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Theological Doubt and Institutional Certainty: An Anglican Paradox

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2016

Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams*
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, Cambridge
*
*Magdalene College, Cambridge, CB3 0AG. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

Explicating John Donne's ‘doubt wisely’, this essay argues for the theological and psychological sophistication of Richard Hooker's distinction of wise from unwise doubt and shows why this led him to support compulsory adherence to the Church of England. Framed by consideration of how his ideas were adopted by Thomas Browne's Religio Medici (1643), it explores Hooker's thinking on what is certain in itself and where we can properly doubt. If true, the revealed character of God and the consequent acknowledgement of God as faithful to his elect, is true by necessity, or definition, and may be held with certainty of adherence: whatever my emotional state, adhering is proof that I have not denied my faith and am therefore sincere in my profession. It is wise to doubt the absolute importance of issues such as the right definition of Christ's presence in the sacrament, the God-given character of any specific Church order, and assumptions about the spiritual state of any other baptized person. We cannot, however, be doubtful about the Church to which allegiance is commanded by law. For Hooker, legal enforcement of conformity is a pastoral good: it enables the unsure to establish a practice likely to offer them some anchorage for fluctuating convictions and ‘affections’.

Keywords

doubtelectionChurch of Englandconformitysacrament
Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 52: DOUBTING CHRISTIANITY: THE CHURCH AND DOUBT , June 2016 , pp. 250 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2016 

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References

1 London, 1969.

2 ‘Doubt wisely; in strange way | To stand enquiring right, is not to stray.’

3 Thomas Browne, Religio Medici 1.5, 6 (first publ. 1643).

4 Ibid. 1.6.

5 Ibid. 1.48.

6 Ibid. 1.59.

7 The relation of this to the epistemology of Locke and those who followed him needs more exploration; but it is important to grasp that Browne is not proposing that sense experience is the sole arbiter of true or justifiable belief.

8 Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 5.63.1 (ed. A. S. McGrade, 3 vols [Oxford, 2013], 2: 195).

9 Ibid. 5.67.1 (ed. McGrade, 2: 222).

10 Hooker, Richard, A Learned Sermon of the Certaintie and Perpetuitie of Faith in the Elect (Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, 5: Tractates and Sermons, ed. Yeandle, Laetitia and Grislis, Egil [Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991], 59–82, at 70–1)Google Scholar.

11 See, classically, Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I q. 2 a. 1, ‘Utrum Deum esse sit per se notum’.

12 Voak, Nigel, Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology: A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace (Oxford, 2003), 245CrossRefGoogle Scholar, referring to Summa theologiae, II–IIae q. 2 a. 1. See also ibid. 71–8 for a very helpful overview of Hooker's formulations on the varieties of certainty.

13 Hooker, Learned Sermon, 75. There is an exemplary reading of the argument of this sermon in Shuger, Debora K., ‘Faith and Assurance’, in Kirby, Torrance, ed., A Companion to Richard Hooker (Leiden, 2008), 221–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar: on Hooker's echoing of Aquinas (and his divergences or different emphases), see especially ibid. 237–41, and ibid. 248–9 which establish that Hooker's use of the distinction between truths certain in themselves and certain for us is picked up directly by Richard Baxter, who then, however, goes on to make a radically different use of Hooker's themes in the service of a far more ‘Lockean’ epistemology.

14 ‘Are they not greeved for their unbeliefe? they are. Do they not wish it might and also strive that it may be otherwise? wee know they do. Whenc cometh this, but from a secret love and liking which they have of those things that are believed? No man can love the thinges which in his own opinion are not . . . then must it needs be that by desiring to beleeve they prove themselves to be true beleevers’: Hooker, Learned Sermon, 76.

15 Voak, Hooker, 222–51.

16 Hooker, Laws, Preface 3.10–11 (ed. McGrade, 1: 14–15).

17 See Richard Hooker, Answer to the Supplication, 9 (Hooker, 5: Tractates and Sermons, ed. Yeandle and Grislis, 211–58, at 236–7).

18 Cf. Hooker's second sermon on the Epistle of Jude, 3, 16 (Hooker, 5: Tractates and Sermons, ed. Yeandle and Grislis, 36–58, at 37–8, 45–6), allowing for the marked difference of emphasis between this and the Certaintie sermon. On the divergences, see especially Shuger, ‘Faith and Assurance’, 227–8. She is rightly clear that the one thing Hooker is not doing is directly overturning the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance, but that he is proposing a radically reconfigured approach to assurance: ibid. 229–35. For a helpful though not very searching general treatment, see also Grislis, Egil, ‘The Assurance of Faith according to Richard Hooker’, in McGrade, A. S., ed., Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community (Tempe, AZ, 1997), 237–49Google Scholar, especially 239–40.

19 Hooker, Laws, 5.10–11 (ed. McGrade, 2: 42–3); these echoes in what is said about the eucharist represent a significant point of continuity between Hooker's earlier and his more mature thought that merits more exploration.

20 Ibid. 5.67.12 (ed. McGrade, 2: 343, lines 24–6).

21 Ibid. 5.68.6 (ed. McGrade, 2: 234–6).

22 Ibid. 5.68.7 (ed. McGrade, 2: 237).

23 Ibid. 5.68.9 (ed. McGrade, 2: 238).

24 Ibid. 5.68.8 (ed. McGrade, 2: 238).

25 Ibid. 5.68.9 (ed. McGrade, 2: 238).

26 See, for example, Voak, Hooker, 242–3.

27 Ibid. 250–1; Voak rightly points out the difference between this and Calvin's systematic scepticism about the possibility of deducing anything about one's spiritual state from an external pattern of conduct. See also Patterson, W. Brown, William Perkins and the Making of a Protestant England (Oxford, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 To the question of whether Hooker accepted and taught the final perseverance of the elect, which he is commonly supposed not to have endorsed by the time of his later writings, there is no crystal-clear answer. The Certaintie sermon is designed not so much to assure people of final perseverance on their part as to persuade them that God is able to guarantee their status and that their own lack of warmth or affective conviction is not evidence against this. On the whole, he writes of election as if it is inamissible; and if he did not believe this, much of both earlier and later work becomes unintelligible. What is distinctive is that he will not tie this to an individual sense of security. Our subjective insecurity is one of the things that drives us to constant self-examination, penitence and dependence – and thus to a more authentic and prayerful living out of our inner status.

29 Browne, Religio Medici 59.