Law, Sit Up Higher: Richard Hooker and the Natural Law, Part 1

THE "JUDICIOUS HOOKER" IS HOW THE ANGLICAN Richard Hooker (1554-1600) came to be cited by those writers of the natural law, political science, and constitutionalism, including John Locke whose writings influenced the American Founding Fathers and whose words--life, liberty, and estate"--, with but slight Jefferson variation, were to grace our Declaration of Independence as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In the next series of blogs, we will focus on Richard Hooker, in particular his theory of natural law as expressed in his most famous work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Before we start on that discourse, we ought to spend a little time reviewing Hooker's life and the background of his most famous work.

Portrait of Richard Hooker

Hooker flourished during the literary tempus mirabilis and theological ferment that was the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe were Hooker's contemporaries. The learning, balance, sense of fairness, and prudence exhibited by Hooker in his great work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (or Politie) earned him great praise. As one example of many encomia that could be cited is the comment of Pope Clement VIII (1536-1605) , who is reported to have said in 1597 in the presence of the English Cardinal William Allen (1532-94), that the Protestant Hooker's great work"has in it such seeds of eternity that it will abide until the last fire shall consume all learning." (Alexander S. Rosenthal, Crown Under Law: Richard Hooker, John Locke, and the Ascent of Modern Constitutionalism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008), xiv & xxviii n. 3; see also Walton, 84).

It is perhaps evidence of the fires of relativism and secularism consuming all learning that most moderns are clueless of Richard Hooker, much less of his work. So we will start off with a brief biographical sketch of this man. Born at the town of Heavitree in Exeter, Devon in 1554 from a family neither noble nor wealthy, Richard Hooker attended school at Exeter, and later attended Corpus Christi College at Oxford, largely as a result of the financial largess of Bishop of Salisbury, John Jewel, who supported his education. One of his earliest biographers, describes the young Hooker as "an early questionist, quietly inquisitive." (Izaak Walton, 8) At Oxford, his tutor was John Rainolds (Reynolds), a clergyman and scholar of decidedly Calvinistic, even incipient Puritan leanings. Hooker obtained his master's degree in 1577, and became assistant professor of Hebrew. In 1581, Hooker became an Anglican clergyman, and married Jean Churchman from whom he eventually obtained six children. It was as a result of the obligations imposed upon him by this marriage that, in the words of Walton, Hooker "was drawn from the tranquility of his College; from that garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace, and sweet conversation; into the thorny wilderness of a busy world; into those corroding cares that attend a married priest, and a country parsonage; which was Drayton-Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire, not far from Aylesbury, and in the Diocese of Lincoln." (Walton, 31)

In 1585 he was appointed Master of the Temple Church which allowed him to be the spiritual guide of the Inns of Court in London, and exposed him to the English legal community. Hooker's appointment as Master of the Temple Church, "was the very beginning of those oppositions and anxieties" that came from engaging in theological controversy. (Walton, 34) His first theological controversy was battling the extreme predestination of the stern Calvinist theologian Walter Travers. After his first controversy, Hooker "grew daily into greater repute with the most wise and learned of the nation." (Walton, 67) Hooker became a stalwart defender of the Elizabethan settlement, and took the side of the Anglican conformists against the non-conforming Calvinists and Puritans, the latter movement which was just then budding. He was later appointed Subdean of Salisbury Cathedral, and Rector of St. Andrew's Boscomb in Wiltshire in the Diocese of Sarum.

In 1593, Hooker published the first book of his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. (Subsequent volumes were published thereafter, with three volumes published posthumously.) In it he sought to defend the episcopal form of government of the Church of England against the presbyterian ideas of the Calvinists and the even more radical ideas of church government advanced by the Puritans. Though it would seem that the controversy that gave rise to Hooker's work would limit its applicability in the area of natural law and political philosophy, that is not the case because Hooker starts his work with fundamentals regarding law, order, and governance. And these fundamental principles apply regardless of whether one is analyzing ecclesiastical or civil law. In the area of the natural law, Hooker's importance is derived from the fact that his work "was deeply influenced by the medieval scholastic tradition represented by St. Thomas Aquinas, even while adapting this tradition to confront the new challenges of early modern political life." (Rosenthal, xvi) He is thus a "transitional figure" (Rosenthal, xvi) between the medieval and Enlightenment concepts of law and order, and a middling figure between the perennial Catholic doctrine of natural law and the more radical Protestant rejection of that doctrine, partial or entire, by Luther, Calvin and their followers.

Title Page of Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Hooker's Magnum Opus

After the publication of his first volume of his famous work, Hooker was appointed Rector of St. Mary's in Bishopsbourne in Kent, near Canterbury, in 1595, in which appointment he remained until his death. Hooker died there in Bishopsbourne in 1600, and is buried in the Churchyard of St. Mary's.

We may adequately enough summarize Hooker's contribution to the natural law and political science by quoting a recent scholar of his work, Alexander Rosenthal:

Upon his death in 1600, Hooker left a long and distinguished legacy. All sides of religious and political controversy in seventeenth century England recognized Hooker as a major figure whose authority could be employed to settle difficult disputes about theology. During the Restoration era, Hooker was essentially canonized as an almost infallible saint and doctor of the Anglican Church. Meanwhile, Whigs like Algernon Sidney, James Tyrrell, and especially John Locke turned to Hooker for their own, quite different, purposes. Hooker's status as a luminary of Anglican theology was more or less secure through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with Tractarians like John Keble (who guided a new publication of Hooker's works) and John Henry Newman celebrating Hooker as a proponent of the Via Media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Meanwhile, Hooker's contribution to Whig constitutionalism was generally accepted (albeit in an often unreflective way) during this period.

(Rosenthal, xv)

The Natural Law scholar, A. P. d'Entreves classifies Hooker as a "sixteenth-century Anglican example of seventeenth-century Catholic scholasticism." (Rosenthal, xiv)

The poet Sir William Cowper wrote Hooker's epitaph:

Though nothing can be spoke worthy his fame,
Or the remembrance of that precious name,
Judicious HOOKER; though this cost be spent
On him that hath a lasting monument
In his own books; yet ought we to express,
If not his worth, yet our respectfulness.
Church ceremonies he maintain'd; then why
Without all ceremony should he die?
Was it because his life and death should be
Both equal patterns of humility?
Or that, perhaps, this only glorious one
Was above all, to ask, why had he none?
Yet he that lay so long obscurely low,
Doth now preferr'd to greater honours go.
Ambitious men, learn hence to be more wise,
Humility is the true way to rise:
And God in me this lesson did inspire,
To bid this humble man, 'Friend, sit up higher.'

The natural law doctrine is a philosophy of law that urges human law and human order to humble themselves and thereby to "sit up higher," to set their eyes on their fundamental source, and their fundamental end, namely, God and the Eternal Law, and to thus recognize both their fundamental limits and divine pedigree; at once to realize their humble limits and constraints with the glorious dignity and heights from whence they come and whither they go; to realize that, like all things human, they find their dignity and limits in the reason and will of the God most high.

Statue of Richard Hooker

Ecstasis and Telos: John Locke: From Natural Law to Natural Right

WALKING A SORT OF VIA MEDIA, a middle way, between the atheist Thomas Hobbes and the Anglican Richard Hooker, John Locke (1632-1704) is a fundamental figure in the history of natural law (lex naturalis) and its subtle transformation, arising from an emphasis on individualism and away from common nature, into the doctrine of natural rights (ius naturale). His influence on Thomas Jefferson and the American founding fathers--even on the phraseology of the American Declaration of Independence--merits him an important place.

In his book Passage to Modernity, Professor Louis Dupré succinctly describes this process:

. . . British philosophers, beginning with John Locke, attempted to restore a normative, moral meaning to the notion of natural law: the "dictates of reason" may conflict with positive laws. But the more they stressed the norms inherent in an individualist concept of nature, the more they emptied their natural law of any concrete social content. Natural law thus becomes to function as a rational basis of prepolitical, individual rights.

Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 99.


While for Hobbes, all natural rights ceased upon formation of the overweening State, that "Mortall God," for Locke the opposite was very clearly the case. Natural rights remained after the formation of the State; indeed, the State was obligated not only to recognize those rights, but was formed through a social contract for the very purpose of defending those rights. Levering, 99; see also Rommen, 79.

However, Locke does not "view the law as an objective order of norms out of which individual righs flow by intrinsic necessity," such as one would see in a classic Natural Law doctrine. Compared to the traditional and classic Natural Law doctrines, which viewed human law and human right as participating in, and flowing out of, a greater order designed by God and written in the substance of the created world and in particular man, Locke's notion of inalienable rights is a very thin. It is merely a "nominalistic symbol for a catalogue or bundle of individual rights that stem from individual self-interest." Indeed, in an odd sort of way, in Locke's view, instead of rights arising out of law, law arises out of rights. "The rights to life, liberty, and estate or property make the law; the law does not create them." Rommen, 79.


Though in parting with Hobbes's doctrine, Locke's doctrine is commendable, it is something altogether different from the classic and traditional Natural Law doctrine such as was still to be found in the Anglican Richard Hooker. Levering attributes this shift to a failure on the part of Locke to appreciate the natural disposition of individuals to live in community, an overemphasis on the individual, and an undue focus on man's animalistic needs of self-preservation (the right to life and the procreation of children by means of the family) to the exclusion of other, higher goods both individual and social. In addition, for Locke the individual's need for self-preservation includes the ownership of private ownership of property. Levering thus summarizes:

In short, Locke reduces natural law to the bare bones of self-preservation, inclusive of property. He thereby turns natural law radically inward upon the individual and upon the inclination most shared by human beings with other animals. In so doing, he has turned upside-down the biblical theocentric and ecstatic account of natural law . . . .

Levering, 103.

Informed as they are by a political philosophy and culture so deeply influenced by Locke's individualism, Americans suffer from the effect of Locke's thin, individualistic theory of natural rights revolving around a short list, an ensemble of private rights. When we talk about rights, we are therefore predisposed to focus on self-interest and questions of commutative justice over questions of distributive justice, legal justice, and the common good. We engage only in "Rights Talk," and it impoverishes our political discourse (Mary Ann Glendon). We ignore "Duties Talk." Looking at the world from the traditional or classical doctrine of the Natural Law will therefore broaden our perspective.

We ought to put Locke's Two Treatises aside for a time, and turn to Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, or, better yet, turn to Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law. Best yet, we ought to go to John Paul II and his masterly synopsis on the Natural Law, his Encyclical Veritatis Splendor.

Natural Law: Ecstasis and Telos

ETIAMSI DAREMUS . . . NON ESSE DEUM. These temerarious but still tenuously introduced words in the introduction (Prolegomena) of Hugo Grotius's treatise De iure belli ac pacis (1625) symbolize a historical phenomenon of which anyone who studies the Natural Law must be aware. In this treatise on international relations, Grotius (1583-1645), commonly called the "Father of International Law" (although the title could equally be claimed by the Spaniard and Catholic Vittoria), relied on the doctrine of the Natural Law. Though the Dutch Grotius was himself a Christian [of Protestant bent, he wrote an apologetic of Christianity in Dutch, Vewisjs van den waren Godsdienst (1622) which was translated into Latin as De veritate religionis Christianae (1627)], he argued that the Natural Law would bind us etiamsi daremus . . . non esse Deum, even if "we dare to say there is no God." It is true that the Natural Law binds all men, including the Atheist, and if understood in this manner, there is no controversy to what was said. But Grotius's etiamsi is indicative of something in the air a little more subtle, and a little more ominous. It is perhaps the first shoot, the first flowering of a Natural Law theory wholly unmoored from the notion of God, if such a theory is even tenable. It was the maturation of trend of turning away from God being the measure of all things to a Protagorean man is the measure of all things. In his classic The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988), the historian of Natural Law, Henrich Rommen, identifies Grotius as the "turning point." The "turn," however, started much earlier than Grotius.


In his excellent book Biblical Natural Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), Matthew Levering, an Associate Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University, discusses this "turn" from a theocentric notion of Natural Law to an anthropocentric notion of Natural Law. According to Matthew Levering, two things are required for a wholesome (and also Biblical, i.e., consistent with Revelation) theory of Natural Law. The first he calls ecstasis. The second he calls teleology.

What do these words mean? Ecstasis is the transliteration of a Greek word ekstasis or ἔκστασις. It means to "extend outwards" to "stretch out." It is the word from which we derive the English word ecstasy. It is used here for the desire of union with the Divine. This ecstasis need not be religious in origin, though it most often is. For example, the neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus, no Christian himself, in his Enneads speaks of his ecstasis, his virtual experience of union, with his philosophic notion of God which was based upon a natural theology. The term ecstasis was readily adopted by Christians to describe the union with the Trinity. Levering's point is that the Natural Law must recognize ecstasis, a desire for union with God, which means that our lives on earth are ordered to God.


The second requirement that Levering argues is required for an adequate theory of Natural Law is a teleology of nature. The word teleology is a technical word derived from a combination of two Greek words: telos (τέλος), which means "end", "purpose", or "goal," and logos (λόγος), a word which means "reason" or "word." For example, in the Gospel of Christ Christ is referred to as the Logos of God, the Word or Reason (logos) of God. John 1:1. In St. Paul's letter to the Romans, Christ is also referred to the end (telos) of the Law. Rom. 10:4. As applied to Nature, a teleological view would include the concept that God created nature, including the nature of man, and that He did so with a plan, a purpose, an end, a reason in view.

In short, requiring a theory of Natural Law to possess a notion of ecstasis and a notion of teleological nature means that God is both the origin and the end of things, including man. God is the alpha (A), He is the omega (Ω), the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, and the first and last letters of the Natural Law. Put another way, the requirement that a theory of Natural Law include notions of ecstasis and notions of teleology in nature mean that a theory of Natural Law must presuppose Eternal Law.

The traditional or classical notion of Natural Law includes both notions of ecstasis and teleology in nature. This notion of Natural Law found its most mature expression among the Stoics, e.g., Cicero, and was advocated in modified form by the Church, e.g., in St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, as consonant with, and in fact revealed in, Scripture and Tradition. Many modern theories of the Natural Law shun notions of ecstasis. They turn not outward to God (ecstasis), but wholly inward (in what may be called an entasis) to man. Though a turning inward to man is not fatal to a theory of the Natural Law (in fact it would be part of our discovery of our nature), it is when this turning inward is exclusive or in opposition to the turning outward to God that it becomes a problematic to a theory of Natural Law.

The story of how the Natural Law came to be progressively emancipated from its theological roots is a long one, and there are many controversial points about it, for example who initiated the process, and whether the arguments made to justify such emancipation are valid or not. Regardless, Levering calls this disassociation from of the Natural Law from its original theological roots the "Anthropocentric Turn" or "Anthropocentric Shift." He wrests out eight individuals from history to make his point. And for the next series of reflection we will rely on his choices: Renè Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, George W. F. Hegel, and Friederich Nietzsche. There are many others Levering could have chosen (e.g., Ockham, Scotus, Machiavelli, or Luther). Though these may (or may not) have been believers in various shades, the "natural law" of Messrs. Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel is not the Natural Law. These gentlemen's ideas are already on the way out of the Porch (Stoa) or the Church (Ekklesia) , and in some instances completely out of the Porch or the Church into the Wilderness.

To a greater or lesser degree, each of these men rejected the notion of ecstasis and teleology in nature. In some cases, there was no apparent rejection, but some of their presuppositions would lead to or implied such rejection. Each played a part in the Western world's turning from God as the measure of all things, including Law, to Man as the measure of all things, in particular Law. Some of their notions have prevailed and are assumed in modern culture, and we have to be aware of them in order to understand better the Natural Law, to reject these ideas, or to respond to them.