Richard Hooker #2: (His Teaching)

Richard Hooker's work, "The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity," had a significant influence on the decline of Western civilization. He believed in natural law, with scripture being just one authority among many. Hooker defended the Anglican church against Presbyterianism and argued that the form of civil government should reflect the form of church government. He believed that man could become god-like and that the king had absolute authority. Hooker's ideas influenced John Locke and American political philosophy divorced from scripture. Hooker's work also reversed the progress of the Reformation by placing man back on the throne of civil authority. Hooker's views reflected those of Thomas Aquinas, who also exalted human reason and natural law. In America, these ideas have led to a focus on individual rights rather than God's law. Dispensationalism has further undermined the authority of the Old Testament. Hello everybody, today we are continuing our study of Richard Hooker as part of a study of 100 classical authors at greatbiblereset.com. We are seeking to demonstrate how each of the classical authors in their own unique way contributed to the decline and fall of Western civilization that we experience today. Hooker's masterpiece is The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker's philosophical base is Aristotelian, with a strong emphasis on natural law eternally planted by God in creation. On this foundation, all positive laws of church and state are developed from scriptural revelation, ancient tradition, reason, and experience. Note how scripture is reduced to but one authority among many. Reinforcing this, Hooker assumed absolute abrogation of both the ceremonial and civil law in both Old Testament and New Testament. We noted yesterday that Richard Hooker, an Anglican, preached a morning sermon in the same pulpit occupied by Walter Travers, a Presbyterian, in the afternoon. In the 1590s, under Elizabeth, the Anglican church was the state church of England and its preachers occupied the pulpits on Sunday morning. Elizabeth was basically irreligious, but she favored the centralized church polity but was forced by circumstance to nurture the reform. The Puritans were granted privilege of conducting a second service in the afternoon in the same building. In one church, the Anglican preacher was Richard Hooker and his Puritan counterpart was his assistant, a pastor named Walter Travers. Debates and discussion between the two, in which Travers challenged the Anglican form of government, prompted Hooker to write laws of ecclesiastical polity. All the Stuart monarchs, except the boy king Edward VI, who fell right in the middle of the five Tudor monarchs, were aligned with one or the other, Roman, Catholic, or Anglican. They pursued hundreds of Protestant leaders to the stake. Human right theory has an ally in the top-down structure of the Roman and Anglican churches. The effect of the book has been considerable, especially in the Age of Enlightenment to follow in the 18th century. Hooker greatly influenced John Locke, the father of the Enlightenment, who wrote in the late 1600s, and both directly and through Locke, American political philosophy divorced from scripture in the late 1700s. Thus, Hooker, in a very real sense, may be considered the grandfather of the American system of godless political pluralism and the anarchy it has generated in our present day. Richard Hooker wrote laws of ecclesiastical polity to defend the Anglican church against the Presbyterianism of his colleague, Walter Travers, but its scope extended to civil government as well. The form of civil government is usually a reflection of the form of church government in a nation. Hooker argued that because the Bible did not prescribe a specific form of church government, it fell under the auspices of natural law as interpreted by the civil magistrate. This made the magistrate accountable to God alone, with no checks and balances. Reinforcing this was Hooker's semi-Aryan persuasion that man himself was elevated to the status of deity in salvation. Thus, Bible and church were subordinated to natural law as interpreted by man's representative, the nearly deified king. My assertion yesterday that Hooker is blatantly Aryan may have been too strong, but his Christology is acknowledged by virtually everybody to be very mystical, with a variety of statements that the nature of man may be deified by incorporation into union with Christ, and this of course reinforces the idea of the divine right of kings, of a single man to rule as God walking on earth. To assert like Hooker that Christ would leave no definitive rule for exercising his authority within the church, that is, no fixed church polity, is absurd on the face of it. We have, for example, illustrations of the means by which church officers are to be selected by nomination in Acts 6, 3 and 4. We know that the church is to be ruled by elders who preach the word and deacons who minister to the physical needs of the body. We are told the qualifications of these leaders in 1 Timothy and the spirit in which they are to rule. Moreover, we have the example of the first church council as a means by which the church settled a doctrinal dispute. But Hooker ignored all this, and much more, to shift the authority in matters of church government to natural law as defined by the king. Prior to Luther, the theology of the Roman Catholic Church had degenerated into a perverse system of works righteousness, based on the purchase of indulgences. This was simony of the worst stripe. The papacy functioned as a civil state, waiting war, practicing the most degrading forms of immorality. God has given us the papacy to enjoy, said one pope, let us make the most of it. The Reformation restored the biblical doctrine of salvation based on faith in the finished work of Christ alone, apart from the work of man. Reformers such as Calvin and Knox extended that work to encompass the reign of Christ over every aspect of life and culture in the priesthood of the believer, including the political. The work of Hooker played a major role in reversing that progress by placing man back on the throne of civil authority as absolute sovereign as part of the Counter-Reformation in the mid-1500s. The stage was now set for the bitter conflict between the crown and Puritanism that dominated 17th century England. In what way did Richard Hooker reflect the teaching of Thomas Aquinas? Thomas Aquinas was an advocate of natural law theory. In this capacity, Aquinas placed human reason on a par with God's revelation, relying on Aristotle's methodology of looking for patterns in the particulars to arrive at truth. Likewise, Richard Hooker exalted human reason and natural law above the Bible, especially as manifested in the state. According to Francis Schaeffer, Aquinas had an incomplete view of the fall in that he believed that man's will was fallen, but not his intellect. As we have seen above, Hooker, in similar fashion, believed that man could in some sense become God or God-like. This has created in America a system of God-like inalienable human rights. All the conservative Christians in America can think about is, how can we restore our God-given inalienable rights? How have we become innocent victims of this globalist cabal? This is 180 degrees out from the question we should be asking. What have we done to offend Almighty God to bring this judgment upon ourselves? For starters, our all-wise theologians have invented every excuse under the sun to explain why God's law doesn't apply anymore. We have unconsciously repudiated the attitude of Psalm 19, which says, in part, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wisdom simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. More to be desired are they than gold, gayer than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. First of all, we can thank dispensationalism, which makes the Old Testament sort of a Word of God emeritus. It's got some good advice, but you can kind of take it or leave it. The problem is, the New Testament authors didn't take it that way. They assumed continuity unless God indicates some change, such as the ceremonial laws, including the change from Sabbath to the Lord's Day. And we've already mentioned how Jesus granted equal authority to the Decalogue and their judicial explanation in Matthew 15. So thank you again for listening today. Please like, subscribe, and ring the bell to be reminded of our daily presentation. When you patronize our sponsors at greatbiblereset.com, 15% of all purchases go toward scholarships for low-income families at kingswayclassicalacademy.com. So stop back tomorrow for more biblical analysis of the teaching of Richard Hooker.