The Third Dimension–Luther’s Two-Kingdoms Theology

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An excerpt from a crucial section of my paper, “Natural Law and Which Two Kingdoms,” to be presented next weekend at the American Academy of Religion:

We must recognize that there were at least two sharply divergent conceptions of the “two kingdoms” that emerged from the sixteenth century, and, of course, a number of more or less consistent half-way houses between them.  Unsurprisingly, these different conceptions, and the way they used natural law, will undermine neat modern preconceptions about what natural law might be, and will suggest several different ways of applying it to a Christian society.  

Martin Luther offers a succinct statement of the first conception in 1521: “The kingdoms of the world are ruled by human laws which evidently have to do with things temporal; the kingdom of Christ is ruled by the pure and simple word of the Gospel.”  For the second, we have the Scottish Second Book of Discipline (1578): 

“The Kirke . . . hath a certaine power granted by God, according to the which it uses a proper jurisdiction and governement, exercised to the comfort of the whole Kirke.  The Policie of the Kirk flowing from this power, is an order or forme of spirituall government . . . different and distinct in its own nature from that power and policie, which is called civill power, and appertaineth to the civill government of the commonwealth: albeit they be both of God.”

Whereas Luther predicates two realms, one of law and jurisdiction, and another of pure grace and liberty, in Scotland we seem back to something akin to Gelasius and the medieval “two swords” doctrine: “two there are by whom this world is governed”–the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities.  Both have power, law, and jurisdiction under Christ, but they govern different functions.  For Luther, on the contrary, we find all power, law, and jurisdiction classed as part of the civil kingdom; Mosaic law, evangelical law, and natural law all fall on this side of the equation.  In short, the “spiritual kingdom” is the Church, but what we would call the “invisible Church,” though perhaps a better term would be the “evangelical Church” taking visible form only in the dynamic preaching of the Gospel and administration of the sacraments.  The visible, institutional Church, the gathered congregation that must be organized, ritualized, and governed, is part of the realm of “polity,” part of the sphere of human authority which it occupies in common with the more mundane concerns of the civil magistrate.  Indeed, the visible Church is simply the communion of the faithful, and as such, includes the civil magistrate if he be Christian, and his government, if the society be Christian.  The continuing “Christendom” idea, the corpus Christianorum, and the civil jurisdiction over the Church that usually went with it, is thus not some inconsistent holdover that Luther’s two-kingdoms theory has failed to exorcise, as VanDrunen suggests, but is part and parcel of it.  Human life is not a two-dimensional map onto which the two-kingdoms are drawn as a dividing line between spheres of jurisdiction, but rather, a two-dimensional map with which the civil kingdom is coterminous, and of which the spiritual kingdom might be said to form the third dimension–the vertical God-ward relation which animates all the rest.

 

What does this mean for natural law?  Well, for Luther, the contrast is not so much between natural law and divine law (Scripture) as between law and grace.  Scripture contains law too, and this is taken to be harmonious with the natural law, helping to govern the civil kingdom as illumination and application of natural law principles.  As much that we would call “religious” falls within the realm of the earthly kingdom, so it falls within the orbit of natural law, which cannot thus serve as the means for a thoroughgoing separation of church and state.  Not that Luther offers us a complete fusion of church and state–mindful of the intimate relationship between the outward ministry of the visible Church, and the inward power of the Gospel which breaks through it, Luther was wary of making the institutions of the Church simply a department of State (although not very successful in preventing it), and argued for the importance of maintaining three distinct “hierarchies” within the earthly kingdom–state, church, and family.

  

Libertine Legalists

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(This is an excerpt from a thesis chapter I am drafting, “Richard Hooker and the Freedom of the Christian Commonwealth”–it explores the paradoxically libertine yet legalist implications of the Puritan rejection of human authority)

For Hooker, the problem with Puritanism is a warped doctrine of Christian liberty which will assuredly destroy the liberty of the Church (and along with it, the State and the individual).  As we have seen already, the doctrine of Christian liberty declared that Scripture alone had authority over the conscience, and that therefore, no other authority outside Scripture could bind the believer.  Given the original thrust of this doctrine as a weapon against papal authority, it is no wonder that it should tend to abridge the liberty of the Church, pitting against it the freedom of the individual and the authority of Scripture.  Rightly qualified, of course, this exclusive authority of Scripture applied only in matters of faith and salvation, in “the spiritual kingdom” into which, by definition, no man could reach, and the doctrine did not need to pose any threat to suitably humble human institutions.  But as the Puritans had made Church discipline and ceremonies to be matters of faith and salvation, a clash was inevitable.  

The problem this posed for the Church of England is revealed in a fascinating passage in Book V, chaper 71, where Hooker, discussing the particular case of the Church’s power to command holy days, takes the opportunity to unfold the alarming implications of Puritan biblicism:

“It is not they saie in the power of the Church to commande rest because God hath left it to all men at libertie that if they thinke good to bestow six whole daies in labor they may, neither is it more lawfull for the Church to abridg anie man of that libertie which God hath graunted, then to take awaie the yoke which God hath laid upon them and to countermande what he doth expreslie injoigne.  But without some expresse commaundement from God there is no power they saie under heaven which may presume by any decree to restraine the libertie that God hath given.  Which opinion, albeit applied here no farther then to this present cause, shaketh universallie the fabrick of government, tendeth to anarchie and meere confusion, dissolveth families, dissipateth colleges, corporations, armies, overthroweth kingdomes Churches and whatsoever is now through the providence of God by authoritie and power upheld.  For whereas God hath foreprised thinges of the greatest waight, and hath therein precisely defined as well that which every man must perform, as that which no man maie attempt, leaving all sortes of men in the rest either to be guided by their owne good discretion if they be free from subjection to others, or els to be ordered by such commaundementes and lawes as proceed from those superiors under whome they live, the patrons of libertie have heere made sollemne proclamation that all such lawes and commandementes are voide, in as much as everie man is left to the freedom of his owne minde in such thinges as are not either exacted or prohibited by the law of God, and because onlie in these thinges the positive preceptes of men have place, which preceptes cannot possiblie be given without some abridgment of theire libertie to whome they are given, therefore if the father commaund the sonne, or the husband the wife, or the Lord the servant, or the Leader the souldier, or the Prince the subject to goe or stand, sleepe or wake at such times as God him selfe in particular commaundeth neither, they are to stande in defense of the freedom which God hath graunted and to doe as them selves list, knowing that men maie as lawfullie comaunde them thinges utterly forbidden by the law of God, as tye them to any thinge which the law of God leaveth free.  The plaine contradictorie whereunto is unfalliblie certaine.  Those thinges which the Law of God leaveth arbitrarie and at libertie are all subject unto possitive lawes of men, which lawes for the common benefit abridg particular mens libertie in such thinges as farre as the rules of equitie will suffer.  This wee must either maineteine or els overturne the world and make everie man his own commander.”

Here Hooker attributes to the Puritans the claim that, in all matters on which Scripture is silent, the individual is left free, and human authority cannot claim to interpose itself.  Although not explicitly stated, the comparison with Anabaptism, which was a standard of conformist polemics and which makes an open appearance several times in the Lawes, is clear enough.  The Puritans would have vociferously denied it, to be sure, and with good reason–they certainly held that the magistrate, in properly “civil” matters, could bind by positive law on matters which Scripture left at liberty.

  Nonetheless, when it came to “spiritual” matters, and the public order of the Church, many Puritans certainly held something like what Hooker attributes to them here–and since Hooker will argue that laws of ecclesiastical polity are of the same nature as civil polity, he is not unfair in here drawing out the Anabaptistic implications of their doctrine.

 

Clearly, however, this apparent libertinism was not incompatible with the starkest legalism.  It is this latter which Hooker is seeking to combat in III.11.  In the Admonition Controversy, Cartwright had argued that if God had given through Moses a thorough constitution for the people of Israel, then how could he omit this gift to the much greater new Israel, the Church of Christ?  The more laws given, the more blessed, reasoned Cartwright, so we must assume that Christ gave to the Church more and stricter laws than ever Moses gave to Israel.

When Whitgift objected that on the contrary, it appeared that the opposite was the case–whereas the political organization of Israel was strictly determined, little or nothing was said of civil matters in the New Testament, Cartwright retorted that 

“the leaving of us at greater libertie in things civill is so farre from proving the like libertie in things pertaining to the kingdome of heaven, that it rather proves a streighter bond.  For even as when the Lord would have his favour more appeare by temporall blessings of this life towards the people under the Lawe then towards us, he gave also politique lawes most exactlie . . . so his care for conduct and government of the life to come, should (if it were possible) rise, in leaving lesse to the order of men then in times past.” (255)

Since divinely-given law is the key to receiving blessings, then just the temporal blessings of Israel’s commonwealth were provided for by detailed divine law, so the spiritual blessings of the Church cannot come except by detailed laws.

Hooker responds by refusing to accept Cartwright’s presupposition that God must have blessed the Church with detailed laws, insisting on the simple empirical fact that he didn’t: “it is manifest that our Lord and Saviour hath not by positive laws descended so far into particularities with us as Moses with them . . . [therefore] to us there should be freedom and liberty granted to make laws.”  Here then it is Hooker arguing that we are “left at liberty” when Scripture is silent; only the liberty is that of an institution to make laws, not of an individual to be free from law. 

The strange dynamic between legalism and libertinism that Hooker identifies in Puritanism was a recurrent one in various forms of radical Reformation movements.  On the one hand, the Puritan platform asserts the absolute authority and massive scope of Biblical law, regulating in detail the conduct of a believer and leaving him, it would seem, very little liberty before God.  On the other hand, so all-encompassing is this divine law that it muscles out of the way all other forms of authority–since it leaves no matter in need of legislation untouched, we are to assume that no further legislation is permissible where it does not speak.  The believer is thus left a great deal of liberty before man.  By failing to distinguish the different planes on which divine and human authority operate, so that freedom of conscience before the one can coexist with bondage before the latter, the Puritan has imagined the two to be competing for territory on the same plane, necessarily in conflict, and with the latter sure to give way before the superior claims of the former.  Thus the assertion of Christian liberty strikes directly at the foundation of institutional liberty.

On the contrary, says Hooker, those things left uncommanded by divine law, being matters of adiaphora, are grants of liberty to political societies to frame positive laws “for the common benefit,” not chains restricting them from any legislation.  If we do not say this, then nothing is left to the authority of such institutions, but all to the individual or to Scripture.

The result of this, Hooker is convinced, will be the crippling of any capacity for corporate action and hence the destruction of society. 

Sola Scriptura in the Public Square, Pt. 2

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(In this second half, I use Richard Hooker’s development of the tripartite division of law to suggest a healthier approach to understanding Scriptural authority in political life.)

****Edit: As this paper will be published in an extended form by T&T Clark in a volume entitled The Bible: Culture, Community, and Society, they would obviously prefer if I did not have the full-text available here.  I have thus removed most of this post, and the previous one, leaving only some tantalizing excerpts.**

First, against the Puritan impulse to draw all things to the judgment of Scripture, Hooker contended strongly for a distinction between “things necessary” and “things accessory” to salvation.  He in no way backed down from the Protestant insistence on Scripture’s sole authority, but he insisted that we must not claim for this authority a broader scope than Scripture itself claims.  We may think we honor Scripture by claiming for it the authority to govern every area of human decision-making, but we deceive ourselves therein: “Whatsoever is spoken of God or thinges appertaining to God otherwise then as the truth is; though it seeme an honour, it is an injurie” (II.8.7).  Not only that, but by seeking to make of Scripture something that it is not, and requiring Scriptural warrant for any decision, “what shall the scripture be but a snare and a torment to weake consciences, filling them with infinite perplexities, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, and extreme despaires?” (II.8.6)

….

However, it should be evident from the way that Hooker has set up the distinction that he will have no truck with the use of natural law theory that gives Scripture exclusive authority over sacred or spiritual matters, and natural law exclusive authority over everything else.  For clearly not everything of which Scripture speaks is “necessary to salvation”; it sheds light on a great deal else, not merely of a historical nature, but of an ethical nature as well.  So to say that “only Scripture speaks authoritatively of spiritual matters” is not to say that “Scripture only speaks authoritatively of spiritual matters.”  To set up such a dichotomy would remain, in Hooker’s eyes, a product of a Puritan bifurcation between nature and grace.

 … 

So if it is in fact true that we should not expect unaided man to come to a fully adequate understanding of morality and application of it in politics, if it is true that we should expect Scripture to shed light on such questions, indeed, to clarify for us the fundamental principles of morality and how to apply them in any number of situations, then how exactly does this differ from the Puritanism above?  How is Scripture’s authority in these matters “accessory to salvation” different from in matters “necessary to salvation”?  

This is where Hooker’s doctrine of “human law” comes in.  For while God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever, and the means of calling upon Him and being united to Him has not changed, human affairs change every day.  

… 

So even to the extent that Scripture illumines for us general principles of natural law, and provides particular applications, it does not supersede the need for human beings to deliberate together and make laws for their own circumstances.  Against Puritan opponents who insisted that if Scripture declared a law for human action, we would be arrogant to ever make other laws, Hooker insists, “Lawes are instruments to rule by, and that instruments are not only to bee framed according unto the generall ende for which they are provided, but even according unto that very particular, which riseth out of the matter wheron they have to work.  The end wherefore lawes were made may bee permanent, and those lawes neverthelesse require some alteration, if there bee anye unfitnes in the meanes which they prescribe as tending unto that end and purpose.” (III.10.3)


Of course, anyone, when pressed, will grant such a distinction between general ends and particular circumstances, and thus the need to use reason and some degree of flexibility in applying Scripture.  But the point that Hooker presses against his Puritan opponents is that this is nothing to be ashamed of.  God does not reap glory at human expense, but by empowering humans to imitate him.  Therefore, we need not grudgingly admit that unfortunately, Scripture doesn’t give us precise directives on some ethical or political question, and try to resist all social change so as to keep ourselves from having to make new applications and interpretations.  On the contrary, we happily embrace our God-given task of using all the resources at our disposal–nature, experience, Scripture, and the existing laws of our societies–to seek fresh applications of very old principles to very new problems.  

The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Hooker’s Doctrine of Law, Pt. 7)

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Now I’m finally wrapping up this series, which has helped give me the first chapter of my dissertation–or more likely, the third chapter, but the first one written.  Congratulations to anyone who actually had the perseverance to read it.  Now I’ll try to get back to Christology and to some less meaty matters, including hopefully some more concise attempts to apply some of this Hooker material to concrete questions of our own context.

Hooker has thus far established that all laws in the Church must be made in obedience to God, but this obedience does not preclude the use of reason and natural law–indeed, it requires it.  God, he has shown, is the author of all wisdom and truth, which comes to us through various vehicles, of which Scripture is the most important–in all things relevant, in many things of chief authority, and in some things of exclusive authority.  Even when we rely on Scripture alone in framing laws, reason will play an indispensable role.  

Hooker is now ready to parse out exactly how reason and Scriptural authority play out in the making of laws of ecclesiastical polity; but before summarizing this, it may be helpful to recap briefly some key points made earlier. 

Three types of law are of particular concern to us: the law of reason, divine law, and human law.  We may categorize these three in terms of an overarching twofold distinction: natural laws and positive laws–the former of which are binding always and everywhere by the nature of things, and the second of which are binding by virtue of being promulgated at some point in time–though they may thereafter be permanent.  The law of reason is natural, while divine and human laws are positive.  (Scripture, in this scheme, is not to be understood as synonymous with divine law: it includes both natural laws–laws of reason spelled out more clearly and precisely–and divine laws, either applications of the law of reason or additions to it.)  Human laws are concrete applications of either the law of reason or the divine law, and can be either mixedly human–that is, applications or specifications of duties already made clear in the law of reason or divine law; or merely human–that is, specifications of duties that are not already clear in the law of reason or divine law, but are nonetheless conformable to it and can be probably deduced from it.  

 

All these distinctions are in the background of III:9-11, but most important here will be Hooker’s elaboration of a notion he has repeatedly touched on earlier: mutability.  Natural laws are immutable, but will take on a great deal change and variability whenever applied to the mutable circumstances of human laws.  Divine laws, although promulgated by God himself, are not therefore necessarily immutable, though they may be.  Hooker’s task now is to show just where and how mutability enters into law.  

Hooker begins III.9 by affirming adamantly that Scripture plays an indispensable role in framing laws of church polity.  But lest we should ask why indeed such laws should need to be framed at all, if we already have Scripture, Hooker reminds us, “yet because both in that which we are commanded, it concerneth the duty of the Church by law to provide, that the loosenes and slacknes of men may not cause the commandements of God to be unexecuted; and a number of things there are for which the scripture hath not provided by any law, but left them unto the carefull discretion of the Church; we are to search how the Church in these cases may be well directed to make that provision by lawes which is most convenient and fit.”  These two needs for laws correspond to his much earlier distinction betweeen mixedly and merely human laws.   

In both cases, “partely scripture and partly reason must teach to discerne,” a claim for which he has laid all the groundwork in previous sections.  Scripture gives us three kinds of direction–examples, laws natural, and laws positive.  Examples “can but direct as precedents onely.  Naturall lawes direct in such sorte, that in all thinges we must for ever doe according unto them; positive so, that against them in no case we may doe any thing, as long as the will of God is that they should remaine in force.  Howbeit when scripture doth yeelde us precedents, how far forth they are to bee followed; when it giveth naturall lawes, what particular order is therunto most agreeable; when positive, which waye to make lawes unrepugnant unto them; yea though all these shoulde want, yet what kind of ordinances woulde be moste for that good of the Church whch is aimed at, al this must be by reason founde out.”  So in each of these three kinds of scriptural direction, and when such direction is lacking altogether, reason plays a necessary role.  The most important distinction made here is between the diverse ways that natural and positive laws bind.  Natural laws being general in their scope, we must take them as fully regulative for our conduct.  But positive laws, being promulgated for particular ends, are such that we may not, depending on the circumstance, be bound to follow them, only to make sure that we do not act contrary to them: “Lawes humane must be made according to the generall lawes of nature, and without contradiction unto any positive law in scripture.  Otherwise they are ill made.”

 

In chapter 10, he will turn to distinguish precisely the subcategories of scriptural positive law, and when it is mutable.  Laws of church polity, he says, can be changed in three ways: “when either altogether abrogated, or in part repealed, or augmented with farther additions.”  Some positive laws will state just how long they continue in force; many, however, will not.  In the latter case, the only way for us to determine whether they are still in force is “by considering the nature and qualitie of such lawes,” which is to be judged by “by the ende for which it was made, and by the aptnes of thinges therein prescribed to the same end.”

Of course, some laws are such that we do not know the end of them–it has simply not been disclosed to us by the lawmaker, and we are unable to divine it on our own.  As an example, Hooker gives God’s original command to Adam, not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Adam simply did not know why God made the law, and Satan took advantage of this ignorance.  We know it must have had a good reason, but not knowing what that reason was, we cannot be sure whether the command had permanet force or would’ve expired when certain conditions changed.  Indeed, theologians have debated precisely this point, some concluding based on a certain construal of the purpose of the law that in time, Adam would’ve received permission to eat of it, others imagining this as a permanent condition.  When the end of the law is unknown, says Hooker, only the lawmaker has power to change the law; otherwise, we must assume it to be perpetually binding.  

But what if we do know the end for which a law was instituted?  Well, if that end is known to be permanent, then so is law, though not absolutely:  “But if the reason why thinges were instituted may be knowne, and being knowne do appeare manyfestly to be of perpetuall necessitie, then are those thinges also perpetuall, unless they cease to be effectuall unto that purpose for which they were at the first instituted.”  The qualification here is a crucial one, so it’s worth paying attention to Hooker’s elaboration: “we cannot be ignorant, howe sometimes that hath done great good, which afterwardes, when time hath chaunged the auncient course of thinges, doth growe to be either very hurtfull, or not so greatly profitable and necessary” (III.10.1).  Hooker will return to this distinction later, but for now he turns to the other main classification, positive laws with temporary ends: “Whether God bee the author of lawes by authorizing that power of men whereby they are made, or by delivering them made immediatly from him selfe, by word onely, or in writing also, or howsoever; notwithstanding the authoritie of their maker, the mutabilitie of that end for which they are made doth also make them chaungeable” (III.10.2).  Examples here include the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, and even New Testament laws such as the decree of the Council of Jerusalem.  These are laws made to serve temporary purposes, which expire when these purposes expire.  Hooker is particularly insistent on this category because his Puritan opponents are arguing that the divine authority of the lawmaker should be sufficient proof that we have no right to change his laws–to do so would be to assert our authority above his.  This argument rests on a fundamental confusion, and an inability to distinguish the different kinds and purposes of laws, says Hooker.  

Those who concede this point, however, insist that any law with a permanent end must be unchangeable: “for us to change that which he hath established, they hold it execrable pride and presumption, if so be the end and purpose for which God by that meane provideth be permanent.  And upon this they ground those ample disputes concerning orders and offices, which being by him appointed for the government of his Church, if it be necessary alwaies that the Church of Christ be governed, then doth the end for which God provided remaine still, and therfore in those meanes which he by lawe did establish as being fittest unto that end, for us to alter any thing is to lift up our selves against God and as it were to countermaund him.”  

This too, however, manifests a crucial misunderstanding:

“they marke not that lawes are instruments to rule by, and that instruments are not only to bee framed according unto the generall ende for which they are provided, but even according unto that very particular, which riseth out of the matter wheron they have to work.  The end wherefore lawes were made may bee permanent, and those lawes neverthelesse require some alteration, if there bee anye unfitnes in the meanes which they prescribe as tending unto that end and purpose” (III.10.3)  

Here is his elaboration of his earlier remark about laws becoming in time no longer “apt” to their purpose.  The end of the law (e.g., “good order in the Church” is completely good, and remains as long as the world lasts), but the matter may change, so that a law formerly good ceases to be so, and must be altered so as to realize the original end in new circumstances.  There is plenty of evidence for this happening in the Old Testament itself, and it is clear that many of the apostolic injunctions to the New Testament church, while their general aim remains constant, may require alteration when the Church finds itself in new settings.  To be sure, it will be hard to reach agreement about precisely which injunctions fall under this heading, but all will ultimately have to grant that some laws do.   “And therefore lawes though both ordeyned of God himselfe, and the end for which they were ordeined continuing, may notwithstanding cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be found unsufficient to attain unto that end.  In which respect why may we not presume that God doth even call for such change or alteration, as the very condition of things them selves doth make necessary?” (III.10.4)

Hooker has thus arrived at three categories–laws in which both the end and the matter remain constant, and thus can never be changed; laws in which the end is temporary, and which thus expire once the end has been accomplished; and laws in which the end is permanent, but the matter changes.  These correspond, he argues, to the conventional threefold division in the Old Testament law: moral, ceremonial, and judicial.  The first of these concerns matters necessary to salvation; the latter two things accessory thereunto.

 

It then remains merely for Hooker to answer a few objections.  He has already dealt with the argument that the authority of the lawmaker in itself proves Scriptural laws unchangeable; indeed, he has developed this whole schema in response to this objection.  But at the end of chapter 10, he turns to a variation on it: they argue that it is sacrilege to innovate upon the Gopsel, “And the Gospell as they say containeth not onely doctrine instructing men howe they should beleeve, but also preceptes concerning the regiment of the Church.  Discipline therefore is a part of the Gospell: and God being the author of the whole Gospell, as well of discipline as of doctrine, it cannot be but that both of them have a common cause.  So that as we are to beleive for ever the articles of evangelicall doctrine, so the preceptes of discipline we are in like sorte bounde for ever to observe” (III.10.6).  In other words, since matters of faith and of outward discipline were delivered together in the New Testament, they must be equally permanent.  However, the distinctions already drawn dissolve this objection: “There is no reason in the world wherefore we should esteem it as necessarie alwaies to doe, as alwaies to believe the same things; seing every man knoweth that the matter of fiath is constant, the matter contrariwise of action daily changeable, especially the matter of action belonging unto Church politie” (III.10.7).

The last objection occupies Hooker throughout the lengthy chapter 11, and runs as follows: very well, in principle, it may well be that the laws of polity given in Scripture are mutable; however, if the divine lawmaker made a point of making them immutable, then we lose that freedom to modify them.  And since God laid down rules of strict perpetuity in the Mosaic law, how could we imagine that he would leave his Church less well-provided in the New Covenant?  Hooker’s response to this objection, apparently a popular one among the Presbyterians, proceeds by several stages.  He argues first that there is no reason why just because Christ was a more perfect mediator, he had to give an equally permanent polity–it was not in this that his perfection consisted.  Moreover, it is false that the laws of Mosaic polity were so unchangeable as they allege–many fell into what we designated above IIIB2.  Moreover, a look at the New Testament witness makes it quite clear that Christ, as a matter of fact, simply didn’t lay down a system of law like Moses did.  So that Hooker can conclude with the stinging retort: “As for those mervelous discourses wherby they adventure to argue that God must needs have done the thing which they imagine was to be done, I must confesse I have often wondered at their exceeding boldnes herein.  When the question is whether God have delivered in scripture (as they affirme he hath) a complet particular immutable forme of Church-politie, why take they that other both presumptusous and superfluous labour to prove he should have done it, there being no way in this case to prove the deede of God saving only by producing the evidence wherein he hath done it?  But if there be no such thing apparent upon record, they do as if one should demaund a legacie by force and vertue of some written tesatment, wherein there being no such thing specifyed, he pleadeth that ther it must needs be, and bringeth arguments from the love or goodwill which alwayes the testatour bore him, imagining that these or the like profes will convict a testament to have that in which other men can no where by reading find.”

 

Hooker concludes Book III by arguing that as a matter of fact, the Puritans make plenty of distinctions of their own between fixed forms and changeable circumstances; there are plenty of commands regarding church order even in the New Testament that they consider  temporary (Hooker gives several examples, including the provisions for widows and the practice of love feasts).  Likewise, the Anglicans recognize that there are many matters of church orders that are not flexible, in which we are not permitted to make new laws.: ultimately, the question is not about generalities, but particulars. 

“The fault which we finde with them is, that they overmuch abridge the Church of her power in these things.  Whereupon they recharge us, as if in these things we gave the Church a libertie which hath no limits or bounds, as if all things which the name of discipline conteineth, were at the Churches free choice….They graunt that in matter of circumstance they alter that which they have received, but in things of substance they keepe the lawes of Christ without chaunge….we say the same in our owne behalfe….For our constant perswasion in this point is as theirs, that we have no where altered the lawes of Christ further then in such particularitis onely as have the nature of thinges changeable according to the difference of times, places, persons, and other the like circumstances” (III.11.13).

The debate, then, is not in fact about generalities, as it has seemed all along.  This is, Hooker claims, merely a smoke-screen, a bunch of bombastic rhetoric exalting Scripture and implying that the Puritans take Scripture seriously while the Anglicans run roughshod over it.  In fact, no sane party to the dispute denies some difference between unchanging substance of biblical law and changing applications.  The rest of the debate, then, must revolve around particulars–specific questions in which the Puritans take Scripture to have laid down unchanging law which forbids the Church of England’s practice.  Hooker will spend the remaining 1150 pages of the Lawes addressing these particular compaints with enormous systematic thoroughness.


Visible v. Invisible, Necessary v. Accessory (Hooker’s Doctrine of Law, Pt. 6)

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Before moving on to Hooker’s detailed account of church polity and ecclesiastical law, we must lay one more brick in place–Hooker’s doctrine of the two kingdoms.  For Hooker inherits and expounds a bundle of crucial Protestant dualities–the two kingdoms, the two realms, the visible and invisible Church–dualities which, although shared by all the Reformers, admitted of several different mutations, which could lead in rather different directions.  One such mutation, which Hooker was convinced had led the Puritans grievously astray from genuine Protestantism, was the institutionalization of the two kingdoms.  Rather than identifying the two kingdoms with the two realms–internal/spiritual and external/civil–the Disciplinarians took them as two separate institutions within the same external realm.  In so doing, they imported much of the perfection, immutability, holiness, etc., of the invisible Church into the realm of the visible.  

Hooker’s response to this was not, of course, to drive a wedge between interior and exterior grace, between Christ and the visible Church, between the individual conscience and the corporate body–at least, not in the way we might think.  Hooker is after all fervently insistent throughout Bk. 5 of the Lawes on the reality of sacramental grace, on the deep connection between exterior means of grace and the inner reality of union with Christ, and on the spiritual power and necessity of the visible Church.  However, he is no less insistent on the importance of proper conceptual distinction–“The mixture of those thinges by speech which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error.  To take away therefore that error which confusion breedeth, distinction is requisite.  Rightly to distinguish is by conceipte of minde to sever thinges different in nature, and to discerne wherein they differ” (III.3.1).  This passage functions almost as a mantra for Hooker, who is determined to rigorously distinguish where necessary, without separating.

 

Indeed, his paradigm in this, as Torrance Kirby argues in his Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy, is Christology, in which we must make careful distinction between the diverse attributes and operations of the two natures of Christ in order to rightly establish the unity of his person.  Something similar, Kirby argues, is going on in Hooker’s understanding of visible and invisible churches.  But more of that on another occasion.  For now, the statement of the doctrine:

This appears at the very outset of Bk. III, showing that for Hooker it was absolutely foundational to his account of ecclesiastical law.  First, then, he briefly defines the invisible church: “That Church of Christ which we properly terme his body mystical, can be but one, neither can that one bee sensiblie discerned by any man, in as much as the partes thereof are some in heaven alreadie with Christ, and the rest that are on earth (albeit their naturall persons bee visible) we doe not discerne under this propertie, whereby they are truly and infallibly of that body.  Onely our mindes by intellectual conceipt are able to apprehend, that such a reall body there is, a body collective, because it containeth an huge multitude” (III.I.2).  We know, in other words, that there is such a thing, a multitude of believers conjoined to Christ, sharers in his grace, but the nature of their union is something altogether beyond our ability to sense or fully conceive–we know that it is, but how it is and where it is we remain largely unsure.  “They who are of this societie have such markes and notes of distinction from all others, as are not object unto our sense” (III.1.2)–we have no way of knowing infallibly those who are members thereof.  

Not so with the visible church.  This too is one body, from the beginning of the world to the present.  The unity of the visible body “consisteth in that uniformitie, which all severall persons thereunto belonging have, by reason of that one Lorde whose servantes they all professe them selves, that one faith which they al acknowledge, that one baptisme wherewith they are all initiated” (III.1.3)  It is one “in outward profession of those thinges, which supernaturally appertaine to the very essence of Christianitie, and are necessarily required in every particular christian man” (III.1.4)–which is to say not only profession of faith but baptism as well: “Now although we know the Christian faith and allow of it: yet in this respect we are but entring; entered we are not into the visible Church before our admittance by the doore of baptisme” (III.1.6).  Although we might want to say that Christians are marked also by their outward behavior of a righteous life, such actions are not, Hooker says, a proper mark of membership in the Church, “because they are not proper unto Christian men, as they are Christian, but doe concerne them, as they are men.”  The lack of such virtues indeed “excludeth from salvation,” but not from the visible Church, “whose children are signed with this marke, One Lord, one faith, one baptisme” (III.1.7).

All this means that Hooker is able to provide a very generous account of the scope of the visible Church, refusing to count apostates, heretics, schismatics, or wicked men as wholly outside of it.  Inasmuch as these still bear the mark of baptism and profess Jesus Christ, they are still Christians, only unfaithful ones.  Contra his Puritan interlocutors, then, Hooker utterly refuses to unchurch Roman Catholics.  So far as possible, he says, we must maintain fellowship with them, considering that in the “main parts of Christian truth” we are still at one with them, and may hope one day for reunion.  Although some take Rome to be no Church on account of her errors, some, he points out, make the same claims of the Church of England. 

“But whatsoever either the one sort or the other teach, we must acknowledge even heretikes them selves to be though a maimed part, yet a part of the visible Church….Heretikes therefore are not utterly cut off from the visible Church of Christ….For where profest unbeleefe is, there can be no visible Church of Christ; there may be, where sound beleefe wanteth. Infidels being cleane without the Church denie directlie and utterlie reject the very principles of Christianity, which heretikes embrace and erre onely by misconstruct; whereupon their opinions although repugnant indeed to the principles of Christian faith, are notwithstanding by them held otherwise, and maintained as most consonant thereunto” (III.I.11).

This insistence on the Church a mixed multitude contrasts sharply with the Puritan tendency to purge the Church of all dross and treat only the properly reformed as the true Church. 

This visible Church, although one throughout history and throughout the world, is divided, like the sea, into diverse precincts with diverse names–it is “devided into a number of distinct societies, every of which is termed a Church within it selfe.”  Although Hooker is all in favor of as much fellowship and common counsel between the various regional churches, he argues the necessity for them to be separately governed in their various nations and regions, and to each must belong therefore “ecclesiasticall politie”– a term that “conteyneth both governement and also whatsoever besides belongeth to the ordering of the Church in publique.”  Nothing he says, is “in this degree more necessarie then Church-politie, which is a forme of ordering the publique spirituall affayres of the Church of God” (III.1.14).

 

Corresponding then to this distinction between visible and invisible churches is a distinction between things “necessarie to salvation” and things “accessorie thereunto,” the first of which corresponds to the realm of the invisible church, and the latter to the realm of the visible church.  Hooker develops this distinction with reference to the question of ecclesiastical law in chs. 2-3 of Book III, but it has been invoked already throughout Bk. II, and indeed is anticipated already in ch. 14 of Bk. I: “The sufficiencie of scripture unto the end for which it was instituted.”  Hooker has already given us to understand that while divine law at many points merely confirms, clarifies, or applies natural law, it also at points treats of matters purely supernatural, of duties necessary for salvation that could not be known by natural law alone.  In these matters, Scripture is completely and solely authoritative and sufficient.  If anything is necessary for salvation, we may be sure that it is included in Scripture, and we may be sure moreover that we could not have divined it on our own, without the aid of Scripture.  This being so, we may be sure that in such matters, we have only to carefully attend to and obey the testimony of Scripture; indeed, if we do otherwise, and import doctrines or duties from other authorities, we are sure to err, and in the end overthrow the gospel.  

But clearly not everything falls under this heading, not even everything of a “spiritual” nature.  There are many things useful for ordering the Church and our Christian lives of which Scripture tells us nothing clearly, and there are many things within Scripture that, while important, are not indispensable or universally binding to us (e.g. “Take a little wine for your stomach”).

Hooker offers a threefold distinction here in II.8.  First, while we might want to say that all actions are in some sense either good are evil, there are some things that are almost absolutely indifferent: “Some things are good, yet in so meane a degree of goodnes, that men are only not disproved or disalowed of God for them….In actions of this sorte the very light of nature alone may discover that which is so far forth in the sight of God allowable” (II.8.2).  On the other extreme, “Some thinges in such sorte are allowed that they be also required as necessarie unto salvation, by way of direct immediate and proper necessitie finall, so that without performance of them we cannot by ordinarie course be saved….In actions of this kinde our cheifest direction is from scripture, for nature is no sufficient teacher what we shoulde doe that we may attaine unto life everlasting.  The unsufficiencie of the light of nature is by the light of scripture so fully and so perfectly herein supplied, that further light then this hath added there doth not neede unto that ende” (II.8.3).  But in between these two fall the majority of moral choices we must make: “Finally some things although not so required of necessitie that to leave them undone excludeth from salvation, are notwithstanding of so great dignitie and acceptation with God, that most ample reward in heaven is laid up for them.  Hereof wee have no commandement either in nature or scripture which doth exact them at our handes: yet those motives there are in both which drawe most effectually our mindes unto them” (II.8.3).  

It is into this category (or the first) that matters of ecclesiastical polity will fall, and so Hooker returns to reiterate this distinction in III.2-3.  At this point, he is responding directly to the complaints of Thomas Cartwright in his writings against Whitgift from the 1570s.  Hooker summarizes his position, and the objection, thus: “whereas it hath been tolde them that matters of fayth, and in generall matters necessarie unto salvation are of a different nature from Ceremonies, order, and the kinde of Church-governement; that the one are necessarie to bee expresselie conteyned in the worde of God, or else manifestly collected out of the same, the other not so; that it is necessarie not to receive the one, unlesse there bee some thing in scripture for them, the other free, if nothing against them may thence be alleaged…herein…we are reprooved…[for] misdistinguishing, because matters of discipline and Church-governement are (as they say) matters necessarie to salvation and of faith, whereas we put a difference betweene the one and the other” (III.2.2).  

Hereupon Hooker undertakes, almost with an air of exasperated longsuffering, to explain again why this distinction is valid and necessary.  First, he says, all will grant a distinction between those matters of faith and matters of action–as the Puritans themselves do, between “Doctrine and Discipline.”  In each of these, however, we must recognize some as indispensable for salvation, and others as secondary though still valuable.  Of the first sort “the articles of Christian fayth, and the sacramentes of the Church of Christ are, all such thinges if scripture did not comprehende, the Church of God should not be able to measure out the length and the breadth of that waye wherein for ever she is to walke.”  In these Scripture is alone and fully authoritative.  However, other matters there are, such as secondary questions of doctrine in the realm of faith, and forms and ceremonies in the realm of action, that are clearly not so crucial, and here Scripture exercises a looser, though still important, kind of authority.  “But as for those thinges that are accessorie hereunto, those thinges that so belong to the way of salvation, as to alter them is no otherwise to chaunge that way, then a path is chaunged by altering onely the uppermost face thereof, which be it layde with gravell, or set with grasse, or paved with stone, remayneth still the same path; in such thinges because discretion may teach the Church what is convenient, we holde not the Church further tyed herein unto scripture, then that against scripture nothing be admitted in the Church, least that path which ough alwayes to be kept even, doe thereby come to be over-growen with brambles and thornes” (III.3.3).  In the former then, our principle must be, “Nothing without Scripture”; in the latter “Nothing against Scripture”; in the former, Scripture functions as guide leading us by the hand along the right path; in the latter, as a fence on either side, keeping us from straying too far.  

 

The two sets of distinctions laid out here are not exactly the same thing; after all, there some matters necessary to salvation which are clearly functions of the visible Church–e.g., the sacraments.  However, they are nonetheless closely related, and speaking generally, we might characterize them thus: The invisible Church comprises all those things in which true faith and obedience in submission to Scripture alone bring us into perfect union with Christ and make us sharers in salvation.  The visible Church comprises all those things in which the guidance of Scripture, mixed with the law of reason and applied to particular circumstances, governs the professing people of God in their quest to worship and serve God effectively, minister to one another, and pursue justice.  The visible Church then, while not identical with the State or the “civil kingdom” as we might understand that term, exists on the same plane, is governed by the same standards, and administered in analogous ways, so that if we were to talk of “two kingdoms,” all these matters of church order and Christian life “accessorie to salvation” could rightly be characterized as standing in the “civil kingdom” over against the “spiritual kingdom” in which Christ works invisibly, infallibly, and directly unto salvation.  

 

Hooker has now paved the way to treat of laws of ecclesiastical polity as things accessory to salvation, a species of human positive law, and hence as often mutable, applied according to reason and discretion, rather than conjured whole out of holy Writ and woodenly imposed upon churches of all times and places.  This discussion occupies the absolutely crucial ninth through eleventh chapters of Book III, and it is here I shall turn in the next and final post.