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.  

Sola Scriptura in the Public Square, Pt. 1

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Last week, I presented a paper at a conference in Winchester entitled “Sola Scriptura in the Public Square: Insights of Richard Hooker” which was a sort of miniature, highly-condensed form of my thesis as currently envisioned, or at any rate of several key chapters of it.  I thought I would post it here for the benefit of anyone who’s been interested in my posts on Hooker, Reformed two kingdoms theory, natural law, and the role of Scripture in politics, although be warned that this relatively short essay can do little more than scratch the surface of the key issues, many of which have been developed at more length in previous posts here.

**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 next one, leaving only some tantalizing excerpts.**

The key problem with fundamentalism, then, is not that it claims that Scripture has something to say to politics, or even that it claims that Scripture has a great deal to say about politics.  The problem is that Scripture becomes a blunt instrument, a self-interpreting standard that demands a particular political result, and that will be repeatedly used to club the relevant authorities until they come into line.  In many cases, this is simply a result of ignorance–ignorance of the interpretive complexities of Scripture itself, and of the complex riddles of particular political circumstances.  But often, I suggest, and more seriously, it stems from a more fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God, man, and revelation, and unfortunately, the Reformed two kingdoms theorists offer no real answer because they share this basic flaw.  

The flaw in question is what I will label the “Puritan impulse,” recognizing that this may do injustice to many fine Puritans over the centuries, but defensible because it appears most starkly in many assumptions of the Elizabethan Puritans and their theological heirs.  To paint with an extremely broad brush, so that I do not spend the whole of my twenty minutes dwelling on the problem, the Puritans felt that for God to be exalted, man had to be abased.  The extreme form of this appeared in the hyper-Calvinist doctrine that in order for God to reap the full glory of his sole sovereignty, sinners could not claim “credit” for their own damnation, which was to be ascribed exclusively to the divine will.  Divine action and human action were completely incommensurable, and the former must be emphasized at the expense of the latter.  This meant that any account of authority tended to be rather one-dimensional.  In rejecting the authority of the Pope and reasserting the authority of God exercised through Scripture, the Puritans liked to think that they were doing away with, as much as possible, any kind of human authority.  Human authority, to the extent it must exist, must be merely a passive channel for divine action.  A church minister could not teach or publicly do anything without the express warrant of Scripture.

Revelation must be conceived as extrinsic and arbitrary, depending as little as possible on prior human understandings.  Any subject about which Scripture might speak, it must speak, and it must speak exclusively and with such detail as to leave little or no latitude for prudential application.  To say anything else is to raise up human authority in competition with God, to raise up reason in competition with Scripture.  The Reformed two kingdoms theorists tend to share this legalistic conception of Scriptural authority; they merely tend to artificially limit this authority to the institutional Church, cutting Scripture off from the concerns of daily life and social ethics with which it is clearly so deeply concerned.

The Church’s Gag Order (Christian Liberty in the Reformation, Pt. 1)

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At several points in his Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, David VanDrunen states that the Protestant doctrine of Christian liberty was foundational to the Reformed understanding of natural law and the two kingdoms, and hence to his own two-kingdoms project.  But has he rightly characterized that foundational doctrine?  Whose liberty, after all, are we talking about? 

One person’s liberty is always asserted over against another person or entity, conditioning their liberty in some way.  That I have a liberty not to be assaulted means that you do not have the liberty to assault me.  So whose liberty are we talking about when we talk about Christian liberty?  Is this liberty corporate or is it individual?  It makes rather a difference, you see, since if it’s the former, then it is the liberty of the Church body over against its individual members, but if it’s the latter, then its the liberty of the individuals over against the Church body, which has quite the opposite effect.  Which is the true Protestant doctrine? 


The dilemma is neatly illustrated by an example that VanDrunen himself examines–a rather bizarre debate in 1860 that could only have happened between two Presbyterians, and two particularly prickly ones at that: Charles Hodge and James H. Thornwell.  The question was: “Is it legitimate for the denomination to create a mission board?”  (Not, mind you, “Is it a good idea?” but “Is it even allowed?”)  Charles Hodge argued a resounding “Yes,” appealing to the doctrine of Christian liberty.  As VanDrunen tells it, “He claimed that Thornwell’s idea ‘ties down’ the government and action of the church to what is prescribed in the New Testament and, toward the end of his article, he writes: ‘There is as much difference between this extreme doctrine of divine right, this idea that everything is forbidden which is not commanded, as there is between this free, exultant Church of ours, and the mummified forms of mediaeval Christianity’” (NLTK 258).  In other words, if the Church is not free to do things neither commanded nor forbidden in Scripture, then we are back to a new legalism as bad as that of the Papacy.

VanDrunen immediately lets us know what he thinks about this:

“The Reformed doctrine of Christian liberty was never about the church being freed to to things (such as create boards to which it could delegate the work of missions) about which Scripture was silent.  Instead, with direct reference to the two kingdoms doctrine, Reformed theologians and confessions spoke of Christian liberty in regard to the justified individual, who was freed in the civil kingdom from any obligation to do things contrary to the teaching of Scripture and in the spiritual kingdom from any obligation to do things beside the teaching of Scripture….Thus, when Hodge taught, as the Presbyterian’s doctrine of Christian liberty, that the church is permitted to do what is not forbidden in Scripture, he was in fact transferring the traditional Reformed standard for the civil kingdom to the spiritual kingdom and thus giving the church precisely the power (speaking and acting beyond the teaching of Scripture) that the Reformed tradition had tried to take from it” (NLTK 258-59).

This, he said, was Thornwell’s contention, who responded with, we are told “an incisive, biting, and at times humorous response” which “lamented on the one hand the lack of candor and honor in his [Hodge’s] article and, on the other hand, his ineptness in regard to ecclesiology.”  Hodge, he said, had it backward–his “principle that the church is permitted to do all that Scripture does not forbid it to do was not the Reformed principle of Christian liberty over against Rome but the principle of Rome which the Reformed doctrine of Christian liberty sought to overthrow” (NLTK 259).  In short, “Thornwell sought to limit the government and action of the church to the prescriptions of the Bible only, and did so with reference to historic Reformed convictions about the church’s ministerial authority and about Christian liberty” (260).

VanDrunen is in no doubt what the proper Protestant doctrine is–Christian liberty means the individual believer is freed from having to do anything not directly commanded in Scripture, and therefore the Church is bound not to authorize anything that is not directly commanded in Scripture.  (There is already a tension, mind you–one could understand how this construal of Christian liberty would mean that the Church could not require individual believers to serve on church boards, etc.; but it is a bit harder to see why it would mean that the Church could not authorize them in any way as an option for its members.  But more on this anon.)  Believer free, Church bound.  This dialectic is even further intensified in Thornwell’s doctrine of the spirituality of the Church, which is much more relevant to VanDrunen’s own project: the liberty of the individual Christian means that he is free from having to receive any guidance from the Church on anything not directly contained in Scripture (e.g., political issues like, say, slavery)–the Church is bound not to speak on any such matters.  

Now, Hodge’s concern seems justified here–surely this is not freedom but legalism!  Surely this cannot be the traditional Protestant doctrine.  But earlier in the book, VanDrunen has already shown that it is, hasn’t he?  Let’s follow the trail backwards.  He sprinkles the appeal to Christian liberty throughout his narrative, but a significant focus of the discussion comes near the end of chapter 5.  

 

Thornwell’s legalism may be understood as an application of the “regulative principle of worship” (or RPW), which, says VanDrunen, “states that the public worship of the church may consist only of those elements that the New Testament itself teaches are proper elements of worship” (191).  This comes from the doctrine of Christian liberty: “Because the church has no power to impose anything beyond the teaching of Scripture upon the consciences of believers, it has no power to demand that believers worship God in any other way than what Scripture ordains” (191-2).  This is again all wrapped up in the two kingdoms doctrine:

“In the spiritual kingdom of the church, ecclesiastical authorities, dealing only with spiritual things, have no power to bind consciences beyond the declaration of what Scripture itself teaches (a ‘ministerial’ authority) and believers have no conscientious obligation to believe or do anything that the church says otherwise.  Believers are free from anything ‘beside’ the word of God.  In the civil kingdom and with respect to civil matters, however, believers are free only from commands ‘contrary’ to Scripture, meaning that they are conscientiously bound to do all things that the magistrate commands (however disagreeable) so long as they do not contradict some biblical teaching” (191). 

In fact, this is all in Calvin, VanDrunen tells us on the previous page: “in Institutes 3.19, alongside 4.11 and 4.20, Calvin lays down the principle that while ecclesiastical authorities cannot bind the conscience of believers in anything beyond what Scripture teaches, civil authorities do in fact bind consciences when they command anything that is not contrary to biblical teaching” (190). 

Well, by Jove, there you have it.  Calvin said it, in the Institutes no less, so it must be the proper Christian doctrine.  Following the narrative back further, we come to chapter 3, where Calvin is dealt with in great detail.  So let’s look at this closely.

For Calvin, christian liberty consists in 1) “having one’s conscience assured of justification and no longer seeking justification by the law,” 2) “being obedient to the law voluntarily rather than under legal compulsion,” and 3) “being freed from obligation to do or not to do external things that are in themselves morally indifferent” (NLTK 73).

However, this last point is immediately qualified by the two kingdoms doctrine–since “Christian liberty is in all its parts a spiritual matter,” this freedom from obligation to things indifferent does not apply in the civil sphere: “By attending to this distinction, we will not erroneously transfer the doctrine of the gospel concerning spiritual liberty to civil order, as if in regard to external government Christians were less subject to human laws, because their consciences are unbound before God…” (Inst. 3.19.15).

The redemptive doctrine of Christian liberty, VanDrunen explains,“applies to life in the spiritual kingdom but not to life in the civil kingdom.  No human authority can bind the believer’s conscience in regard to participation in the spiritual kingdom of Christ.  Over against Roman Catholic claims, Calvin teaches that Scripture is the only authority in this realm.  Hence, as he explains in Institutes 4.10-11, the church can minister the word of God alone and never its own opinions, and it can prescribe for worship only those things that Scripture provides….In other words, the officers of the church have authority to do and command only those things prescribed in Scripture, and Christians in the spiritual kingdom are thus free in conscience from anything beyond this”; on the other hand, “civil magistrates have a broader discretion to promote justice and order in the civil kingdom, and Christians are bound to obey them except if their commands contradict their biblical obligations” (NLTK 74).

Was this, then, the Protestant doctrine of Christian liberty–the believer’s freedom from any command outside Scripture in the visible Church, and the Church’s corresponding gag order not to say, do, or command anything besides what is specifically laid down in Scripture?  I have already argued in a recent post that such a notion of sola Scriptura is simply impossible and incoherent–no church could function if it took VanDrunen’s rhetoric seriously.  So was Protestantism really so incoherent at such a key point?

 

I would suggest that the answer is a resolute “No,” and that VanDrunen has in fact distorted the teaching of the magisterial Reformers almost beyond recognition at this point.  He has done so by equivocating at the exact point where Calvin is so careful to be absolutely precise–the notion of “conscience.”  VanDrunen slides carelessly from saying “the Church cannot bind the conscience beyond Scripture” to “the Church cannot command anything beyond Scripture” to “the Church cannot do anything beyond Scripture.”  Not only are the last two quite different statements (as I already pointed out parenthetically above with regard to church boards), but for Calvin, the first two are quite different statements.  Indeed, because of this, VanDrunen has in fact gotten Calvin wrong on the other side of the duality as well–magistrates cannot bind the conscience in the civil kingdom, for Calvin, because in fact there is no one but God himself who can bind the conscience. 

In a series of posts over the coming weeks, preparatory to a chapter draft for my Ph.D., I will be exploring this question in Calvin, but also in several of his contemporaries, in the Puritans who claimed to follow him, and of course in Hooker.  VanDrunen’s construal is not, I will argue, completely alien to the Reformation–it was certainly there, and popped up from time to time in incendiary outbursts, but it was always resisted by the magisterial Reformers–Luther, Melanchthon, Bullinger, Bucer, Vermigli, Calvin.  Hooker, I hope to argue, helped resolve some of the tensions thus raised that his predecessors had not quite been able to deal with satisfactorily.  

 

(For some of my initial critiques of VanDrunen on some the chapters quoted above when I read them last year, see here and here–take all with a grain of salt, however.)

(For an initial sketch of my Ph.D thesis, or what I aspire to be my thesis, covering a lot of the ground discussed above, see here.)

(For an excellent review of VanDrunen that exposes the category confusion that lies at the heart of this problem, see this article by Steven Wedgworth.)

Sola Scriptura as Rhetorical Posturing

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At the end of his long argument against the Puritan doctrine of the regulative principle in Book III of the LEP, Richard Hooker makes a fascinating move.  Having mounted a deft and devastating critique of their assumptions about Scripture, reason, law, ecclesiology, etc., Hooker turns around and says that actually, he agrees with them, and they with him.  This is all just one great big misunderstanding, it seems.  Well, no, not quite; but Hooker does suggest that when it really comes down to it, most of the Puritan dissent was nothing but rhetorical posturing.  And it strikes me that Hooker is really onto something here, something relevant not merely for his own dispute, but for so many that we are familiar with today in theology and politics.

The Puritans, you see, had set themselves up as the defenders of sola Scriptura, against the “wicked inventions of men.”  They claimed that nothing should be done in the Church except according to the direction of Scripture, while their opponents were happy to bring in laws and ceremonies on merely human authority.  Big difference, right?  Well, it wasn’t quite that simple.  The conformists, as a matter of fact, were quite insistent on Scriptural authority in all areas of church practice as well, but they argued that, as Scripture did not give direct guidance on most particulars, and as the guidance that is given in Scripture is mostly only by way of examples, it was necessary to use discretion, reason, and tradition in applying them.  The Puritans, Hooker was convinced, ultimately believed the same thing!  Or rather, inasmuch as they were able to achieve anything like a consistent practice, they believed the same thing; for, if they really believed that Scripture alone and entirely provided all the answers and applications, it would be impossible for them to put in place any kind of complete liturgy and polity.  Instead, they had to grant 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”–and, said Hooker, this is precisely what the conformists believed.

The difference, then, was not on the level of general principle–Scripture alone vs. Scripture and reason–but on the level of particulars and the level of consistency.  The Puritans and the conformists disagreed a great deal over which particular bits of guidance in Scripture were changeable circumstances and which were of perpetual substance, and over what the best way was to apply the permanent principles in their own circumstances.  They also differed in that the conformists were able to consistently follow through on their stated principles, whereas the Puritans were destabilized by the felt need to be faithful to a rhetorical ideal that was completely impracticable.  This disconnect between rhetoric and reality did not merely make it difficult for them to achieve consistency and stability in their own practice, but even more seriously, made it impossible for them to have a civil and rational discussion with their opponents over differences.  If differences were merely over particular applications of generally shared overarching commitments, then a rational adjudication or a charitable bearing with one another ought to have been possible.  But once differences were elevated to the level of fundamental presuppositions–of faith vs. infidelity, God’s authority vs. man’s, Protestantism or popery–discussion and mutual edification prove almost impossible.  

No doubt this disconnect partially explains why Puritanism in all its forms (I use the term now in its broadest possible sense) has proven so uniquely fissiparous, splintering and schisming for the last four centuries.  Having often committed itself rhetorically to a standard of sola Scriptura that it simply could not follow through on, it was always dogged by discontents who thought it was compromising too much; and given the polarizing tendency of the rhetoric, small disputes over church order could readily be elevated to questions of basic orthodoxy, making reconciliation impossible. 

 

This same tendency, it seems to me, has come to epitomize so much of American Reformed and evangelical church life today.  For at least a couple centuries now our churches have been characterized by an endless contest of one-upsmanship, in which everyone struggles to prove that they take sola Scriptura with utmost seriousness, more seriously than anyone around them.  Something about our national psyche, it seems, has made us almost universally susceptible to this fundamentalist malaise–”Scripture alone, Scripture alone!” we cry, “Down with all merely human authority, with the vain inventions of ungodly reason.”  In the 19th century this battle-cry was unleashed against existing denominations and church authorities in favor of the individual Christian’s supposedly pure interpretation of Scripture.  In the 20th century, it has more often taken the form of a stalwart refusal to have anything to do with “secular academia”–whether that be historical or scientific scholarship–or “secular politics.”  (Don’t get me wrong, of course–in many particular battles, the sola Scriptura rally-cry has been deployed on the side of truth, and important truth, but the ethos conjured up has often been dangerous and destructive.)  

For the Reformed, this impulse has often taken the form of Scriptural absolutist movements like theonomy or presuppositionalism, movements which, like their 16th-century antecedents, find themselves uncomfortably perched between a rhetorical commitment that they can’t really follow through on, and a more sober articulation that they must follow in practice but which unfortunately puts them on the same general ground as their imagined opponents.


In each of these cases, the problem of course is not that sola Scriptura is not a valid principle, but that Scripture is not, alas, self-interpreting.  Scripture is never alone–it is always mediated through people, places, and times, mediated to particular circumstances on which other principles must necessarily be brought to bear.  The rhetorical commitment  to an extreme construal of sola Scriptura leads either to a frighteningly un-Scriptural radicalism on the part of those who try to follow through on the rhetoric, or an uncomfortable schizophrenia for those who try to bridge the rhetoric with the reality of their practice.  Worst of all, it proves terribly polarizing.  Opponents are cast as those who don’t take Scripture seriously, or don’t care about it, those who are worldly-minded, rationalist, secularist, liberal–in short, they are idolatrous, because they erect another authority alongside, or above, Scripture.  This makes dialogue and edification impossible, and pride and schism inevitable.  

Something similar, I should add (though briefly, to keep this post from ranging too broadly), seems to infest American political discourse.  Ideologues who dominate public discourse (particularly those whom evangelicals like) are dedicated to propositions like “the government should have nothing to do with the economy” or “private property is an absolute and sacred right” or “that government is best which governs least”–propositions that, I am convinced, hardly any of them can really mean, or consistently act upon, at any rate.  In reality, the question isn’t whether the government shouldn’t be involved with the economy, but merely how much and in what ways it should be involved–complete uninvolvement is by the nature of the case impossible.  The rhetoric functions as a polarizing weapon, one that demonizes the opposition, makes dialogue impossible, and actually drives more and more people toward a radicalism at odds with their existing practice.  

 

No doubt the Church bears some responsibility for helping to foster this black-and-white, total war mindset.  And if we are to regain sanity in our culture and the ability to talk to one another again, it must begin with repentance in the Church and a renunciation of the self-justifying rhetorical smokescreens that obscure the issues at hand, demonize the opposition, and absolve us of any responsibility for the schisms we thus generate.  

Another reason to love Hooker. 🙂

Harmonizing Reason and Scripture (Hooker’s Doctrine of Law, Pt. 5)

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We have already seen how Hooker is at pains to demonstrate continuity between natural and supernatural, the law of reason and the law of Scripture.  The two are not at odds, nor are they carved off into separate spheres, but they mutually depend on one another, and are mutually interpreting.  

Hooker elaborates this harmonious vision at much more length in Bk. II of the Lawes, in the context of a devastating polemic against the Puritan vision that is so determined to play Scripture and reason, divine and human, off against one another.  The effects of this antagonism, he perceives, cannot but be disastrous to the Church.  The denigration of human reason undermines any respect for the Church or her traditions, and leads to a stubborn, individualistic anti-intellectualism–it “hath alreadie made thousandes so headstrong even in grosse and palpable errors, that a man whose capacitie will scarce serve him to utter five wordes in sensible maner, blusheth not in any doubt concerning matter of scripture to thinke his own bare Yea, as good as the Nay of all the wise, grave, and learned judgements that are in the whole world” (II.7.6).

Much of this comes from a laudable desire to exalt Scripture by attributing to it exclusive and universal authority over all knowledge, but Hooker perceives that it is no honour to Scripture to claim for it attributes that it does not claim for itself; “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.  And as incredible praises geven unto men do often abate and impaire the credit of their deserved commendation; so we must likewise take great heede, lest in attributing unto scripture more then it can have, the incredibilitie of that do cause even those things which indeed it hath most abundantly to be less reverendly esteemed” (II.8.7).

Not only this, but if we play Scripture off against nature, we will undermine the foundations of human knowledge, with disastrous effect: “Marke, I beseech you, what would follow.  God in delivering scripture to his Church should cleane have abrogated amongst them the lawe of nature; which is an infallible knowledge imprinted in the mindes of all the children of men, whereby both generall principles for directing of humaine actions are comprehended, and conclusions derived from them, upon which conclusions groweth in particularitie the choise of good and evill in the daylie affaires of this life.  Admit this; and 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).

Clearly, for Hooker, much is at stake.  We cannot allow ourselves to become so carried away with reverence for Scripture that we fail to revere the rest of God’s revelation, for God speaks to us through all his works.  To heed God’s revelation in nature is not to reject his revelation in Scripture, for divine law does not “cleane abrogate” the law of nature, but reinforces and further expounds it, as we have already seen.  Therefore, in a great many of our actions, “it sufficeth if such actions be framed according to the lawe of reason; the generall axiomes, rules, and principles of which law being so frequent in holy scripture, there is no let but in that regard, even out of scripture such duties may be deduced by some kinde of consequence” (II.1.2)–but such deduction need not be explicit or self-conscious, he goes on to say.  In other words, we may comfort ourselves that we do not need to have a Scriptural command in mind for every action we take, because we may be confident that, in many ordinary matters, if we conform our actions in godly humility to the law of reason, we are thereby acting in conformity to Scripture also.


The Puritans will argue, he says, that whatever we do not do according to God’s will and command must be sinful.  Very well, but why restrain the revelation of God’s will to Scripture alone?  We have already seen Hooker’s expansive vision of the eternal law of God unfolding itself through all his works, from the actions of the smallest creatures to the laws of human societies.  They alleage “that wisedome doth teach men every good way,” but 

“The boundes of wisedome are large, and within them much is contayned.”  Indeed, before the Scriptures were written down, did not Adam and the patriarchs direct their steps by wisdom, a wisdom available outside of Scripture?  God’s wisdom teaches us in many ways: “Some things she openeth by the sacred bookes of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of nature; with some things she inspireth them from above by spirituall influence, in some thinges she leadeth and trayneth them onely by worldly experience and practise.  We may not so in any one speciall kind admire her that we disgrace her in any other, but let all her wayes be according unto their place and degree adored” (II.I.4) 

Likewise, although it be true that all things must be done to the glory of God, it does not follow from this, as the Puritans would have it, that all things must be done in express obedience to Scripture, or even with “an expresse intent and purpose to obey God therein.”  With his eminent sensibility, Hooker pleads, “Shall it hereupon be thought that S. Paule did not move eyther hand or foot, but with expresse intent even therby to further the common salvation of men?  We move, we sleepe, we take the cuppe at the hand of our freind, a number of thinges we oftenimes doe, only to satisfie some naturall desire, without present expresse, and actuall reference unto any commaundement of God” (II.2.1)  Again, the Puritan’s error here is a failure to understand how God can be glorified in all his works.  Even when we obey the involuntary law of our nature–breathing, closing our eyes when we sneeze–we glorify God therein as his well-designed creatures.  Likewise, when we consciously act in accord with the law he has set for our natures, when we take food or even when we share food with our neighbor, we glorify God therein as his rational creatures.  “For scripture is not the onely lawe whereby God hath opened his will touching all thinges that may be done, but there are other kindes of lawes which notifie the will of God, as in the former booke hath beene proved at large” (II.2.2).  He even has a Scripture proof for this–Peter exhorts the saints in 1 Pet. 2:12 to do good works that, when the Gentiles see them, they may “glorifie God in the day of visitation” (II.2.3).  How could heathens discern the godliness and goodness of these works without themselves having faith unless the law of reason revealed it to them?

 

So Hooker has argued in the first place that we understand natural revelation as conformable to special revelation, that reason may offer insight even in ethical matters that  Scripture does not directly speak to.  But surely there are matters over which Scripture exercises absolute supremacy, not natural law, reason, etc.?  Certainly there are, and Hooker ends Bk. II by carefully delineating this realm–this shall be the subject of the next post in this series.  However, Hooker goes on in Bk. III to argue that even here, the Puritan construal of sola Scriptura and the antagonism they set up between Scripture and reason is incoherent.  For even where Scripture rightly exercises sole primacy, reason plays an indispensable role.  The crucial passage comes in ch. 8.  He has just finished an apologia for reason, against Scriptural and patristic testimony that the Puritans have alleged against it.  “There is in the world,” he concludes, “no kinde of knowledge, whereby any part of truth is seene, but we justlie accompt it pretious, yea that principall truth, in comparison whereof all other knowledge is vile, may receive from it some kinde of light….To detract from the dignitie thereof [the various kinds of natural wisdom] were to injurie even God himselfe, who being that light which none can approch unto, hath sent out these lights wherof we are capable, even as so many sparkls resembling the bright fountain from which they rise” (III.8.9).  The central claim here is that “that principall truth”–the salvific truth of Scripture “may received from it”–that is, from the light of natural reason–“some kind of light.”  

The argument here is not that reason adds necessary substance to Scripture–not in salvific matters, though as we have already seen, it does to an extent in mundane matters–but that it serves as a necessary instrument.  Hooker is quite careful and lucid on this point: “Unto the word of God being in respect of that end, for which God ordeined in, perfect, exact, and absolute in it selfe, we do not add reason as a supplement of any maime or defect therin, but as a necessary instrument, without whihch we could not reape by the scriptures perfection, that fruite and benefit which it yeeldeth.  The word of God is a twoedged sword, but in the hands of reasonable men” (III.8.10) 

To be sure, God made use of unlearned men as his Apostles to proclaim the Gospel, but not by bypassing reason and wisdom altogether; rather, by endowing them miraculously with persuasive powers and knowledge from on high.  All of the Apostles, and especially Paul, use reason to make arguments and proofs for their doctrinal and ethical claims.   The Church has always used reason in argument to refute heretics.  Reason is an indispensable tool in determining and expounding the meaning of Scripture, as we see Jesus and his Apostles using it all the time. “Our Lord and Saviour him selfe did hope by disputation to doe some good,” Hooker points out, as we see in his argument about the meaning of Psalm 110.  And with some exasperation he adds, “There is as yet no way knowne how to dispute or to determine of things disputed without the use of natural reason” (III.8.17).  In short, “Exclude the use of naturall reasoning about the sense of holy scripture concerning the articles of our faith, and then that scripture doth concerne the articles of our faith who can assure us?” (III.8.16)  

 

Indeed, our confidence in Scripture itself must rest to some extent in an extra-Scriptural foundation. “Scripture indeed teacheth things above nature, things which our reason by it selfe could not reach unto.  Yet those things also we believe, knowing by reason that the scripture is the word of God” (III.8.12).  If we accept the testimony of Scripture on account of its authority as the word of God, on what account do we accept it as the word of God in the first place?  Scripture cannot contain its own first principles, for “No science doth make knowne the first principles whereon it buildeth, but they are alwaies taken as plaine and manifest in them selves, or as proved and graunted already, some former knowledge having made them evident….There must be therefore some former knowledge presupposed which doth herein assure the hartes of all believers” (III.8.13).  In the case of the authority of Scripture, this knowledge is supplied by tradition. Hooker holds “that the first outward motive leading men so to esteeme of the scripture is the authority of God’s Church.  For when we know the whole Church of God hath that opinion of the scripture, we judge it even at the first an impudent thinge for any man bredde and brought up in the Church to bee of a contrarye minde without cause” (III.8.14).  After coming to Scripture with this conviction already in place, our experience of its truth confirms us in our belief in its infallible authority.  

Furthermore, although faith comes to us supernaturally, and not by the aid of human will and understanding, it nonetheless presupposes and rests upon a foundation of reason and natural understanding.  If it were not so, “why should none be found capable thereof but only men, nor men til such time as they come unto ripe and full habilitie to worke by reasonable understanding? [Note that Hooker is far from denying that God imparts a kind of saving faith to infants and the mentally disabled, but he speaks here of the ordinary sort of faith which actively and intelligibly lays hold of God.]  In vaine it were to speake any thing of God, but that by reason men are able some what to judge of that they heare, and by discourse to discerne how consonant it is to truth” (III.8.11).  

In short, reason serves both as instrument to make Scripture more effectual for those who believe, and also, although of course in itself useless without the grace of the Holy Spirit, as an instrument to mediate the gospel to those who do not:  “Wherefore if I beleeve the gospel, yet is reason of singular use, for that it confirmeth me in this my beleefe the more: If I do not as yet beleeve, nevertheles to bring me to the number of beleevers except reason did somwhat help, and were an instrument which God doth use unto such purposes, what should it boote to dispute with Infidels or godless persons for their conversion and perwasion in that point?” (III.8.14)

 

In all of this, Hooker is careful to qualify the limits of reason–only it is not so limited as to be useless in devising church polity, which is the question at hand: “In all which hitherto hath beene spoken touching the force and use of mans reason in thinges divine, I must crave that I be not so understood or construed, as if any such thing by vertue thereof could be done without the aide and assistance of Gods most blessed spirite.  The thing we have handled according to the question mooved about it; which question is, whether the light of reason be so pernitious that in devising lawes for the church men ought not by it to search what may be fit and convenient” (III.8.18).

Both of these lines of argument that we have just surveyed–the reality and utility of God’s revelation in the law of reason outside of Scripture, and the indispensability of reason and its laws in grasping and rightly applying Scripture–will play a key role in Hooker’s argument for the latitude that ought rightly to characterize the domain of ecclesiastical affairs.