Law, Sit Up Higher: Richard Hooker and the Natural Law, Part 6

REASON IS THE FACULTY BY WHICH MAN obtains knowledge of things that are perceptible to his senses, as well as those things which are not. Hooker explores how it is that man attains the knowledge of things beyond the senses. Man's desire to know things beyond the mere sensory must be spurred by an end which incites or provokes this desire. "How should that divine power of the soul, that 'Spirit of our mind,'" as St. Paul calls it in his letter to the Ephesians (4:23), "ever stir itself unto action, unless it have also the like spur?" I.7.1, 77.

Hooker then explores the ends for which man works or acts, and notes that the good that some of the actions or works man undertakes are the very actions or works themselves, in other words, the actions or works are ends in themselves, whereas in other situations, the actions or works are means to a further end.

Hooker continues with the observation that man is a free agent, "we do wittingly work and freely," and so man is not like the natural agents compelled to act in one manner, "but that it is in our power to leave the things we do undone." I.7.2, 77.

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Two things are therefore necessary for man to act, knowledge of an end, and the will to be able to pursue that end. "So that two principal fountains there are of human action, Knowledge and Will, which will in things tending towards any ends is termed Choice." I.7.2, 78. An example of this is given in Deuteronomy 30:19: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Chose therefore life . . . " In this passage is distinguished both Knowledge and the need for Will or Choice.

Hooker then considers it important, "a matter of no small moment," to distinguish the will "from that inferior natural desire which we call appetite." I.7.3, 78. He distinguishes will from appetite thus:

The object of appetite is whatsoever sensible good may be wished for; the object of will is that good which reason does lead us to seek. . . . [A]ppetite is the will's solicitor, and the will is appetite's controller; what we covet with one, by the other we often reject, neither is any other desire termed properly will, but that whre reason and understanding, or the show of reason prescribes the thing desired.

I.7.3, 78. Hooker observes that affections are not always trustworthy inasmuch as they are not voluntary or derived by reason. "Affections, as joy, and grief, and fear, and anger, with such like; being as it were the sundry fashions and forms of appetite, can neither rise at the concept of a thing indifferent, nor yet choose but rise at the sight of some things. Wherefore it is not altogether in our power, whether we will be stirred with affections or no." I.7.3, 78. On the other hand, "actions which issue from the disposition of the will are in the power thereof to be performed or stayed [i.e., prevented]." I.7.3, 78. There are some appetites, however, that can be controlled by reason, even though the appetites themselves are not derived by reason (e.g., eating, drinking, the need for sleep). In such cases, the yielding of the will to the appetites makes them as voluntary as if they had stemmed directly from the will. "In such cases therefore of such facility the will does yield her assent, as it were with a kind of silence, by not dissenting; in which respect her force is not so apparent as in express mandates or prohibitions, especially upon advice and consultation going before." I.7.3, 78-79.

Understanding requires a determination of what is good, and so "the laws of well doing are the dictates of right reason." I.7.4, 79. Children, those mentally deficient, and the mad have not the use of reason, and so they must rely "for their guide the reason that guides other men, which are tutors over them to seek and to procure their good for them." I.7.4, 79. Other than these exceptions, in the rest of men there is reason that guides them to good and evil: "In the rest there is that light of reason, whereby good may be known from evil, and which discovering the same rightly is termed right." I.7.4, 79.

Right is not determined by will, but by reason, and reason must both indicate the good and its possibility. "The will notwithstanding does not incline to have or do that which reason teaches to be good, unless the same [reason] does also teach it to be possible." I.7.5, 79. "Let reason teach impossibility in anything, and the will of man does let it go; a thing impossible it does not affect, the impossibility thereof being manifest." I.7.5, 79. What is true of reason is not true of appetite, as appetite sometimes pines for the impossible. How many of us have not sighed with Virgil's Evander those impossible lines:

O mihi praeteritos referat si Iupiter annos!
If only Jupiter would restore me those bygone years!

Aeneid VIII.560. (Reason would say the words of T. S. Eliot in "Ash Wednesday," "Because I do not hope to turn again / Because I do not hope / Because I do not hope to turn.")

There is no good that has not its concomitant evil, and there is no evil that has not its concomitant good, for "things are blended." With respect to any particular object, therefore, it is not so good that it may not have attached or appended to it "some difficulty or unpleasant quality annexed to it," I.7.6, 79, thus allowing us to "shrink and decline it." The contrary is also true: there is no particular evil "which has not some appearance of goodness whereby to insinuate itself" to us as a good. I.7.6, 80. It is under the appearance of a good that evil so insinuates itself and moves our will. "For evil as evil cannot be desired: if that be desired which is evil, the cause is the goodness which is, or seems to be joined with it." I.7.6, 80. In an opposite vein, goodness does not move us "by being, but by being apparent; and therefore many things are neglected which are most precious, only because the value of them lies hid." I.7.6, 80.

It is in the nature of things that the tug of a sensible goodness tends to be stronger than a goodness apprehended by reason. Unless reason therefore intervenes to teach otherwise, we incline to sensory goods. And even if reason dictates otherwise, the attraction of the sensory good is sufficiently present so as to allow us the freedom to neglect the instruction of reason.

Sensible goodness is most apparent, near, and present, which causes the appetite to be therewith strongly provoked. Now pursuit and refusal in the will do follow, the one the affirmation, the other the negation of goodness, which the understanding apprehends, grounding itself upon sense, unless some higher reason do chance to teach the contrary. And if reason have taught it rightly to be good, yet not so apparently that the mind receives it with utter impossibility of being otherwise; still there is place left for the will to take or leave.

I.7.6, 80. This ever-present tug of an apparent sensible good, and the freedom of the will to opt for it, is what explains why an apparent sensible good is chosen by men when reason dictates that right action ought to be otherwise. "We are not to marvel at the choice of evil, even then when the contrary is probably known." I.7.6, 80. We ought not further to forget the role that "custom" or the "inuring [of] the mind by long practice" may have against a good that is presented by reason. Bad habits, bad customs, embedded cultural norms and prejudices, all these "leaving there [in the mind] a sensible impression, prevail more than reasonable persuasion." I.7.6, 80.

But the tug of evil either under the appearance of sensible impressions of good or the artificially-induced or conventionally-induced impressions of good should not lead us to thing that we are excused from guilt. "For there was never sin committed, wherein a less good was not preferred before a greater, and that willfully." Such choice of a lesser or apparent good over a greater or real good creates disorder,

as any such choice cannot be done without the singular disgrace of nature, and the utter disturbance of that divine order, whereby the preeminence of chiefest acceptation is by the best things worthily challenged. There is not that good which concerns us, but it has evidence enough for itself, if reasons were diligent to search it out.

I.7.7, 80. It is our neglect of that search for real good, "the subtility of Satan inveigling us as it did Eve," the "hastiness of our wills," or "the very custom of evil making the heart obdurate against whatsoever instructions to the contrary," that lead us to choose evil under the guise of apparent good. "Still therefore that wherewith we stand blamable, and can no way excuse it is, In doing evil, we prefer a less good before a greater, the greatness whereof is by reason investigable, and may be known." I.7.7, 80-81.

It is true, Hooker concedes, that the "search of knowledge is a thing painful and the painfulness of knowledge is that which makes the will so hardly inclinable thereunto." I.7.7, 81. One cannot discount also the result of the "divine malediction" following Adam's sin which have weakened the "instruments . . . wherewithal the soul (especially in reasoning) does work." I.7.7, 81. There is sort of post-lapsarian torpor, a moral inertia in us, that "prefers rest in ignorance before wearisome labor to know." I.7.7, 81.

For a spur of diligence thereof we have a natural thirst after knowledge ingrafted in us. But by reason of that original weakness in the instruments, without which the understanding part is not able in this world by discourse to work, the very conceit of painfulness is a bridle to stay us.

I.7.7, 81. It is this heaviness, this laziness that the Apostle Paul and the Scriptures enjoin us to shake off as they call us to repentance, to metanoia.

For which cause the Apostle who knew right well, that the weariness of the flesh is a heavy clog to the will, strikes mightily upon this key, 'Awake you that sleep, cast of all which presses down, watch, labor, strive to go forward and to grow in knowledge.'

I.7.7, 81.

Portrait of Richard Hooker

Law, Sit Up Higher: Richard Hooker and the Natural Law, Part 5

HOOKER STARTS HIS TREATMENT OF NATURAL LAW by discussing his philosophical foundations. In his presentation, Hooker is decidedly traditional and Aristotelian, and rejects the philosophical presuppositions of the Calvinist/Ramist schools.

Hooker begins: All things but God (who is pure act, and in whom is no potentiality for development) are in various states of potentiality or "somewhat in possibility," and to that extent are not in act. In other words, all creation develops towards something, has not reached its end, and is in movement from its potential to some perfection in act. Creation is becoming in its being, unlike God in whom there is no shade of becoming, but is pure Being. This metaphysical reality gives rise to the well-observed fact that "there is in all things appetite or desire, whereby they incline to something which they may be." I.5.1, 72-73. Upon achieving that desire, they are more perfect, more complete, than before achieving that desire. This perfection which all things seek is generally known as goodness. Since there is nothing in the world that does not exist to make another thing good, it follows that all things are good. I.5.1, 73.

This desire for goodness, that is to say, a creature's thirst for improvement, for perfection, proceeds from God, as he is the cause of all things. Since God is the cause of all things, and since "every effect does after a sort contain, [or] at least . . . resemble the cause from which it proceeds," all things may be said to be seeking in a manner "to seek the highest, and to covet more or less the participation of God himself." I.5.2, 73. All things, willy-nilly, seek to participate in God, as effect to cause.

This urge toward perfection, and therefore this urge to participate in God, is nowhere more clearly seen than in man. Part of this is because man desires "so many kinds of perfection," that is, he seeks various "degrees" of perfection. I.5.2, 73. Like animals, men seek to "the continuance of their being" (first degree). Since man, like other beings, cannot in fact live for ever, the urge to continue his being is manifest in the desire to propagate offspring. Man, not unlike God, also seeks to be constant and excellent in those physical qualities which are his by nature (second degree). Quoting Aristotle, Hooker observes how "the works of nature do always aim at that which cannot be bettered." I.5.2, 73 (quoting Aristotle's De Anima, (415b) [Πάντα γὰρ ἐκείνου ὀρέγεται.]) These two degrees of appetites or desires are, however, so intertwined with our nature that "we scarcely perceive the appetite to stir in reaching forth her hand towards them." I.5.3, 73. They are, as it were, involuntary appetites or desires.

More apparent than the first two degrees of aspiring toward perfection is the third degree. This degree comprehends those desires for perfection which "grow externally," especially those desires that do not arise without knowledge of the perfection (virtue) or those desires for knowledge itself (truth).

Concerning perfections of this kind, that by proceeding in the knowledge of truth and by growing in the exercise of virtue, man amongst the creatures of this inferior world, aspires to the greatest conformity with God . . .

I.5.3, 73-74. This aspiration to moral goodness and to truth, "aspires to the greatest conformity with God," and is particular to man among all creation. Its presence and uniqueness is attested to by both Scripture and the best of pagan philosophers. Mention of it is found in the Gospel of Matthew (5:48: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect") and in the Book of Wisdom (7:27: Wisdom "maketh the friends of God and prophets."). Plato speaks of knowledge as exalting men above other men, raising them up into heaven, and, though it makes men not God, it makes them quasi-divine: "yet as gods, high, admirable, and divine." I.5.3, 74. In reference to the virtues of a righteous soul, the pagan Mercurius (Hermes) Trismegistus states that "such spirits . . . are never cloyed with praising and speaking well of all men, with doing good unto every one by word and deed, because they study to frame themselves according to THE PATTERN of the father of spirits." I.5.3, 74 (Ἡ δὲ τοιαύτη ψυχὴ κόρον οὐδέποτε ἔχει ὑμνουσα εὐϕημουσά τε πάντας ἀνθρώπους, καὶ λόγοις καὶ ἔργοις πάντας [πάντως] εὐποιουσα, μιμουμένη αὐτης τὸν πατέρα.)

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Hooker then addresses the issue of knowledge, contrasting the angelic knowledge which is "already full and complete," and men whose knowledge "in their spring," that is, when they are children, "are at the first without understanding or knowledge at all." I.6.2, 74. Ultimately, however, man's knowledge approaches, as it were, asymptotically, angelic knowledge.

Nevertheless from this utter vacuity [of knowledge in man which an infant], they grow by degrees, till they come at length to be even as the Angels themselves are. That which agrees to the one now, the other shall attain unto in the end; they are not so far disjoined and severed, but that they come at length to meet.

I.6.1, 74. Hooker sees man as a tabula rasa, a γραμματεῖον, an unwritten book, a book upon whose pages knowledge must be inscribed: "The soul of man being therefore at the first as a book, wherein nothing is, and yet all things may be imprinted; we are to search by what steps and degrees it rises unto perfection of knowledge." I.6.1, 74.

Here, Hooker invokes that great circle of being, the chain of being from insensate creation, through vegetative life, up to the life of unreasoning animals, unto man and angel reaching into the ultimate source of Being, God Himself. Man participates, like the creatures below him, in the perfections of God. But he has a calling, a dignity all his own. He is meant to participate in the being and perfection of God in a way unique to him, and he achieves this through the use of reason:

The soul of man therefore being capable of a more divine perfection, has (besides the faculties of growing unto sensible knowledge which is common unto us with beasts) a further ability, whereof in them [brute animals] there is no show at all, the ability of reaching higher than unto sensible things. Till we grow to some ripeness of years, the soul of man does only store itself with conceits of things of inferior and more open quality, which afterwards do serve as instruments unto that which is greater: in the meanwhile above the reach of meaner creatures it ascends not.

I.6.3, 75. This aspect of man's reason is found in such things as the awareness of time, of "affirmations, negations, and contradictions in speech." To these must be applied the "true art and learning" of Aristotelian demonstration or logic. I.6.3, 75.

Hooker complains that his generation appears to have ignored or rejected Aristotelian logic. The gap in "maturity of judgment" between a man who is well-versed in Aristotelian logic, and one who is not is as wide as that between men and children.* Hooker stresses the importance of education, of instruction or formation, of paideia, as it were, in the development of human reason.

Education and instruction are the means, the on by use, the other by precept to make our natural faculty of reason, both the better and the sooner able to judge rightly between truth and and error, good and evil.

While Hooker realizes the value of education and instruction as an aid in allowing men to judge between truth and error and good and evil, he also notes that this faculty is not necessarily tied to the "skill and learning" of academia, but is more a product of "common sense" and experience. I.6.5, 76. It is not philosophers "who best know the nature both of fire and gold, to teach what degree of the one will serve to purify the other," but rather artisans "who do this by fire, discerns by sense when the fire has that degree of heat which suffices for this purpose." I.6.5, 76. In similar manner, then, truth and good are not obtained solely from education and instruction, but are also a sort of art and product of common sense and experience. For Hooker, then, the knowledge of true and good is both a science and art, one which requires personal involvement and commitment.

In the next blog entry, we will continue Hooker's treatment of the underlying principles, the philosophical foundations of his theory of the natural law.

*Note: In this regard, Hooker is focusing his sights on Ramism (what he calls "Ramystry"), "that other new devised aid" of reasoning. The traditionalist Hooker, therefore rejects the novel logical/rhetorical anti-scholastic and anti-Aristotelian theories of the Protestant Peter Ramus, the distasteful and superficial and rebellious scholar that had been killed at the St. Bartholomew's Massacre. Sarcastically, Hooker describes "Ramystry" as "of marvelous quick dispatch," allowing its proponents to learn in three days what others take sixty years to learn. It also restrains itself to generalities, avoiding the peril of detail. Thus, "Ramystry" is an art "which teaches the way of speedy discourse, and restrains the mind of man that it may not wax over wise." I.6.4, 76.

Portrait of Richard Hooker

Law, Sit Up Higher: Richard Hooker and the Natural Law, Part 4

LIFTING HIS EYES FROM GOD'S FOOTSTOOL to His throne, Hooker pays a quick visit to the law which governs the spiritual creation, those "heavenly and divine creatures," "spirits immaterial and intellectual," that are known as angels. The eternal law that governs the angels is, as Hooker previously called it, Celestial or heavenly law. I.3.1, 63.

Although the law as it pertains to Angels is probably not within the scope of a blog dedicated to the natural law, there are some concepts arising out of Hooker's treatment that merit mention.

First, one may note that the existence of law is not restricted to situations where there is evil or where love is lacking. It is a fallacy to believe law inconsistent with love, or goodness, or a rightly ordered will. St. Augustine's Dilige et quod vis fac, "love God and do what you will," (Epist. Joann. Tractatus, vii, 8) is not a excuse for lawlessness. In Hooker's view, law is required even "where nothing but light and blessed immortality, no shadow of matter for tears, discontentments, griefs, and uncomfortable passions to work upon, but all joy, tranquility, and peace, even for ever and ever does dwell." I.4.1, 69. Hooker therefore rejects, and properly so, the negative vision of law that one finds, for example, in Calvin. In his sermon on Galatians 3:19-20, Calvin spouted off:

If we were all like angels, blameless and freely able to exercise perfect self-control, we would not need rules or regulations. Why, then, do we have so many laws and statues? Because of man's wickedness, for he is constantly overflowing with evil; that is why a remedy is required.

This negative vision of law fundamentally Protestant is carried over into our thinking by, for example, James Madison. Madison's famous statement in Federalist No. 51 is informed by Calvin's legal negativism.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

The notion that there is no law in heaven, or that there is no law where love reigns ought to be banished.

The angels are subject, and obey perfectly, "that law which the Highest whom they adore, love, and imitate, has imposed upon them." I.4.1, 69-70. It is this perfect state of governance that Christ refers to when, in the Lord's prayer, the Christian asks that it be done on earth as it is in heaven. In other words, we pray that man may follow the natural and divine law with as equal fidelity as the angels their Celestial law. Heaven is not a place where there is no law, but a place where law is obeyed faithfully in love. Law and love, like justice and mercy, kiss in heaven.

Celestial law governs "Angelical actions," including relationship of God to angel, thus comprehending angels' love of God, their adoration of Him, and their imitation of Him. According to Hooker this is the intendment of David who mentions in Psalm 148:2: "All ye his Angels praise him." I.4.2, 71.

Law is also present in the relationship of angel to angel, and of the angels corporately who, 'linked into a kind of corporation amongst themselves," act in unison as an army. [Cf. Luke 2:13, Matt 26:53, Ps. 148:2] "[T]heir law is that which disposes them as an Army, one in order and degree above another," states Hooker. I.4.2, 71.

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There is also a Celestial law that governs angels' relationship to man.

Consider the Angels as having with us that communion which the Apostle to the Hebrews noted, and in regard whereof Angels have not disdained to profess themselves our fellow servants; from hence there springs up a third law which binds them to works of ministerial employment.

I.4.2, 71

Finally, Hooker completes his treatment of Celestial law by a disquisition on the fall of the angels before their confirmation. Hooker attributes the deviation of the wicked angels to the sin of pride. I.4.3, 71-72. Pride, then, not love, is what is contrary to law. "The fall of Angels was therefore pride. Since their fall, their practices have been the clean contrary unto those before mentioned." I.4.3, 72. Pace Calvin and Madison, then, it is not angels who are without law, but the Devils and his demons. These, dispersed "some in the air, some on the earth, some in water, some among the minerals, dens, and caves that are under the earth: they have by all means labored to effect a universal rebellion against the laws . . ." I.4.2, 72. (One may perhaps mention that there must be some sort of law, however attenuated and however corrupt its end, that governs even the Devil and his minions, for as St. Augustine reminds us, even the devil is not completely evil, for if completely evil he would cease to be. Similarly, if the evil angels had no law, they would cease to be governed, and could carry on no real war against God and his creation. Since in Augustinian thought evil is the privity of good, it may also be said to be the privity of law.)

Our next blog entries will address Hooker's treatment of that part of the eternal law of God that relates to mankind.

Portrait of Richard Hooker

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

Law, Sit Up Higher: Richard Hooker and the Natural Law, Part 2

THE FIRST BOOK OF HOOKER'S Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity shall be the focus of these next several blog entries. In his book, Richard Hooker addresses the issue of law, and the different kinds of law, in particular the role of reason in law, and the distinctions and similarities between the natural law based upon Reason and the divine law based upon Revelation.

Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

As an apologist for the existing order aimed at the public, Hooker realizes that he faces intrinsic difficulties, what he calls "the secret lets and difficulties," I.1.1, 56, that confront a person undertaking such public discussion. The adversaries of the existing order enjoy presumption that they are attacking disorders of the state, and that they are more liberated and ingenious. Therefore, what is founding wanting "in the weight of their speech," is compensated by the public's natural bias in their favor. Conversely, the public sees the apologist for the existing order as defending their privileges or seeking preferment, brown-nosing, as it were, the powers that be. Particularly difficult is discussion directly with the leaders of those who advocate resistance or change in the existing order, since their minds are already predisposed against that order. In short, the public pulls for the underdog, and the opposing party has already invested too much in his rebellion.

Additionally, very few people have the discipline to go through the tedium required to think from the basics or general principles to the particular issue at hand. They prefer to walk "those beaten paths wherewith they are inured," and never have "sounded the depths from whence [truth] springs." I.1.2, 56. Though perhaps obscure, dark, and intricate, the origin of laws is as necessary to study as is a foundation to a house, or the root of a tree. Sometimes more important that the things we readily see and admire, is the underlying basis, foundation, or roots that we do not see. "In like manner," Hooker states, "the use and benefit of good laws, all that live under them may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit the grounds and first original causes from whence they have sprung be unknown, as to the greatest part of men they are." I.I.2, 57. Return to foundations is particularly necessary when confronting the arguments of those who "withdraw their obedience" to existing laws, or argue that they "are corrupt and vicious." I.I.2, 57. For this reason, invoking God's aid, Hooker will first begin his discussion of Church governance "with consideration of the nature of law in general, and of that law which gives life unto all the rest, which are commendable just and good, namely the law whereby the Eternal himself does work." I.I.3, 58.

All things that are, Hooker, begins come from "some operation not violent or casual." I.2.1, 58. In other words, the world before us is not the product of chance or arbitrariness. Additionally, Hooker assumes that nothing that exists operates "without some foreconceived end for which it works." "For unto every end every operation will not serve." This observation takes us to Hooker's definition of law in general:

That which assigns unto each thing the kind, that which moderates the force and power, that which appoints the form and measure of working, the same we term a Law. So that no certain end could ever be attained, unless the actions whereby it is attained were regular, that is to say, made suitably fit and correspondent undo their end, by some canon, rule or law.

I.2.1, 58. This is true, preeminently in fact, "in the works even of God himself." I.2.1, 58.

All things, including humans, work according to law, but that law in things finds its source in some superior to which they are subject. With respect to creation, then, the subject that works according to law is distinct from the superior source who promulgates the law. Only God is both source of law and of his works. Only God is self-law. "Only the works and operations of God have him for both their worker, and for the law whereby they are wrought. Even the inner life of God, the "being of God," "is a kind of law to his working: for that perfection which God is, gives perfection to that he does." I.2.2, 59. In his analysis of law, Hooker does not address the inner operations of the Trinitarian God, but only "such operations as have their beginning and being by a voluntary purpose, wherewith God has eternally decreed when and how they should be." I.2.2, 59. This eternal decree is what is termed eternal law. We should not presume, Hooker warns, that we can understand or comprehend the Eternal Law by reason, at most we apprehend its existence.

Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the most High, whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of his name: yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know him not as indeed he is, neither can know him: and our safest eloquence concerning him is our silence, when we confess without confession that his glory is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon earth, therefore it behoves our words to be wary and few.

I.2.2, 59. The idea of an eternal law derived from God, the first cause "whereupon originally the being of all things depends," and the notion of an order or law in the workings of the world were perceived by the wisest pagans. As examples of this, Hooker cites the the first book of Homer's Iliad: Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή (God's [Zeus's] counsel was accomplished), Mercurius (Hermes) Trismegistus, the pre-Socratic philosopher: Τὸν πάντα κόσμον ἐποίησεν ὁ δημιουργὸς οὐ χερσὶν ἀλλὰ λόγῳ [The creator made the whole world not with his hands, but by Reason]. He also refers to Anaxagoras and Plato, both of whom call the maker of the world, the demiurge, a work of the intellect, as they speak of a God with mind, a νοὺς ὁ Θεός. I.2.3, 60. Following in that line of thinking are the Stoics, who though perceiving erroneously the first cause as "fire," did recognize nevertheless that that fire did ὁδῳ̑ βαδίζειν ἐπὶ γενέσει κόσμου (proceed by a certain and set way in the making of the world). These pagans

all confess therefore in the working of that first cause, that counsel is used, reason followed, a way observed, that is to say, constant order and law is kept, whereof itself must needs be author unto itself. Otherwise it should have some worthier and higher to direct it, and so could not itself be the first. Being the first, it can have no other than itself to be the author of that law which it willingly works by. God therefore is a law both to himself, and to all other things besides.

I.2.3, 60. It is plain that Hooker sees that all things are the works of God, that God works nothing without cause, that every cause must have a purpose, some end for its being done, and that the end for which things are done is the "reason of [God's] will to do them." I.2.3, 60. Though God is infinte in power and ability, God's power is limited by reason of the "end which he has proposed, and the laws whereby his wisdom has stinted the effects of his power in such sort, that it does not work infinitely by correspondently unto that end for which it works, even all things χρηστως, in most decently and complete sort, all things 'in measure, number and weight.'" I.2.3, 61.

It is true, Hooker concedes, that we do not always grasp or discern the reason in God's works, it sometimes appears "secret" to us, and sometimes amazes us. Nor should we even expect to comprehend the Eternal Law: "[H]ow should either men or Angels be able perfectly to behold [the Eternal Law]? The book of this law we are neither able nor worthy to open and look into. That little thereof which we darkly apprehend, we admire, the rest with religious ignorance we humbly and meekly adore." I.2.5, 62.

But we may be assured with certainty that there is such reason, "undoubtedly a proper and certain reason there is of every finite work of God, in as much as there is a law imposed upon it." I.2.4,5, 61. That law is absolute, perfect, and just; it is eternal and therefore "can have no show or color of mutability." I.2.6, 62. For this reason of the eternal law, God's promises can be absolutely relied upon because it is not possible that God deny his promises, fail to perform on them, thereby denying himself.

Because of his emphasis of the reason behind the eternal law, Hooker, in his analysis of law, clearly rejects voluntarism: "They err therefore who think that of the will of God to do this or that, there is no reason besides his will." I.2.5, 61. Hooker rejects any suggestion that God's self-imposition of law "any whit abates" God's freedom of will. This is because the "imposition of this law upon himself is his own free and voluntary act." I.2.6, 62-63. Hooker concludes this section: "This law therefore we may name eternal, being that order which God before all ages has set down with himself, for himself to do all things by." I.2.6, 63.


*All quotes from Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity here and in following blog postings are to the Folger Library Edition of the Words of Richard Hooker (Volume 1) (Harvard: Belknap Press, 1977). Citation will be by Book, Chapter, Section, followed by page. However, I have taken the liberty of modernizing spelling and, where I thought appropriate, simplifying the text.

Portrait of Richard Hooker