What is it about?
Changes in church order in England in the sixteenth century were justified by a pattern that had been established early in the century, with a humanist twist: the order of the church should edify the participants in its authorized liturgies, so that the extremes of superstition on the one hand and indifference to the divine on the other were avoided, and growth in virtues enabled. These reforms led to criticism, including that attention to the humanistic virtues distracted from faith in the divine, and that inherited theology acknowledged the powerless of the human to do good things. Richard Hooker offered a remarkable solution, based on the inherited humanism of his age and of the high middle ages, as well as a traditional account of God’s grace, so that human beings were crated for a perfection they aspired to, but were capable of it only with the assistance of God in their real labours.
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Why is it important?
Too much attention is paid, in Reformation Studies, to confessional disputes, whereas the Church of England, although using inherited Patristic and Scholastic theology, did not approve any new confessional standards, but used existing theological theory to understand the power of its reforms.
Perspectives
Bringing together thoughts about Richard Hooker and the virtues is a new project, using Hooker's dispersed tests to understand a basic theological conviction he assumed would be accepted as it had been.
David Neelands
Trinity College Toronto, Faculty of Divinity
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Virtue Valued and Rewarded in Richard Hooker, July 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004700888_004.
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