Law, Sit Up Higher: Richard Hooker and the Natural Law, Part 3

HOOKER'S DEFINITION OF THE ETERNAL LAW is slightly broader than the traditional scholastic doctrine because of a distinction in the eternal law Hooker seeks to emphasize. In his discussion of the eternal law, Hooker seeks to distinguish between what he calls the "first law eternal" and the "second law eternal." Hooker is aware that this formal distinction in the eternal law takes him out of the general scholastic presentations of the eternal law. For Hooker, however, it is not that there are two eternal laws, but one eternal law which differs depending upon focus.

Portrait of Richard Hooker

Hooker notes that most scholars would present the eternal law as being "the order . . . which [God] has set down as expedient to be kept by all his creatures." I.3.1, 63 This he calls the "second law eternal." Under this perspective, the eternal law is typically viewed ad extra, from the perspective of the thing or person subject to the eternal law. Hooker, however, emphasizes that the eternal law may also be viewed as it were, ad intra, as God's self-imposed limitation with respect to his creation, and this emphasis on the Divine Lawgiver is what leads to his notion of the "first eternal law." Hooker's view of the eternal law, which encompasses the formal distinction between "first" and "second" eternal law, is thus "more enlarging," broader, indeed richer in explaining phenomena. In any event, particularly with respect to his notion of "first eternal law," Hooker is clearly on the side of the theologians that maintain that God operates in his Creation and in his providential governance of that Creation under potentia ordinata, an ordered, reason-and-law informed power. Hooker therefore clearly rejects the notion of an arbitrary, will-only informed power, the potentia absoluta of the nominalists such as Occam, and some of the more extreme Protestant reformers.

Hooker's "second" eternal law may be distinguished further, depending upon the subject in which that eternal law is manifest. For brute creation, or "natural agents," the eternal law may be called "Nature's law." "Celestial law" is that eternal law which "Angels do clearly behold and without any swerving observe." The "law of Reason" (what we would call the natural law or natural moral law) is that part of the eternal law "that binds creatures reasonable in this world, and with which by reason they may most plainly perceive themselves bound." Law that derives not from the creature's reason, but "by special revelation of God," is called "Divine law." "Human law" is derived either from the law of Reason or Divine law. "All things therefore, which are as they ought to be, are conformed unto this second law eternal . . ." I.3.1, 63.

Hooker acknowledges that creatures sometimes do not conform to the second law eternal, in particular voluntary agents such as humans who frequently disobey the second law eternal as it is made manifest in the law of reason, divine law, or even human law. Likewise, even the brute creation sometimes shows a lack of perfection in apparent violation of the eternal law as manifest in the law of nature. Even so, all things, "even those things which to this [second] eternal law are not conformable, are notwithstanding in some sort ordered by the first eternal law." I.3.1, 63. That is, any manner of either evil or good in the world by creatures does not taint, much less abrogate the first eternal law. And so Hooker asks rhetorically:

For what good or evil is there under the sun, what action correspondent or repugnant unto the law which God has imposed upon his creatures, but in or upon it does God work according to the law which himself has eternally purposed to keep, that is to say, the first law eternal?

I.3.1, 63-64.

Hooker further distinguishes between that eternal law that is manifest in brute or inanimate creation, and that which applies to voluntary agents, that is creation with free will.

[God's] command those things to be which are, and to be in such sort as they are, to keep that tenure and course which they do, imports [suggests] the establishment of nature's law. The world's first creation, and the preservation since of things created, what is it but only so far forth a manifestation by execution, what the eternal law of God is concerning things natural?

I.3.1, 65. For Hooker, nature's law is of manifest importance, as its keeping assures the continued existing of man, who relies on the order found in the cosmos, and without which order his existence would end:

Now, if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws: if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have, if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself: if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as it might happen: if the prince of the lights of heaven which now as a Giant does run his unwearied course, should as it were through a languishing faintness begin to stand and to rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mixture, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine away as children at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them relief, what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve?

I.3.2, 65-66. There is, Hooker concedes, in nature as in art, apparent disorder, a lack of harmony or beauty. Nature appears sometime errant. On occasion, a musician plucks the wrong string and creates disharmony. An artist's chisel cuts an errant groove in the marble before him. The world is not perfect; it limps. Pagans attributed this to the curse or malediction of the gods, an explanation which Christians reject, though they may not be able to comprehend, as a result of the weakness of their minds and the limits of their breadth, how the disorder and chaos fits in with God's greater perfection. It remains true, Hooker insists, that

howsoever these swervings are now and then incident into the course of nature, nevertheless so constantly the laws of nature are by natural agents observed that no man denies but those things which nature works, are wrought either always or for the most part after one and the same manner.

I.3.3, 66.

In further addressing the issue of the law of nature, Hooker rejects both a Platonic exemplarism or idealism and a pantheistic construct of the eternal law, and seeks to steer a course somewhere down a philosophical and theological via media. On the one hand,

we are not of [the] opinion . . . as some are that nature in working has before her certain exemplary drafts or patterns, which subsisting in the bosom of the Highest, and being thence discovered, she fixes her eye upon them, as travelers by sea upon the pole-star of the world, and that according thereunto she guides her hand to work by imitation.

I.3.4, 66-67. On the other hand, Hooker clearly rejects any pantheistic interpretation: there is no divine soul in nature, no "art or knowledge divine in nature herself working." I.3.4, 67 (emphasis added). Nature acts knowing neither what it does, nor why. Rather, anything divine is to be found outside of nature, "in the guide of nature's work." I.3.4, 67. Steering thus between Platonic idealism and pantheism, Hooker opts for a sort of internal, necessary and unintelligent entelechy in nature. The intellectual capacity of brute Nature should be distinguished from that of its Creator. And though it may appear that Nature acts as if "she did both behold and study how to express some absolute shape or mirror always present before her," and though Nature may show such "dexterity and skill" so as to be even beyond the capacity of intellectual creatures, as to nature's apparent intelligence: "it cannot be." I.3.4, 67. This seeming intelligence is evidence of some divine art, some guide, "some director of infinite knowledge to guide her in all her ways." I.3.4, 67. And who is this guide but "the God of nature," in whom we live, and move and have our being, as St. Paul poetically states (see Acts 17:28).

It is not within man's comprehension to know the hows or whys of God's knowledge, appointment, holding up, and framing of this second eternal law as it shows itself in the law of nature, in short, the particularity of God's Providence. In understanding God, humans are as limited as brute animals are in understanding human behavior.

The manner of this divine efficiency being far above us, we are no more able to conceive by our reason than creatures unreasonable by their senses are able to apprehend after what manner we dispose and order the course of our affairs. Only thus much is discerned, that the natural generation and process of all things receives order of proceeding from the settled stability of divine understanding. This appoints unto them their kinds of working, the disposition whereof in the purity of god's own knowledge and will is rightly termed by the name of Providence.

I.3.4, 68. God, therefore, is in command of Nature, and Nature "is therefore nothing but God's instrument." I.3.4, 68.

Before Hooker takes leave of the law of Nature, he reminds the reader that the law of Nature is both individual or particular, and social or general. It guides both individual agents as they tend to their own perfection, and also individuals in the form of a law "which touches them as they are sociable parties united into one body." I.3.5, 69. This law

binds them each to serve unto others' good, and all to prefer the good of the whole before whatsoever their own particular [good], as we plainly see they do, when things natural in that regard forget their ordinary natural want . . . even as if it did hear itself commanded to let go the good it privately wishes, and to relieve the present distress of nature in common.

In the next blog entry, we will review Hooker's discussion of the Celestial law, or that law "which Angels do work by." I,4.1, 69.

Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie