The legitimacy of Richard Hooker as a standard author and “common doctor” has not much, since the seventeenth century, been in dispute. The significance of his views has frequently been the subject of debate, in some measure because what one thinks of Hooker must be what one thinks of Anglicanism, or more pointedly, what one thinks of Anglicanism must be what Hooker meant. This book is a delightful treatment of Hooker himself, and not only of what has been said about him, and this gives it both freshness and authenticity.
The received hermeneutical assumption is obviously flawed. Hooker would not have known what an “Anglican” was if he had found one. He was obviously and clearly a typical figure, and more important, an apologist for the (incompletely) reformed church of Elizabeth I, which did in fact allow English Christianity to maintain some distinctivness within the Reformation that would become known as Anglican but which enshrined a Protestant version of Christianity, even though the word “Protestant” was almost never used.
And it is a flawed approach to argue, as some have, from what Hooker must or should have said; the author shows the perils of claiming Richard Hooker for “a particular moral, theological or ecclesiological perspective, rather than reading what he actually has to say” (116).
Recently, studies of Hooker have asked readers to decide whether Hooker was a figure of the Reformation, in some line with the great continental reformers, or whether he was an unrepentant scholastic, relishing and preserving the medieval solutions of Thomas Aquinas whenever possible, to resist and even deny the positions of the continental reformers.
It is the considerable merit of this book to show that, at least within the theological areas covered, we have a both/and: Hooker is both clearly a child of the Reformation, loyal to its absorption in England under Cranmer and the ministers of Edward VI and its consolidation under Elizabeth and her ministers, and a theologian of depth, making use, explicitly and inexplicitly, of the retrieval of classical thought in the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas and the high Middle Ages.
The author has mastered the academic literature of the Anglican moral theology of the twentieth century and the study of Hooker, but the work always goes to the words of Hooker himself, to show that Hooker held views that he has not been supposed to hold and that he should not hold, in the view of those who wish to align him with some current concerns within Anglicanism. The author concludes that “the unfortunate tendency of scholars, both historically and in the modern era, to seek to identify him with one specific tradition rather than another, or to quarry Hooker for their own purposes, without taking account of such factors [as sources and influences], has at times had unhelpfully distorting effects upon the way in which his text has been read and interpreted” (244–45).
One major influence that has too frequently been neglected is the power of the rhetorical assumptions of Hooker's age. Joyce makes use of a skilled interpretation of Hooker's words to show how rhetoric must be used to interpret Hooker's attitude to Calvin. In the view of this reviewer, the book succeeds in showing that Hooker's rhetoric surrounding the person of Calvin manifestly succeeds in reducing his authority. This reader is not convinced, however, that Hooker did not admire Calvin and follow him, though not unconditionally, when it seemed his Church had.
Further, Joyce offers a highly original and carefully constructed account of Hooker's moral theology “in its own terms” (15), a topic frequently addressed, with varying conclusions, but not heretofore dealt with in so careful an exposition of Hooker's own words. Hooker has been enlisted as a voice on several sides of contemporary Anglican discussions about moral questions. Joyce shows Hooker's position clearly by asking what it was, rather than by assuming it was on one side of a particular issue or another.
Joyce's choice of a topic to illustrate Hooker's moral theology will be puzzling and unpromising to many who study Hooker, for Hooker's conclusions about the morality of marriage beneath his apologia for the disputed rites of the Church of England may appear naïve and even embarrassing. Yet Joyce has wrestled this topic to the ground, by a careful and honest address to Hooker's words, and has therefore contributed a new appreciation of how moral theology in fact works for Hooker. Few may use it to understand marriage in the Church of England or in broader society, but many may find it a helpful illustration of how moral theology works for Hooker, and that may, or may not, find application.
