I was too sick to post anything on Monday, the feast of Richard Hooker. Belatedly, in his honor, a short essay on a great man.
--
1. For as often as Anglicans acclaim Hooker as the inaugurator of a theological method grounded in the conviction that any lex credendi exists only as the self-conscious expression of the lex orandi, few assess his eucharistic teaching in the context of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer. This is especially strange given the fact that the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie represents a systematic defense of the Elizabethan Settlement enshrined decisively in that edition of the prayer-book. In the fifth book of the Lawes in particular, Hooker defends in excruciating detail the liturgical aspects of the Elizabethan Church that most exasperated its puritan detractors. It is therefore to be expected a priori that his treatment of the eucharist in Book v will assume a strict conformist stance vis-à-vis the lex credendi encapsulated in this lex orandi. Hence mere historical prudence commends an examination of the relevant moments of The Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion from the 1559 prayer-book (while keeping in mind the Articles also) before expositing Hooker’s own thought.
Political circumstances surrounding Elizabeth’s accession prevented her preferred return to the non-papal catholicism of her father. Something of a humanist-style Lutheran (perhaps not unlike Melanchthon), the first of Cranmer’s prayer-books would have suited her theological tastes more nearly than the second. As it happened, however, the 1559 edition closely resembled the second Edwardian prayer-book of 1552. The contents of its eucharistic prayer especially show this to be the case. In 1549 the patient, savvy Cranmer retained sacrificial emphases and, more importantly, included an epiclesis (lost for centuries in the Latin church):
With thy Holy Spirit and word vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these thy gifts and creatures of Bread and Wine, that they may be unto us the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ…
To Cranmer’s pious horror such passages were so amenable to conservative interpretation that his nemesis Stephen Gardiner hailed their orthodoxy from his gaol cell. Indeed, their strict grammatical construction would seem to tend toward at least a Lutheran interpretation. Accordingly the second prayer-book overhauled the eucharistic prayer in a distinctly Swiss direction. And in the context of the reforming mood ascendant after the impolitic reign of Mary, it was this second, more advanced protestant edition that served as the basis for the 1559 prayer-book legally mandatory throughout Elizabeth’s realm for the lion’s share of Hooker’s brief life. The parallel to the passage quoted above runs as follows:
Grant that we receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ’s holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood…
Remarkably while the diction sounds similar the theological content of the two prayers has shifted drastically. Whereas in 1549 the prayer would seem to explicitly seek the transformation of the elements into Christ’s body and blood (as Gardiner gleefully recognized), in the 1559 edition used by Hooker the emphasis is entirely on the recipients of the eucharistic gifts. In fact the latter prayer doesn’t even ambiguously suggest any change in the elements themselves. They remain creatures of bread and wine. By receiving them precisely as bread and wine, whilst holding Christ’s passion in memory, the recipient becomes a partaker of Christ’s body and blood. The transformation takes place not in the elements but in the recipients.
2. Now it should not surprise us to discover that that is more or less what Hooker taught. To begin, I must stress that Hooker doesn’t espouse mere memorialism: the Eucharist is not merely a subjective happening in the mind of the individual. Far from it. For Hooker, sacraments are means of grace by which – to borrow from Article xxv – God doth work invisibly in us. As Hooker himself put it, sacraments are “meanes conditionall which God requireth in them unto whome he imparteth grace” (Lawes 57.3). God really or truly – one could say “objectively” – employs sacraments to minister grace. Any student of Hooker, but especially she of the self-consciously catholic variety, must recognize this before proceeding any further. For with respect to the grace truly, really, objectively given by God through the sacraments, Hooker is every bit as catholic as Thomas Aquinas; indeed his language at this point seems to borrow from Summa Theologiae III q. 62. Yet at the same time, the protestant point Hooker wants to hold against Tridentine catholicism is that it is not the sacraments themselves, but God, who gives grace by means of the sacraments. “Which grace also they that receive by sacramentes or with sacramentes, receive it from him [viz., God] and not from them” (57.4). In other words, sacraments are separable from sacramental grace (58.2). By definition grace transforms the recipient of the sacramental gift. But grace need not for that reason necessarily change the sacramental elements themselves. God can use the bread and wine as instruments of his grace without first changing them into the body and blood of his Son.
Grace is a consequent of Sacramentes, a thinge which accompanieth them as theire ende, a benefit which he that hath receyveth from God himselfe the author of sacramentes and not from anie other naturall or supernaturall qualitie in them.
Hooker thus concludes that sacraments “conteine in them selves no vitall force or efficacie,” as they are “not physicall but morall instrumentes of salvation” (57.4). To say this is not necessarily to denigrate the importance of sacraments, only to clarify their nature and purpose in God’s economy of salvation.
This is therefore the necessitie of sacramentes. That savinge grace which Christ originalie is or hath for the generall good of his whole Church, by sacramentes he severallie deriveth into everie member thereof; sacramentes serve as the instrumentes of God to that ende and purpose (57.5).
Hooker writes that “except wee be trulie partakers of Christ, and as reallie possessed of his Spirit, all wee speake of eternal life is but a dreame” (56.7). Sacraments turn the dream into reality because through them we truly become partakers of Christ. The sacraments take lonely sinners and make of them living members incorporate of Christ’s mystical body: for they are “meanes effectuall whereby God when wee take the sacramentes delivereth into our handes that grace available unto eternall life.” Hence the eucharistic elements “reallie give what they promise, and are what they signifie” (57.5), not by any virtue inherent to them, but because by them God grants to the recipients the gift of becoming partakers of the body and blood of Christ (to return to the language of the prayer-book). In a justly famous passage summarizing his reading of the patristic teaching on this matter, Hooker argues that the eucharistic bread and wine are
….instrumentes as mysticallie yeat trulie, invisiblie yeat reallie worke our communion or fellowship with the person of Jesus Christ as well in that he is man as God, our participation also in the fruit grace and efficacie of his bodie and blood, whereupon there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soule and bodie, an alteration from death to life (67.11).
“A kind of transubstantiation in us.” There in a nutshell is Hooker’s bottom-line on the eucharist. Not bread and wine, but the church, becomes by the eucharistic mystery Christ’s true body and blood. “The fruite of the Eucharist is the participation of the bodie and blood of Christ” (67.6). “The bread and cup are his bodie and blood because they are causes instrumentall upon the receipt whereof the participation of his boodie and bloode ensueth” (67.5). Accordingly, Hooker thinks Christ’s “boodie and blood are in that verie subject whereunto they minister life… by a farre more divine and mysticall kinde of union which maketh us one with him even as he and the father are one,” and thus that
the reall presence of Christes most blessed bodie and bloode is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthie receiver of the sacrament (67.6).
To which conclusion he adds, in the spirit of Article vi, this final argument:
there is no sentence of holie scripture which saith that wee cannot by this sacrament be made pertakers of his bodie and bloode except they be first conteined in the sacrament or the sacrament converted into them (67.6).
Now we have to be careful here with our conclusions about what Hooker is actually saying. He hasn’t exactly written off transubstantiation (or other theories of real corporal presence) entirely, though he certainly doesn’t adhere to such a theory himself. Rather, he primarily argues that such a theory is theologically superfluous, that is, that transubstantiation isn’t necessary for the sacrament to accomplish its purposed end. Of course that doesn’t of itself mean transubstantiation is necessary false; which is why Hooker insists Holy Scripture does not teach the doctrine. To be sure, even granting the silence of holy writ – the sole incontrovertible authority no less for Aquinas than for Hooker – it might be true that the bread and wine become substantially Christ’s body and blood. As it is, however, Scripture’s silence encourages theologian’s reticence. We know with certainty that which is necessary for us to know, to wit, that
these mysteries do as nailes fasten us to [Christ’s] verie crosse, that by them wee draw out, as touching efficacie force and vertue, even the blood of his goared side, in the woundes of our redemer wee there dip our tongues, wee are died redd both within and without, our hunger is satisfied and our thirst for ever quenched (67.12).
In Hooker’s final analysis, “what those elementes are in them selves it skilleth not,” but it is enough “that to me which take them they are the bodie and blood of Christ (67.12).
3. Obviously Hooker’s eucharistic doctrine fails the Roman test of catholicity. Nor is it likely that many contemporary catholic Anglicans could accept his teaching wholesale. But this ought not in itself lead us to impugn his doctrine as less than catholic. If it did, it would either mean we’d given up the fight and submitted to the private judgment of papal tyranny – or something far worse. What might that more dreadful fate be? Namely, that each one of us had appointed her own private judgment to determine what counts as catholic and what doesn’t. But then if we’d done that we’d be nothing but protestants, and for that matter protestants of the very worst sort: bound to the sinful, ignorant, impatient fancies of our own whim. Which leaves us with the highly ironic conclusion that we Anglicans can only dismiss Hooker’s eucharistic doctrine as less than catholic if we admit that deep down we’re just liberals. As it is, the anglo-catholic can only assert that Hooker’s teaching doesn’t suit his personal preferences. Or am I mistaken? Perhaps today’s catholic Anglican brings patristic testimony to support his case; but then, so does Hooker. Does he turn to the Holy Scriptures? So does Hooker. Where else can he turn?
To the catholic church, of course, eastern, western, our own: not split into autonomous branches but speaking with her mighty undivided voice. At the moment we can certainly infer a broad consensus of eucharistic doctrine across these three communions, not least with the help of the documents produced by twentieth-century ecumenical dialogues amongst all parties. But even in the case of the remarkable ARCIC document on the Eucharist, which once seemed to portend such promise, neither communion officially recognizes its teaching as her own. And were this to change still little would change, for a theological document ratified by two communions is by no means comparable to the august authority of a dogmatic decree of an oecumenical council of the whole Catholic Church. When the whole Church speaks only a fool shuts up his ears. But the whole Church precisely as the whole Church has not yet and perhaps ever will speak definitively on the nature of Christ’s eucharistic presence. We can and must speak of the “catholic” doctrine of God, of the “catholic” doctrine of Christ. The first four councils have spoken definitively to these questions, and when she speaks her faithful sons and daughters obey. But mater ecclesia hasn’t yet similarly spoken to this question of Christ’s presence in the eucharist. Until she does, we are left to quarrel with one another, hopefully peaceably, about the meaning of this or that biblical proof-text, or the exact construction of this or that patristic commonplace. Hooker recognized this and met the challenge ably. We are obliged to do the same, whether we agree with his conclusions or not.
4. Now in conclusion I want to highlight two of Hooker’s contributions in this ecumenical direction, one methodological and one substantive. First, along the lines I’ve just sketched regarding theological certainty, conciliarity, and catholicity, Hooker leaves us this wonderful observation:
Varietie of judgmentes and opinions argueth obscuritie in those thinges where about they differ. But that which all partes receive for truth, that which everie one havinge sifted is by no one denyed or doubted of must needes be matter of infallible certaintie (67.12).
Again the comparison of eucharistic doctrines and trinitarian dogma is instructive. In his historical moment the majority of reformers assumed the truth of the Nicene Faith, which was only questioned by a relatively small number of radical thinkers. Remarkably this remains more or less the case after five centuries of ecclesial disintegration. The dogma of the Holy Trinity must needs be taken as infallibly certain. Not so, clearly, with any given understanding of the nature of Christ’s eucharistic presence. The variety of judgments amongst the would be “catholic” communions, to say nothing of the wild diversity held throughout all trinitarian churches, in itself argues for the inherent obscurity of the question at hand. In fact, to push Hooker a bit further than he goes himself, it is worth noting that while the early councils dogmatically declared the faith of the catholic Church with respect to the doctrine of God, they did not enshrine this or that particular trinitarian theology. The claim of the creed is entirely more humble, and more suitable to the nature of the mystery. The One True God exists eternally as three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: but there is no conciliar conceit to explain how this could be. Augustine, Nyssa, Bonaventure and Aquinas all arrive at different trinitarian theologies with distinct emphases but all alike share one common trinitarian faith. Could the Catholic Church speak to the question of the Eucharist in a similar way, similarly eschewing explanation and adoring the mystery? She would then declare the what of catholic eucharistic faith, but not the how.
Which leads us back again to the judicious Mr Hooker. What we would call his ecumenical concern is evident throughout his treatment of the eucharist in book v of the Lawes, but shines especially brightly at two moments. Near the beginning of paragraph sixty-seven he states categorically, and I think truly, that all parties agree on “that which alone is materiall,” to wit, “the reall participation of Christe and of life in his bodie and bloode by meanes of this sacrament (67.2). And then to complete his entire section on the sacraments he writes of baptism and eucharist alike: “Wee may with consent of the whole Christian world” – note again the implicit conciliar principle – “conclude they are necessarie, [baptism] to initiate or begin, [eucharist] to consummate or make perfect our life in Christ” (67.13). In both passages the teleological bent of his sacramental theology broadly conceived is put to the specific cause of Christian unity. Now I think this is worth considering because as far as I can tell it is true. I think the what of the eucharistic mystery – “which alone is materiall” in the sense I’ve argued above – is precisely the real sacramental participation of the body and blood of Jesus, the feast of the victory of our God which perfects our wayfaring life in Christ. Here is the catholic faith, beyond which lies little more than the explanatory how of this or that local tradition, this or that theologian. Could this not serve as the basis for the sort of conciliar pronouncement the Catholic Church has yet to speak? Might it not at the very least serve as the basis of our own small attempts at genuinely catholic ecumenism?
