HAVING COMPLETED HIS TREATMENT OF THE NATURAL LAW, Hooker turns his attention to the divine law, that is, law as revealed by God. He explores numerous issues relating to the divine law, including its sources, its purposes, its practical necessity, and its eternal and unchanging aspects as well as its variable aspects. As is typical, Hooker begins with the underlying basis behind the divine law.
Hooker begins by noting that every created thing requires something external to its nature for perfection. God alone is the exception to this rule, as God is perfect in himself, and requires no other thing for perfection. Viewed from the vantage point of humanity, it follows from this that everything in the world, "either in respect of knowledge or of use," relates to human perfection and may "add somewhat" to it. I.11.1, 110. Hooker thus espouses the belief in the general good of God's creation, and therewith an anthropic principle avant la lettre. This perfection that may be acquired from the created order is truly our good, and yet it has limits. Hooker parenthetically notes that man's "sovereign good or blessedness," is "that wherein the highest degree of all perfection consists, that which being once attained unto there can rest nothing further to be desired, and therefore with it ours souls are fully content and satisfied, in that they have, they rejoice, and thirst for no more." I.11.1, 110-11. Created goods do not have this quality. By implication, this sovereign good is none other than God. By further implication, any created good which adds to our perfection is not our sovereign or ultimate good. In other words, created goods, though real goods, are relative goods, and are subordinate to God, our final end and good.
Hooker then distinguishes between goods that are means to some further good (i.e., instrumental goods, such as riches), and goods that are ends in themselves. Clearly, Hooker is addressing here goods other than God, for he clarifies that even those goods that we seek as ends in themselves (he gives as examples, health, virtue, and knowledge), "nevertheless are not the last mark whereat we aim, but have their further end whereunto they are referred, so as in them we are not satisfied as having attained the utmost we may, but our desires do still proceed." I.11.1, 111. In some way, then, all created goods are relative, point to another good beyond the one sought. Whether created goods are sought as instrumental goods or in themselves, it is clear that they do not wholly satisfy, and a hankering, a thirst, a desire for something greater remains even after relative fulfillment.
In Hooker's view, there is a great chain in created goods, a "chain of goods" similar to Professor Lovejoy's great "chain of being."
Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie
"Happiness, therefore," Hooker concludes, "is that estate whereby we attain, so far as possibly may be attained, the full possession of that which simply for itself is to be desired, and contains in it after an eminent sort the contentation [i.e., satisfaction] of our desires, the highest degree of all our perfection." I.11.3, 112.
Hooker's words are significant here, as they suggest that there is a sort of analogy of good, an analogia boni, in created nature, an analogy wherein the good that is in a created thing may be applied eminently to God as Good. This would be very similar to the analogy of being, the analogia entis, in which all created being inform us by analogy to God as the self-existing Being.
This notion of analogy of good, of the analogia boni, has two results. First, it means that created goods are relative goods only, and that God is the only eminent and absolute good. But it also suggests that the good that we find in created things is in fact a pointer, or subordinate reference, to the eminent good that is in God himself. So while created things can only yield us a relative happiness, one that leaves us yearning for more, for greater fulfillment, they also bespeak by both their essential goodness and the limit of their satisfaction to our real and absolute good, namely God. The fact that we are left ultimately longing even when temporarily satiated with created goods sought as ends in themselves, suggests the existence of a God that will satisfy that longing. To place a created good in the space that God only can fill is a form of idolatry. These created goods bespeak, intimate, contain, as it were, a residue, a clue, of their maker; and though we may blindly hanker after created goods, or seeming goods, even if we err in absolutizing them, it is truly God that we are seeking.
Is the happiness that Hooker claims exists and is intimated in created goods and the relative happiness they bring something we can achieve in this life? Hooker addresses that question next. It is that topic that we will address in our next blog entry.
Portrait of Richard Hooker
Hooker begins by noting that every created thing requires something external to its nature for perfection. God alone is the exception to this rule, as God is perfect in himself, and requires no other thing for perfection. Viewed from the vantage point of humanity, it follows from this that everything in the world, "either in respect of knowledge or of use," relates to human perfection and may "add somewhat" to it. I.11.1, 110. Hooker thus espouses the belief in the general good of God's creation, and therewith an anthropic principle avant la lettre. This perfection that may be acquired from the created order is truly our good, and yet it has limits. Hooker parenthetically notes that man's "sovereign good or blessedness," is "that wherein the highest degree of all perfection consists, that which being once attained unto there can rest nothing further to be desired, and therefore with it ours souls are fully content and satisfied, in that they have, they rejoice, and thirst for no more." I.11.1, 110-11. Created goods do not have this quality. By implication, this sovereign good is none other than God. By further implication, any created good which adds to our perfection is not our sovereign or ultimate good. In other words, created goods, though real goods, are relative goods, and are subordinate to God, our final end and good.
Hooker then distinguishes between goods that are means to some further good (i.e., instrumental goods, such as riches), and goods that are ends in themselves. Clearly, Hooker is addressing here goods other than God, for he clarifies that even those goods that we seek as ends in themselves (he gives as examples, health, virtue, and knowledge), "nevertheless are not the last mark whereat we aim, but have their further end whereunto they are referred, so as in them we are not satisfied as having attained the utmost we may, but our desires do still proceed." I.11.1, 111. In some way, then, all created goods are relative, point to another good beyond the one sought. Whether created goods are sought as instrumental goods or in themselves, it is clear that they do not wholly satisfy, and a hankering, a thirst, a desire for something greater remains even after relative fulfillment.
In Hooker's view, there is a great chain in created goods, a "chain of goods" similar to Professor Lovejoy's great "chain of being."
These things are linked and as it were chained one to another, we labor to eat, and we eat to live, and we live to do good, and the good which we do is as seed sown with reference unto a future harvest.I.11.1, 111. And so all goods are referent to a prior good and a succeeding good in a chain of goods. But this chain of goods cannot go on into infinity. "But we come at length to some pause." I.11.1., 111. There must needs be a necessary end. A stop. President Truman had a sign on his desk that read, "The Buck Stops Here." For Hooker, the chain of good stops at God. He explains why:
If this chain of goods were to go on into infinity, our ultimate end, and our reason for acting would be vanity, in fact, non-existent. Action would be absurd: For if everything were to be desired for some other without any stint, there could be no certain end proposed unto our actions, we should go on we now not whither, yea, whatsoever we do were in vain, or rather nothing at all were possible to be done.I.11.1, 111. Hooker insists that there must be a last end other than simply an infinite series of good. Just like there must be a beginning, there must be an end. Reason demands it.
Just like there must be a first cause to our existence, there must be a final cause to our action. For as to take away the first efficient [cause] of our being were to annihilate utterly our persons, so we cannot remove the last final cause of our working, but we shall cause whatsoever we work to cease.I.11.1, 111. In other words, Hooker is saying without a final end, an absolute end, that is, God, we are relegated to moral nihilism, moral absurdity.
Now that which man does desire with reference to a further end, the same he desires in such measure as is unto that end convenient: but what he covets as good in itself, towards that his desire is ever infinite. So that unless the last good of all, which is desired altogether for itself, be also infinite: we do evil in making it our end even as they who placed their felicity in wealth or honor or pleasure or anything here attained, because in desiring anything as our final perfection which is not so, we do amiss. Nothing may be infinitely desired but that good which indeed is infinite, for the better the more desirable, that therefore most desirable wherein there is infinite goodness, so that if anything desirable may be infinite, that must needs be the highest of all things that are desired. No good is infinite but only God: therefore he is our felicity and bliss.I.11.2, 112. From the fact that God is our absolute and final good, the only infinite answer to our infinite longing, it follows that God is our happiness, out beatitude.
[I]t is not the possession of any good thing [that] can make them happy which have it, unless they enjoy the thing wherewith they are possessed. Then are we happy therefore when fully we enjoy God, as an object wherein the powers of our souls are satisfied even with everlasting delight: so that although we be men, yet by being unto God united we live as it were the life of God.I.11.2, 112.
Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie "Happiness, therefore," Hooker concludes, "is that estate whereby we attain, so far as possibly may be attained, the full possession of that which simply for itself is to be desired, and contains in it after an eminent sort the contentation [i.e., satisfaction] of our desires, the highest degree of all our perfection." I.11.3, 112.
Hooker's words are significant here, as they suggest that there is a sort of analogy of good, an analogia boni, in created nature, an analogy wherein the good that is in a created thing may be applied eminently to God as Good. This would be very similar to the analogy of being, the analogia entis, in which all created being inform us by analogy to God as the self-existing Being.
This notion of analogy of good, of the analogia boni, has two results. First, it means that created goods are relative goods only, and that God is the only eminent and absolute good. But it also suggests that the good that we find in created things is in fact a pointer, or subordinate reference, to the eminent good that is in God himself. So while created things can only yield us a relative happiness, one that leaves us yearning for more, for greater fulfillment, they also bespeak by both their essential goodness and the limit of their satisfaction to our real and absolute good, namely God. The fact that we are left ultimately longing even when temporarily satiated with created goods sought as ends in themselves, suggests the existence of a God that will satisfy that longing. To place a created good in the space that God only can fill is a form of idolatry. These created goods bespeak, intimate, contain, as it were, a residue, a clue, of their maker; and though we may blindly hanker after created goods, or seeming goods, even if we err in absolutizing them, it is truly God that we are seeking.
Is the happiness that Hooker claims exists and is intimated in created goods and the relative happiness they bring something we can achieve in this life? Hooker addresses that question next. It is that topic that we will address in our next blog entry.
Portrait of Richard Hooker
No comments:
Post a Comment