August 13th is the day that Anglicans, especially Irish Anglicans, remember Jeremy Taylor (d. Aug 13, 1667) whose various clerical posts included serving as chaplain to Charles I and, later in life, as Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. I first learned of Taylor last year in an article by Edmund Newey titled “The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Wichcote, Ralph Cudworth, and Jeremy Taylor”.1 Newey’s central thesis relates to the concept of theosis, also called deification, in four Anglicans and the Cambridge Platonists movement in Anglican theology (Wichcote and Cudworth often being considered the first of the Cambridge Platonists). Tonight, I’ll look at Newey’s introduction and exegesis of Hooker.
Newey argues that theosis, as a doctrine of the Patristics and Aquinas2, is best summed up in Athanasius’ teaching on 2 Peter 2:14: “[God] was made man, that we might be made God [theopoiethomen].”3 “Its implication is not the subsumption of humanity into the ineffability of God, but rather the full realisation of humanity in relationship with the Creator. Only in such relationship can created human beings be fully themselves and at the same time, by a mysterious paradox, fully at one with God in Christ.”4 Salvation, then, is properly understood as creation’s experience of and participation with the presence of God in Christ in creation now. Theosis is therefore not a matter of eschatology, but rather a hybrid concept belonging to the doctrines of Christology and creation.
Newey sees this Patristic line in the work of the above four Anglicans, and is particularly interested in using it to dissolve some of the “Puritan” and “Catholic” stereotypes cast on Anglican theology in the 17th c. C of E. Moreover, per the title of the article, Newey is even more keen to dispel the myths of these theologians’ ties to Lockean empiricism and the Cartesian kiss of death.
[I]t is part of the purpose of this essay to argue that all of the theologians treated here see participative union with the Creator God as the origin and the end of all created human being. If read in this light, ‘reason’ in their work cannot be separated from God’s loving disposition towards us in his Son, the incarnate Logos, who is both the form of reason, and the only means of its true realisaton in us through the Spirit. As Wichcote puts it: ‘As Sin is a Vitiating the Reason of Man; the Restauration must be by the reason of God: by Christ, the Logos.’5
Platonism, particularly Plato’s use of the terms methexis and phronesis, plays a significant part in the work of the above four, according to Newey. He argues for a distinction between Plato’s and Aristotle’s understanding of phronesis, emphasizing the former’s inclusion of both practical and theoretical knowledge in the concept to the advantage becoming a mediating term similar to methexis, “resisting dualisms, and thus had much to contribute to the developing understandings of incarnation and salvation in the Early Church.”6
Hooker, Newey claims, is deeply dependent to both the Platonic tradition and Aquinas for his concept of participation. He gives an extended account of participation in Being in his fifth book of the Laws by examining the role of the sacraments in unifying us to God through Christ. Hooker is directly in line with the Patristics in his linking of the sacraments as participation with God with the doctrine of the Trinity. Christ imparts grace to us, according to Hooker, in such a way as to be inseperable from his person in the Trinity as evidenced to us through the sacraments. Our share of grace is one of unction, while Christ’s is one of union. Hooker: “Thus we participate in Christ partly by imputation, as when those things which he did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousness; partly by habitual and real infusion, as when grace is inwardly bestowed while we are on earth, and afterwards more fully both our souls and bodies made like unto his in glory.”7 Hooker, unlike interpretations of Calvin, clearly sees an “aptness” in human free will to accept grace, grace which then “perfects, but does not abolish, nature.”8
Reason, for Hooker, relates to this aptness inasmuch as he sees it as “a God-given faculty,” for it is human reason which we employ in the interpretation of Scripture. However, just as our free wills must be perfected by grace, our reason must be aided by the Spirit. His doctrine of Scripture, therefore, is not static, relying solely on the truth of the text and the reason of the interpreter, but includes and relies on a continuing intervention of the Spirit. “He cites Augustine explicitly… [and while] influence of St. Thomas is less explicit… Aquinas believes that faith is to reason as grace is to nature, seeing all four as elements in the divine pedagogy, which draws humanity into relationship with God.”9 Hooker is inline with the Patristics and Aquinas, then, in his understanding of participation and with Aquinas on reason in its relationship to grace and nature. The payoff here rests not only in the believer’s heavenly condition, but also in the life of the Church, “that visible mystical body.”10
- Edmund Newey, “The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Wichcote, Ralph Cudworth, and Jeremy Taylor,” Modern Theology 18:1 (2002): 1-26; at Ingenta↩
- On Aquinas’ use of Augustine’s theosis, Newey cites A.N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palmas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 34-101↩
- Newey, 2↩
- Ibid., 2↩
- Ibid., 4↩
- Ibid.↩
- Ibid., 7; and Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, V, lvi, 11, p. 254.↩
- Ibid., 7↩
- Ibid, 8↩
- Hooker, V, xxiv, 1, p. 117↩
Is the analogy btwn.: faith is to reason as grace is to nature, basically this: the former is supernatural (i.e. new creation) and not a given for the creature (i.e. old nature), and the latter is constitutive of the old nature. So, the former is an new power given to the believer which is not acquired, but is infused; the difference is that the former can be achieved by the effort of the creature, and the latter is achieved only by means of God’s own action. So, if faith perfects reason, this means faith brings about conclusions (e.g. God is Triune, God is incarnate in Christ) that natural reason could not achieve by itself. A question then is this, once faith delivers its conclusions, can reason contemplate these and in turn provide an account or explanation of the conclusions of faith? Henry of Ghent seems to say ‘yes’–natural reason can be perfected by faith and in turn give an acct. of the conclusions of faith that are demonstrative; whereas Aquinas seems to say ‘no’, reason is not perfected by faith, b/c even after faith delivers its conclusions, reason cannot give a demonstrative account of these conclusions–otherwise ‘faith would not merit salvation’ and so faith would be denigrated. Gilles Emery discusses this a bit in his ‘Aquinas on the Trinity’ book publ. by Ave Maria Press, though I’m sure it’s also in his newer Oxford Univ. Press version of the book, ‘Aquinas’s Trinitarian Theology’….
Scott, good question about Hooker’s notion of the relation of reason to grace and faith, but not one I’m sure I can answer concisely - especially considering scary and antiquated language of the 17th c. is - but let me try my hand at it. I make drawing fun!
First, I don’t have book III, in whioh, accoridng to Newey, Hooker does most of his work on Reason. I think Newey’s point, however, is that humans have a natural capacity to reason, but this aptitude is a passive one, an aptitudo passiva, in that it has a zero contribution in our participation with Christ. So, while reason can operate in the absence of direct “illumination”, it needs grace for that illumination, particularly in operations and inquiries into Scripture. You can already see Hooker’s emphasis on participation as an active engagement for the human. This illumination is less alien and more akin to wisdom, imparted wisdom yes, but still something that requires “the help of natural discourse and reason” (III, viii, 11, p. 374).
Rowan Williams in his article “Philosopher, Anglican, Contemporary” (in Anglican Identities also draws this comparison between reason and wisdom when he calls Hooker a sapiential theologian. Hooker’s common theme of “Law” invokes the concept of Sophia in describing the actions of God (p. 41). Hooker, or at least Williams reading of Hooker, is faithful to the analogia entis: “If we want to talk of God acting so as to bring about some end, we have to suppose that the divine activity too is ‘law-like’; and, since God cannot be limited or conditioned by any other agency, it is what God is that determines (limits) how God acts.” How we, or let’s say our reason, grasps the actions of God, depends on the context or environment in which we encounter those actions. As such, we need to be careful about how absolute our determinations of those actions get - Hooker advises silence! But in those cases where we’re determined to break our silence, we need to consider our end as humans - we’re destined to know beauty for beauty’s sake, goodness for goodness’s sake, etc.. - and recognize that our growth in wisdom about these things we increase as the rest of our spiritual capacities increase. He gives no formulaic prescriptions for this growth, but urges a contemplative and, above all, sacramental approach - see Newey’s article here for the emphasis on the sacramental qua participation in God’s life through Christ.
So, to answer you question - thick as it is - I would have to conclude that for Hooker faith is about as likely to deliver “conclusion” as the sacraments are to do the same. The language is simply not there in Hooker to talk about conclusions in regard to faith and such. Human reason will certainly give conclusion, although Hooker is likely to chasten our reliance on them. Reason is not there to coerce conclusion out of the sacraments. Rather, faith is there to conform reason and in many cases to silence it. Hooker is fairly conservative, as Williams points out. He seems more content to allow the actions of God to work themselves out in the contemplative and sacramental life of the church than to give systematic accounts of those actions.
But in regard to your statement: “reason is not perfected by faith, b/c even after faith delivers its conclusions, reason cannot give a demonstrative account of these conclusions–otherwise ‘faith would not merit salvation’ and so faith would be denigrated” if we were to change “conclusions” to “illumination” then I think you and Hooker would be close, especially as he utilizes a fair amount of Aquinas.
Hope that helps
Thanks for that.
As an aside, given that Aquinas follows Aristotle on the superiority/nobility of speculative knowledge (knowledge for its own sake–what you say as ‘beauty for the sake of beauty’) over practical knowledge (e.g. ‘knowing beauty for the sake of knowing the sunset’). I’d still say that for Aquinas faith does have conclusions (The second person of the Trinity became incarnate; God is Triune; God is love, etc.), it is just that reason cannot provide premises that necessarily have a conclusion that is identical to the conclusion delivered by faith. And by reason, here we are talking about syllogisms which naturally cause in us scientific knowledge. For Aquinas, if A is B, and B is C, it necessarily causes us to conclude that A is C. We have no ‘choice’ in the matter. And when it comes to faith, this natural/automatic process doesn’t work successfully. There is no syllogism or series of syllogisms that will have conclusions, such as God is a Trinity, that naturally/necessarily follow from the premises.
Anyways, thanks for the Hooker post; he’s someone I’d like to learn more about if time would ever allow it. Tempus edax!