HOOKER CLOSES HIS FIRST BOOK of his great work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity with a short synopsis and an apologia for having turned "aside from that beaten path" and focused on the origin of laws, instead of simply succumbing to a pragmatic presentation "more popular and more plausible to vulgar ears." I.16.1, 135. He has discussed, he says, the nature and the force of laws "according to their several kinds" and viewed them from the vantage point of origin. I.16.1, 134. In reviewing all laws, Hooker has identified a hierarchical structure, as it were, of law, all founded upon the basis of the eternal law of God:
--The Eternal Law: "the law which God with himself has eternally set down to follow in his own works."
--The Law of Nature: "the law which [God] has made for his creatures to keep, the law of natural and necessary agents."
--The Celestial Law: "the law which Angels in heaven obey"
--The Natural Law: "the law whereunto by the light of reason men find themselves bound in that they are men"
--Political Law: "the law which [men] make by composition for multitudes and political societies of men to be guided by"
--The Law of Nations: "the law which belongeth unto each nation" and "the law that concerns the fellowship of all"
--The Divine Law: "the law which God himself has supernaturally revealed"
In the First Book of his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which contains an introduction into or prolegomena of the matter which he intends to discuss in full in the following books, Hooker has focused on the origin of laws. Knowledge of the origin of laws (as distinguished from their mere description through some sort of empirical or pragmatic analysis) he argues, allows us better to discern if laws are "reasonably just and righteous or no." I.15.1, 135. "Is there anything which can either be thoroughly understood or soundly judged of 'till the very first causes and principles from which originally it springs be made manifest?" Hooker asks rhetorically. Wise men, Hooker notes, have always gone to origins in answering questions. In the same manner, Hooker has seen fit to focus on the origin of law before handling the particular matter at issue: the episcopal governance of the English established church in light of the presbyterian models advanced by the Calvinist, and the congregationalist models being put forth by the Puritan interests.
(We, of course, shall not review the remainder of Hooker's work, as it does not relate in sufficiently to the matter of the natural law. However, we must be grateful to Hooker for having begun from "originals," in his "First Booke," as that allowed us the intellectual privilege of reading a classic and yet unique treatment of the natural moral law, perhaps the best in the English language, and certainly one within an Aristotelian/Thomistic framework. In an earlier blog entry, we put forth the four requirements of a competent natural law theory as outlined by Fr. John Courtney Murray in his We Hold These Truths: a realist epistemology, a teleological metaphysic of nature, a natural theology, recognizing that there is a reasonable, personal God, creator of that nature, and a morality that posits an order of reason and therefore of freedom. Hooker's treatment of the natural law meets with everyone of these requirements. Though as we have noted , as a result of historical circumstances, it suffers from an anti-Catholic bias, this bias does not affect the treatment of the natural law, but imposes itself only when Hooker begins to handle divine law.)
To get back to Hooker's conclusion, there is for him a large chasm of understanding between learning by law as distinguished from learning about the law.
In any serious dabbling with matters of law, Hooker teaches, one ought always to have the eternal law before him. This advice, of course, is ignored--even unknown--by the positivists, realists, and other modern schools of legal philosophy or jurisprudence.
The eternal law impresses itself on the law of nature, that law that governs "natural agents." I.16.3, 136. Though the law of nature may not seem pertinent to man's natural and supernatural life, the "rules and axioms of natural operations have their force" upon men even in the area of man's natural moral law and supernatural destiny. As an example of this interrelationship between the law of nature and the moral or supernatural life of man, Hooker points toward marriage. Marriage, an institution with fundamental basis in the law of nature, is yet the symbol of the love that Christ has towards his Church. This is an example where the "axioms of that law," that is the law of nature, "whereby natural agents are guided, have their use in the moral, yeah, even in the spiritual actions of men, and consequently in all laws belonging unto men howsoever." I.16.3, 137. We ought not to look at the natural and supernatural life of men as disembodied realities. We are linked to nature as a whole, albeit called to a higher moral, even supernatural life.
The Celestial or Angelic law that Hooker discussed, though it would seem to be irrelevant to the issue of human guidance, is in fact not so. "[B]etween the law of their heavenly operations and the actions of men in this our state of mortality, such correspondence there is, as makes it expedient to know in some sort the one, for the other's more perfect direction." I.16.4, 137. Man shares with the angels a subordination to God: men are fellow servants with the angels. As the angel told St. John in his apocalyptic vision, conservus tuus sum, "I am a fellow servant." (Rev. 19:10) Angelic obedience is a pattern, and an ideal towards which man must strive. And those things that make the angels rejoice are patterns for our lives. "So that the law of Angels we cannot judge altogether impertinent unto the affairs of the Church of God." I.16.4, 138-39.
Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie
The varietals of law, then, all flowing from God's eternal law, must be considered in judging the right:
One ought not to downplay the importance of the public law, as too quick a tendency to disobey it and place one's private whims in its place causes severe disorder. This disposition makes such men "unframable into societies wherein they live." I.16.6, 140. It is as if they prefer to live in a legal wilderness, outside the pale of social and harmonious life. "Thus by following the law of private reason, where the law of public [reason] should take place," these men "breed disturbance." I.16.6, 140. Even in such basics as food and in fasting or abstinence, the entire gamut of law--the law of nature, the natural law, the public law of society (both civil and ecclesiastical), and the divine law--have a role. To concentrate on one law, even if it be the divine law as revealed in Scripture--and ignore or neglect the others is, for Hooker, a very grave error."Thus we see," concludes Hooker, "how even one and the selfsame thing is under diverse considerations conveyed through many laws, and that to measure by any one kind of law all the actions of men were to confound the admirable order, wherein God has disposed all laws, each as in nature, so in degree distinct from [the] other." I.16.7, 142.
And here concludes our review of the judicious Hooker's first book of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. It is a work of great merit, one well-within the classic Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition. It insists on a message which has been suppressed by the secularists and humanists of our age: all law, even human law, participates and must find its source in the eternal law of God, and in the most direct internal source of that eternal law of God, the natural moral law, or the law of reason that is within us, not withal rejecting the role that the divine law, graciously revealed by our loving God, may have. Grace builds upon nature. The divine law upon the natural law. And all law, strictly so called,--there are no exceptions--is from God.
Portrait of Richard Hooker
--The Eternal Law: "the law which God with himself has eternally set down to follow in his own works."
--The Law of Nature: "the law which [God] has made for his creatures to keep, the law of natural and necessary agents."
--The Celestial Law: "the law which Angels in heaven obey"
--The Natural Law: "the law whereunto by the light of reason men find themselves bound in that they are men"
--Political Law: "the law which [men] make by composition for multitudes and political societies of men to be guided by"
--The Law of Nations: "the law which belongeth unto each nation" and "the law that concerns the fellowship of all"
--The Divine Law: "the law which God himself has supernaturally revealed"
In the First Book of his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which contains an introduction into or prolegomena of the matter which he intends to discuss in full in the following books, Hooker has focused on the origin of laws. Knowledge of the origin of laws (as distinguished from their mere description through some sort of empirical or pragmatic analysis) he argues, allows us better to discern if laws are "reasonably just and righteous or no." I.15.1, 135. "Is there anything which can either be thoroughly understood or soundly judged of 'till the very first causes and principles from which originally it springs be made manifest?" Hooker asks rhetorically. Wise men, Hooker notes, have always gone to origins in answering questions. In the same manner, Hooker has seen fit to focus on the origin of law before handling the particular matter at issue: the episcopal governance of the English established church in light of the presbyterian models advanced by the Calvinist, and the congregationalist models being put forth by the Puritan interests.
(We, of course, shall not review the remainder of Hooker's work, as it does not relate in sufficiently to the matter of the natural law. However, we must be grateful to Hooker for having begun from "originals," in his "First Booke," as that allowed us the intellectual privilege of reading a classic and yet unique treatment of the natural moral law, perhaps the best in the English language, and certainly one within an Aristotelian/Thomistic framework. In an earlier blog entry, we put forth the four requirements of a competent natural law theory as outlined by Fr. John Courtney Murray in his We Hold These Truths: a realist epistemology, a teleological metaphysic of nature, a natural theology, recognizing that there is a reasonable, personal God, creator of that nature, and a morality that posits an order of reason and therefore of freedom. Hooker's treatment of the natural law meets with everyone of these requirements. Though as we have noted , as a result of historical circumstances, it suffers from an anti-Catholic bias, this bias does not affect the treatment of the natural law, but imposes itself only when Hooker begins to handle divine law.)
To get back to Hooker's conclusion, there is for him a large chasm of understanding between learning by law as distinguished from learning about the law.
Easier a great deal it is for men by law to be taught what they ought to do, than instructed how to judge as they should do of law; the one being a thing which belongs generally unto all, the other such as none but the wiser and more judicious sort can perform.I.16.2, 135-36. (This reality may explain the tendency towards legalism or Phariseeism in men, a tendency which must be resisted. But this reality also should warn us from supposing that all men have the requisite wisdom and prudence, the sophrosyne, to go solo in the matter of morals and law. To suggest, in the name of the natural law and freedom, that we all autonomously ought to follow their unformed conscience and are equally competent to sorting out thorny problems of the natural law as self-legislators, without regard to the teaching Church or wise man, the sophron, among us is a recipe to relativism and antinomianism.)
In any serious dabbling with matters of law, Hooker teaches, one ought always to have the eternal law before him. This advice, of course, is ignored--even unknown--by the positivists, realists, and other modern schools of legal philosophy or jurisprudence.
Yeah, the wisest are always touching this point the readiest to acknowledge, that soundly to judge of a law is the weightiest thing which any man can take upon him. But if we will give judgment of the laws under which we live, first let that law eternal be always before our eyes, as being of principal force and moment to breed in religious minds a dutiful estimation of all laws, the use and benefit whereof we see; because there is no doubt but that laws apparently good, are (as it were) things copies out of the very tables of that high everlasting law, even as the book of that law has said concerning itself "by me Kings reign," and "by me Princes decree justice."I.16.2, 136. Citing Proverbs 8:15, Hooker elaborates further on the role of the eternal law in fashioning the natural moral law and the human positive laws that govern us:
Not as if men did behold that book, and accordingly frame their laws, but because it works in them, because it discovers and (as it were) reads itself to the world by them when the laws which they make are righteous.I.16.2, 136. Even if personally we are unable to see the wisdom or the good in any particular human law, we ought to give benefit of doubt to the legislator and obedience to any particular law. Though Hooker recognizes that there are times to obey God rather than men, this principle is not to be presumed. or adopted lightly in each and every circumstance where our "private law" is irked by the "public law." Indeed, there ought to be a sort of presumption against disobedience on the grounds that a human law offends against the natural law or eternal law. This presumption is based upon the fact that most of us are ignorant of how inferior laws "are derived from that supreme or highest law." I.16.2, 136. "Surely," Hooker states, "there must be very manifest iniquity in laws, against which we shall be able to justify our contumelious invectives." I.16.2, 136.
The eternal law impresses itself on the law of nature, that law that governs "natural agents." I.16.3, 136. Though the law of nature may not seem pertinent to man's natural and supernatural life, the "rules and axioms of natural operations have their force" upon men even in the area of man's natural moral law and supernatural destiny. As an example of this interrelationship between the law of nature and the moral or supernatural life of man, Hooker points toward marriage. Marriage, an institution with fundamental basis in the law of nature, is yet the symbol of the love that Christ has towards his Church. This is an example where the "axioms of that law," that is the law of nature, "whereby natural agents are guided, have their use in the moral, yeah, even in the spiritual actions of men, and consequently in all laws belonging unto men howsoever." I.16.3, 137. We ought not to look at the natural and supernatural life of men as disembodied realities. We are linked to nature as a whole, albeit called to a higher moral, even supernatural life.
The Celestial or Angelic law that Hooker discussed, though it would seem to be irrelevant to the issue of human guidance, is in fact not so. "[B]etween the law of their heavenly operations and the actions of men in this our state of mortality, such correspondence there is, as makes it expedient to know in some sort the one, for the other's more perfect direction." I.16.4, 137. Man shares with the angels a subordination to God: men are fellow servants with the angels. As the angel told St. John in his apocalyptic vision, conservus tuus sum, "I am a fellow servant." (Rev. 19:10) Angelic obedience is a pattern, and an ideal towards which man must strive. And those things that make the angels rejoice are patterns for our lives. "So that the law of Angels we cannot judge altogether impertinent unto the affairs of the Church of God." I.16.4, 138-39.
Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical PolitieThe varietals of law, then, all flowing from God's eternal law, must be considered in judging the right:
[A]ll serve but to make manifest that as the actions of men are of sundry distinct kinds, so the laws thereof must accordingly be distinguished. There are in men operations some natural, some rational, some supernatural, some political, some fully ecclesiastical. Which, if we measure not each by its own proper law, whereas the things themselves are so different; there will be in our understanding and judgment of them confusion.I.16.5, 138. This is the error of Hooker's opponents. (This would also be the error of those of the Protestant Reformers, ancient (e.g., Calvin) and modern (e.g., Barth), some of whom we have reviewed in earlier postings, that reject the eternal law and the natural moral law as a result of their erroneous teachings concerning the "depravity of man") It is their error, Hooker states, "to think that the only which God has appointed unto men in that behalf is the sacred Scripture." I.16.5, 138. Man is governed by the law of nature, and even in acting in conformity with it, glorifies God. Even in breathing, sleeping, moving, we glorify God. The law of reason that God has placed in us, if St. Paul is to be believed, is a "universal law of mankind," "a rule which God has given unto all men for that purpose." I.16.5, 139. The laws of our political societies, the laws of nations, these also have a role in man's governance, as we are enjoined by Scripture to be subject to the higher powers. (Rom. 13:1).
One ought not to downplay the importance of the public law, as too quick a tendency to disobey it and place one's private whims in its place causes severe disorder. This disposition makes such men "unframable into societies wherein they live." I.16.6, 140. It is as if they prefer to live in a legal wilderness, outside the pale of social and harmonious life. "Thus by following the law of private reason, where the law of public [reason] should take place," these men "breed disturbance." I.16.6, 140. Even in such basics as food and in fasting or abstinence, the entire gamut of law--the law of nature, the natural law, the public law of society (both civil and ecclesiastical), and the divine law--have a role. To concentrate on one law, even if it be the divine law as revealed in Scripture--and ignore or neglect the others is, for Hooker, a very grave error."Thus we see," concludes Hooker, "how even one and the selfsame thing is under diverse considerations conveyed through many laws, and that to measure by any one kind of law all the actions of men were to confound the admirable order, wherein God has disposed all laws, each as in nature, so in degree distinct from [the] other." I.16.7, 142.
Wherefore, that here we may briefly end, of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world, all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power, but Angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peach and joy.I.16.8, 142.
And here concludes our review of the judicious Hooker's first book of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. It is a work of great merit, one well-within the classic Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition. It insists on a message which has been suppressed by the secularists and humanists of our age: all law, even human law, participates and must find its source in the eternal law of God, and in the most direct internal source of that eternal law of God, the natural moral law, or the law of reason that is within us, not withal rejecting the role that the divine law, graciously revealed by our loving God, may have. Grace builds upon nature. The divine law upon the natural law. And all law, strictly so called,--there are no exceptions--is from God.
Portrait of Richard Hooker
I have stumbled upon your site. I am sort of an armchair classicist and I need a second opinion on a paper. I looked all over your site and didn't see an email address. My paper is "Macrocosm/Microcosm in Doric Thought" and I'm wondering are you interested in looking at it. In it I describe Macrocosm/microcosm as part of the Natural Law. My email is "wheelerplatsis[at]hotmail.com". I hope you can help me.
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