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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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.

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.