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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Richard Hooker's theology of law was rarely far from pragmatic concerns. He wanted to promote a peaceful and prosperous human community before God while holding that moral right consists in conformity to the divine will. In this paper, we tread a narrow path between Hooker as ‘villain’ because of his role in preparing for the modern separation of ethics from metaphysics and as ‘unqualified hero’ whose ethically substantive and teleological theology of law took inspiration from Holy Scripture and the angels' worship of God. The claim is that Hooker's theology of law still provides a fertile environment in which to think practically today about questions such as: What is the nature of divine authority? What is law for? What should characterize the human exercise of authority?
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40. I am indebted in this reading of Hooker to Arthur J. Jacobson's work on ‘writings’ of the law in biblical accounts of God's giving of the law to Moses and the people of Israel. In his essay ‘The Idolatry of Rules’, Jacobson considers Moses' writing of the law, writing about writing the law, and ‘erasing’ the law in the smashing of the tablets. I précis this superb essay in order to draw attention to its central observations that naturalistic and positivistic jurisprudences entail only two ‘writings’ of the law: their initial inscriptions (whether in nature or at the word of a ruler) and their subsequent non-dialogic application. Moses' understanding of the law entailed at least three ‘writings’: the first is God's writing – namely ‘the world, along with the laws of the world, as a finished, created product’. The second is God's collaborative writing with Moses: ‘human deeds continuing creation’ (pp. 130–31). The third is Moses's writing which is characterized by struggle, ‘erasure’, delay, the need for sanctions to ensure compliance, re-writing, and the constant need for recourse to God in prayer. Natural law, says Jacobson, is written once by God without delay at the moment of creation. ‘But natural law is not Moses' law’ (p. 110). Neither is his law positivistic in the sense that it is written once by the law-giver and a second time by an obedient administrator. Rather: ‘Moses' law poses rules as instruments to assist humans to realize Elohim's propositions. It also puts rules in play, opens them to change through consciousness, through ceaseless collaboration of the people with Yahweh’ (p. 11). The challenge to Moses and his successors is to write laws as collaborators and friends of Yahweh, not as the direct representative of Elohim or a pharonic-type God. Jacobson's essay is helpful when reading Hooker because it provides a way of expressing the dynamism and inherent dialogism that characterizes his theology of law. More specifically, it provides a means of demonstrating that, as for the biblical accounts, his theologico-ethic of law involves multiple writings. NB: According to Jacobson, Moses calls God ‘Elohim’ when referring to him as the all-knowing, all-powerful creator who rules the earth by right. He calls God ‘Yahweh’ when referring to the God who interacts with the world he has created as collaborator and friend (Exod. 33.11).
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