficulty squaring with their doctrine.  Certainly it was the opinion of many conformists at the time, such as Whitgift and Bancroft, that puritans affirmations of loyalty were mere lip-service, and the true thrust of their platform, intentional or not, was destructive to the Queen’s jurisdiction. 

The distinction of Presbyterians and separatists, just mentioned, is another way in which historians have attempted to make sense of the various threads within the Puritan movement.  The former still wanted an established church, legally imposed on the nation as a whole, with a unified institutional apparatus, while the latter argued for individual voluntary congregations of the faithful, free from the coercion of the magistrate or of clerocratic Presbyterian synods.  Certainly this divergence loomed large in the 1640s and 1650s, once Puritans were given the opportunity to put their program into practice, but as Brachlow has convincingly shown, it is somewhat anachronistic five decades earlier, in which any line the historian draws between the two camps dissolves on closer inspection.  Again, he argues, all Puritans were cross-pressured by the desire on the one hand to maintain unity with the national church and the inability to imagine a plurality of “churches” within the same land, and on the other hand, their strong emphasis on the need for “visible saints,” for the church to become in reality the pure community of the “godly” that God had called it to be, and to exclude the lukewarm from its midst.

 

Given the evident difficulty of drawing stable generalizations about Puritanismas either a theology or as a political-ecclesiastical program, and yet the seemingly indispensable value of the concept, there has been a notable shift among historians in recent years toward thinking and speaking of Puritanismas a “culture,” an “ethos,” or a “mentalité.”  Durston and Eales capture the new emphasis well in their statement “Above all else, puritanism was a movement grounded in a highly distinctive cast of mind—or to use a more fashionable term, mentalité—which displayed itself in the individual puritan as a peculiarly severe yet vibrant spirituality, and within groups of puritans as a unique and dynamic religious culture.”  Along with this has gone a tendency to rely less and less on polemical portrayals of puritanismby its opponents, given the obvious difficulty of mapping their stereotypes onto the messy reality, and more on more on the internal dynamics of Puritanismin its various manifestations, as attested by its adherents and the products of its practical piety.  Moreover, by focusing less on attempts to draw strict dividing lines  between “Puritan” and “Anglican,” contemporary scholarship has been able to recognize much more clearly the extent to which aspects of Puritan theology and culture permeated the Elizabethan and Jacobean churches.  Accordingly, it seems that recent studies have grown increasingly tired of the tendency to rely on the “canonical texts” of Puritanism—the writings of Thomas Cartwright and his close allies during and immediately following the Admonition Controversy—for an understanding the movement, deeming them to have been mined to depletion by now, unlikely to yield much fresh insight.

Unquestionably, the recent flowering of scholarship along these lines has fostered an abundance of new understanding, shattering sterile stereotypes and paving the way for fresh consideration of aspects of Puritan life and piety, and lesser-known Puritan figures that have been previously marginalized.  What it has gained in breadth, though, it may be fair to say, some of the recent scholarship has sacrificed in depth.  That is to say, by adopting a posture of skeptical detachment from the sharp dichotomies drawn by the preeminent theological interlocutors of the period—Cartwright and Travers on the one hand, Whitgift and later Hooker on the other—scholars have perhaps missed opportunities to clearly discern the genuine theological commitments that were at stake and their relation to the received principles and tensions of the magisterial Reformation. If we conclude too hastily that conformist allegations of Puritan “popery” or “Anabaptistry” are mere stock-in-trade polemical jabs, without asking why these identifications were significant to the interlocutors, we will miss substantive emerging differences in ecclesiology and the theology of law and authority.  Given the remarks above about the elusiveness of pinning down Puritan convictions, it goes without saying that many of the theological faultlines are implicit, and take the form of divergent emphases rather than fundamentally contradictory claims.  We must resist the temptation to impute directly to any of these theologians the apparent logical conclusions of his claims, but we must equally resist the temptation to say nothing about those underlying trajectories.  

If we confine ourselves to the period 1570-1593, and to the more “radical puritans” of this period, those determined to erect a Presbyterian discipline, we might do well to jettison the slippery terminology of “puritan” and adopt instead what was in fact the designation of choice in this early period, “precisian.”  This too, of course, was a pejorative term adopted by conformist adversaries, rather than a self-label, but it captures perhaps more clearly the aspects of the presbyterian movement that will dominate my discussion here, and that dominated Whitgift, Bancroft, and Hooker’s critiques of the movement.  

In this, I am following the lead of Dwight Bozeman, who in his recent book The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion and Antinomian Backlash in Puritanismto 1638, identifies the theme of “preciseness,” a “zest for regulation,” as lying at the heart of both Puritan theology and piety.  “A primary attribute of the deity they served, ‘exact precise severitie’ was equally a habit and credential of his people.  ‘Walke precisely, or exactly, or strictly in all things,’ enjoined John Preston in a sermon, ‘Exact Walking’ . . . . To ‘walk exactly,’ this eminent preacher and college head explained, is to ‘goe to the extremity.’  It is ‘so to keepe the commandements . . . that a man goes to the utmost of them, . . . lookeing to every particle of them.”  It is clear from this description that by speaking of Puritan “preciseness” Bozeman does not mean to resurrect the stereotype of Puritan as mere nitpicker, preoccupied by a merely negative agenda of removing offenses that trouble his trivial scruples.  John Coolidge, echoed by Peter Lake, has rightly attacked this image, emphasising the very positive vision of reform that drove precisians of all stripes.  But contrary to Coolidge’s sometimes rosy-spectacled revisionism, this positive reform was to be conducted at every point according to strictly predefined rules, under the watchful eye of a rule-loving God.  At the heart of this outlook was the urge to leave as little undetermined as possible, and the conviction that failures to conform to these determinations were punished severely.  

It is not at all hard to see how such an outlook was bound to create deep theological rifts in a church formed by the Protestant spirit of adiaphorism, which contended both that a great deal of the Christian life was left undetermined—or at least underdetermined—by God’s commandments, and that, by virtue of the doctrine of justification by faith, failures to walk exactly were readily pardonable.  The doctrine of Christian liberty, with which the Puritan protest began, is at risk of being lost in a thicket of legalism.

No Mercy: Cartwright on the Death of Jesus and the Death Penalty

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Among the most disturbing passages in Thomas Cartwright’s Second Replie to the Answer of the Admonition, which, it must be confessed, rarely makes for edifying reading, and still more rarely for pleasant reading, is the lengthy section in which he undertakes to argue that not only are the death penalties of the Mosaic law still legitimate, but they are in fact strictly required of the Christian magistrate.  He is particularly interested in showing this with regard to adulterers blasphemers, and idolaters (worrisome because of how many people Cartwright would class in the latter two categories), all groups that John Whitgift had argued that the New Covenant magistrate had liberty to spare from death.

Cartwright begins, arguing that Christ’s sacrifice was intended merely to deliver from spiritual death, not corporal death, and hence in no way affected the temporal penalties which should belong to evildoers:

“It remaineth to show that there are certain judicial laws which cannot be changed, as that a blasphemer, contemptuous and stubborn idolator, etc., ought to be put to death.  The doctrine which leaveth this at liberty, when they can allege no cause of this looseness but the coming of our Saviour Christ, and his passion, faulteth many ways.  And first, it is a childish error to think that our Saviour Christ came down to exempt men from corporal death, which the law casteth upon evildoers; whenas he came not to deliver from death, which is the parting of the body from the soul, but from that which is the separation both of body and soul, from the gracious presence of the Lord.  And if it were not that our Saviour Christ had born in his own body this civil punishment of public offenders, it must follow thereupon not (which the Doctor [Whitgift] fancieth) that ‘it is in the liberty of the magistrate to put them to death’ but that he must, will he, nill he (if they repent) kepe them alive.  For if our Saviour Christ hath answered that justice of God in his law, whereby he hath commanded that such malefactors should be put to death, it should be great injustice to require that again in the life of the offender.”

Whitgift’s argument, in other words, proves too much, for if the death of Christ should make any difference at all for these judicial laws, it should be one that requires that mercy be shown, rather than merely permitting it.  (Whatever one thinks of the logic of this argument here, it is a typical move for Cartwright, who can almost never think in terms of permission—God either requires, or forbids.)  Cartwright goes on to argue, further, that Whitgift’s argument would make Christ’s sacrifice into a foolish thing indeed, since by inviting temporal mercy toward sin, he would encourage more evildoing:

“Again, this opinion is injurious unto the death and whole appearing of the Son of God in flesh.  For where he appeared for this cause, that he might destroy sin, which is the work of the Devil, the Answerer [Whitgift] in his imagination of choice, which he leaveth to the Magistrate touching the putting of such horrible offenders to death, doth at unawares as much as in him lieth make our Saviour Christ build again that kingdom of sin which he hath destroyed.  For when both in common reason and by the manifest word of God before alleged, the Lord giveth this blessing unto the punishment of such grievous offenders by death, that others not only which see but also which hear of them have the bridle of fear put upon them, whereby they are withholden from the like crimes; it must needs follow that whosoever maketh our Saviour Christ author of this looseness in punishing such offenders, maketh him forthwith to lose the bridle whereby others are stayed from throwing themselves down the hill of wickedness which was before committed.  And what is this if this be not to make our Saviour Christ a troubler commonwealths?”

Cartwright concludes by insisting that God has put the sword into the hand of magistrates not to permit them to use it, but to require that they use it, whenever it is called for, without mercy:

“In that the Apostle putteth a sword in the hand of the Magistrates, and in the use of it maketh him a  Minister and servant of the vengeance and justice of the Lord against sin; he striketh through this opinion which imagineth that our Saviour Christ came to hang the sword of the Lord’s justice upon the pleasure and will of men.  For the magistrate being the Lord’s officer, as the Sheriff is the Magistrate’s, it is no more in his choice to withhold the sword, which the Lord hath put in his hand to draw, then in the power of the Sheriff to stay the execution of that judgment which the magistrate himself hath lawfully commanded.  Now seeing there is a sword in the Magistrate’s hand by the doctrine of the Apostles, and that also which the magistrate must of duty draw, I would gladly know of the Answerer where that necessity can be found if it be not in these crimes of blasphemy, etc., which I have set down?”

This last part is really the crucial bit, manifesting as it does Cartwright’s conviction that God never, if he can help it, leaves humans, particularly authorities, at liberty to do as reason and prudence might dictate, but meticulously defines their responsibilities in advance.  What kind of God would he be, Cartwright asks rhetorically, if he left us to our own devices?  

 

It is this conviction which leads Cartwright to a classic theonomist stance regarding the continuing validity of the Old Testament civil laws, one which departs radically from that of earlier Protestant reformers.  I hope to explore this issue, in particular Cartwright’s fascinating distortion of Calvin’s language about the “general equity” of the Mosaic laws, in a subsequent post next week. 

The Reign of the Son of Man

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This post, again, contains much material from last year, but considerably reorganized, and much more developed (particularly in the latter section)

For Hooker, the royal supremacy, and indeed, the whole identity of a Christian commonwealth, cannot be explained without reference to Christology.  In this, he responds directly to Cartwright, but also, as we shall see, to VanDrunen, for both have advanced the same argument.   

In Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, VanDrunen lays great weight on what he calls the Reformed doctrine of the “two mediatorships,” which he summarizes, 

“As mediator, the divine Logos is not limited to his incarnate form even after the incarnation.  He was mediator of creation prior to his incarnation and as mediator continues to sustain creation independent of his mediatorial work as reconciler of creation in the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth.” 

The function of this doctrine is to emphasize two distinct offices of the Son of God, that of creator and governor over the order creation, on the one hand, and that of redeemer and governor over the order of redemption on the other.  These are not to be characterized as a temporal sequence, for, by virtue of the doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum, VanDrunen sees both offices being executed simultaneously and separately—while Christ was on earth, and indeed, after his ascension as well.  We need not look far to find the function of this doctrine for VanDrunen, for if Christ exercises two separate kingships, this authorizes the two kingdoms distinction.  VanDrunen, we will recall, correlates the civil kingdom to creation, encompassing phenomena such as politics, economics, and culture, and the spiritual kingdom to redemption, encompassing the Church and its work.  

Thus far, the distinction is fairly unobjectionable.  Having once made such a distinction, however, we must be careful not to allow it to become a dichotomy.  The personal unity of the Incarnate Word ensures that, as Hooker emphasized, creation and redemption hold together as two works of the same agent; moreover, these are not two unrelated works, but the latter, as we have seen repeatedly in Hooker’s exposition, renews the former and brings it to perfection.  A mere distinction of this sort, therefore, will not necessarily underwrite the strict separation of Church and state, of the norms of redemption from the norms of creation, that VanDrunen seeks to offer.  VanDrunen must therefore seek to resist the communicatio idiomatum whereby the human acts of the work of redemption can be predicated of the eternal Word and the divine acts of creation and governing creation can be predicated of the Son of man.  VanDrunen thus asks us to separate out these two “capacities”: “The Son of God rules the temporal kingdom as an eternal member of the Divine Trinity but does not rule it in his capacity as the incarnate mediator/redeemer.”  VanDrunen will even go so far as to say that this means we cannot rightly speak of “Christ” as creator:  “To distinguish between the Son as creator and the Son as redeemer entails that the title of ‘Christ’ belongs only to the latter . . . in his special mission of becoming incarnate for the particular work of saving his people.  The Son redeemed the world, but did not create the world, as the Messiah, the Christ.”  On this basis, VanDrunen argues, it is wrong to try to make the creation order (and thus the state) “Christian.”    

Distant as these Christological concerns may seem from politics, a glance at the 16th-century reveals that VanDrunen is not barking up the wrong tree.  In his debate with Whitgift over the relationship of the two kingdoms, Cartwright developed a similar line of argument, which he pursues at some length in his Second Replie.  In attacking Whitgift’s account of the civil and spiritual kingdoms, Cartwright argues that  

“yt confoundeth and shuffleth together the autoritie of our Saviour Christ as he is the sonne off God onely before all worldes coequall with his father: with that which he hath gyven off his father and which he exerciseth in respecte he is mediator betwene God and us.  For in the governement off the church and superiorytie over the officers off it, our Saviour Christ himselfe hath a superior, which is his father: but in the governement off kingdomes, and other commonwealthes, and in the superiority which he hath over kinges and judges, he hath no superior, but immediate autoritie with his father.”  

Further on, he explains, 

“let yt be consydered fyrst that our Saviour Christ ys in one respecte creator, and preserver of mankinde, in another redeemer, and upholder of his church.  For he created once and preserveth daily as God coequal with his Father, and holy spirite, but he both redemed once, and daily gathereth his church, as mediatour of god and man, in which respect even yet in his infynite glory he enjoyeth, he is, and shall be under his father, and holy ghost, untill having put downe all rule and power, he shall render the kingdom to his father.  Secondly yt ys to be donsidered, that as our Saviour Christe doth these in dyvers respectes: so he doth them by divers meanss.  To wyt that as God symply he hath ordeined certein means to serve his providence in the prservation of mankynde; so as God and man, he hath ordeined other certein, for the gathering, and keping off his church.  Thes groundes laied, yt is to be considered, whether the exercise off the sworde by the magistrate, come from our Saviour Christe preserver off mankinde, wherein he is coequal to his father, or as mediatour off his church, wherin he is inferiour.”

In these passages, Cartwright is attempting to assert a Christological basis for a separate government of church and state.  These institutions, says Cartwright, serve to provide for the ongoing work of redemption, and the ongoing government of creation, respectively.  Accordingly, they are not simply under the government of Jesus Christ in the same way, and cannot be mixed together.  In particular, Cartwright’s point here is to insist that we cannot speak of a human head of the Church, because the Church already has a human head, Christ Jesus, who answers to God.  As governor of the Church, “our Saviour Christ himselfe hath a superior, which is his father.”  However, Cartwright does want to allow for human heads of state, and thus argues that these are subordinated to Christ only as he is God: “in the governement off kingdomes . . . he hath no superior, but immediate autoritie with his father.”  Torrance Kirby explains: “According to Cartwright’s position, then, Christ has a double role or function as the ‘God-man’.  On the one hand, he is the source of all authority in the secular political order by virtue of his being the Son of God; on the other hand, he exercises ultimate power as head of his body, the Church, through his Manhood.”  With two distinct heads, then, the civil and spiritual kingdoms function in Cartwright’s account as two distinct, personally separated bodies.  

VanDrunen approvingly cites Samuel Rutherford advancing a similar, though perhaps even more starkly stated account: 

“Rutherford put the temporal kingdom under ‘God the creator’ and spiritual kingdom under ‘Christ the Redeemer and Head of the Church.’  In speaking further about the former, he writes that it is ‘not a part’ of Christ’s spiritual kingdom and thus states bluntly that the civil magistrate ‘is not subordinate to Christ as mediator and head of the Church.’  Along similar lines, he says later that ‘magistrates as magistrates’ are not ‘the ambassadors of Christ’ but ‘the deputy of God as the God of order, and as the creator.”

 

Behind this sort of account lurks the spectre of Nestorianism, the implication that we must treat the Incarnate God-Man as a separate agent from the eternal Word, and must strictly avoid predicating of the one functions carried out by the other.  Hooker is alive to this danger, and also to its larger consequences, recognizing that “such a separation within the source of authority, and its consequent ‘personal’ separation of the civil from the ecclesiastical community implies an inevitable de-Christianising of the secular political order.”  Accordingly, he responds to Cartwright’s claims from the Second Replie in a masterful stretch of argument in VIII.4.6, drawing on the Christological principles laid down already in Book V.

He begins, “As Christ being Lord or Head over all doth by vertue of that Soveraigntie rule all, so he hath no more a superiour in governing his Church then in exercising soveraigne Dominion upon the rest of the world besides.”  On this basis, he will argue “that all authoritie as well civill as Ecclesiasticall is subordinate unto his.”  One cannot, as Cartwright does, separate Christ’s kingship over the Church as man his divine kingship.  Hooker constructs his argument carefully, beginning with the eternal Son’s sharing in the rule of God the Father:

“That which the Father doth work as Lord and King over all he worketh not without but by the sonne who through coeternall generation receiveth of the Father that power which the Father hath of himself.  And for that cause our Savioures wordes concerning his own Dominion are, To me all power both in heaven and earth is given.  The Father by the sonne both did create and doth guide all.”

So far, VanDrunen and Cartwright would probably concur—the second person of the Trinity, by virtue of his divinity derived from the Father, is creator and ruler of all things.  However, Hooker insists at this point on the communicatio idiomatum: “there is no necessitie that all things spoken of Christ should agree unto him either as God or else as man, but some things as he is the consubstantiall word of God, some thinges as he is that word incarnate.  The workes of supreme Dominion which have been since the first begining wrought by the power of the Sonne of God are now most truly and properly the workes of the Sonne of man.  The word made flesh doth sitt for ever and raigne as Soveraigne Lord over all.”  Indeed, at stake here is not merely the doctrine of the incarnation—by virtue of which divine agency can be predicated of Jesus of Nazareth—but the doctrine of the ascension, by virtue of which the man Jesus Christ has been elevated, in his human nature, to kingship at the right hand of God over all his works.  Whereas VanDrunen asserts, and Cartwright implies, a version of the extra Calvinisticum which permanently sunders the human being Jesus Christ from the lordship exercised by the divine Son, Hooker insists that all that the Son worked as God he works now also as man, and what the Son works as man, he now does by divine power: “And yet the dominion wherunto he was in his humane nature lifted up is not without divine power exercised.  It is by divine power that the Sonne of man, who sitteth in heaven doth work as King and Lord upon us which are on earth.”  The two natures, in short, are united in one agency, one dominion, a dominion over not only the Church, but all creation.  

It is thus as both God and man that Christ rules over his Church, and as both God and man that he rules over the kingdoms of this world.  The foundation for all earthly government, then, is not merely from God the Creator, but now also through the God-man, the redeemer, who as man sits on the throne at the right hand of God, as redeemer of the world exercises his rule over creation.  All that the Son has and does by virtue of divinity, his humanity is made sharer in, and all that Jesus Christ has and does by virtue of his humanity, the divinity is made sharer in.  This, Hooker has argued, is simply the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation.  One cannot say then that as divine Son, the Word exercises a dominion in which the man Christ Jesus has no part, or that as redeeming man, Christ exercises an office in which the divine Son has no part.  Rather, all things on heaven and earth are made subject to the Word made flesh.  For that reason, there is no part of the natural order that has not been united to, and perfected in, the order of grace.

 

Just as the implications of Cartwright’s semi-Nestorian move for political theology are profound, so the implications of Hooker’s response supply him with a strong foundation not merely for his defence of the royal supremacy, but more generally, for his account of the Christian commonwealth.  Civil magistrates hold their authority derivatively from God through Christ, and thus are accountable to Christ for the outward protection of his kingdom.  Because we cannot sever Christ’s redemptive work from his work of creating and governing, it follows that magistrates are responsible not merely for preserving the created order of human society, and witnessing to God’s rule over it, but also for encouraging the redemption of society, and witnessing to the kingship of Christ the redeemer.  For Hooker, this is not a denial of his clear insistence on the integrity of the natural order, and of natural law as a means for governing this order.  Rather, as we have seen, he has maintained throughout that human nature seeks its proper fulfillment in union with God.  Now that this natural end has been achieved by virtue of supernatural grace in the Incarnation of Christ, one cannot speak of the natural order without reference to its rightful king, Christ the Redeemer.  In him, human nature has not been destroyed, nor transformed into something else; rather, it has been restored from its fallen condition, and advanced to a higher perfection, a perfection not beyond nature but proper to it.  Accordingly, the political order, while falling within the realm of nature, is not unaffected by the work of Christ; it cannot carry on as though it existed only under the banner of a generic deity.  By the same token, nor does natural law have no need of the revelation of Christ and his Word, despite having its roots in creation rather than redemption.