From The Prayer Book Society: Scripture, tradition, reason: Hooker’s supposed 3-legged stool

from Stand Firm by Sarah Hey

Once every two months, I receive Mandate in the mail -- the print publication of the Prayer Book Society. You may recall that I had a nice conversation with members of the English version of this society at the Lambeth conference in Canterbury. Mandate has many useful articles and its issues are rich in particular with church history.

Here's an article that they reprinted in the Spring issue of Mandate -- they graciously allowed me to post it here for the benefit of StandFirm readers. You cancheck out the full pdf issue over at their website.

Scripture, tradition, reason
Hooker’s supposed 3-legged stool
by Peter Toon (reprinted from the Mandate July/August 2001)

In the modern Episcopal Church there are frequent references made to what is sometimes called “the three-legged stool” (Scripture, tradition & reason) or “the four-legged stool” (Scripture, tradition, reason & experience).

These expressions are commonly believed to derive from the reign of Elizabeth 1 and to be associated with the name of the theologian Richard Hooker (died November 2, 1600). However, the common belief is at best a half truth, as we shall see.

Before actually seeking to state what for Hooker are the relations of Holy Scripture, human reason and church tradition, let me comment on the origins of the supposed “three-legged stool” attributed to Richard Hooker, famous as the author of the multi-volume apologetic for the Church of England by law established and entitled, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

The reference to “Hooker’s threefold, ‘Scripture, tradition and reason’” appears to be a 20th century phenomenon with roots in the late 19th century. An example of this phenomenon is found in Francis Paget, An Introduction to the Fifth Book of Hooker’s Treatise of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, (2nd ed, 1907) on pages 282-283. Here there is a new and unprecedented attempt to buttress what was later to be called the Anglican theological method (see the Report of the Lambeth Conference 1968, for a reference to the authority of “reason” as a special Anglican tool).

Richard Hooker
Those who know Hooker’s writings know that he did not use this modern expression. There is only one place in his writings where he seems to come near to asserting this 20th century formulation:

What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth. That which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason over-rule all other inferior judgments whatsoever (Laws, Book V, 8:2; Folger Edition 2:39,8-14).

We notice that he speaks of Scripture, reason and the voice of the Church, and in that order.

Hooker differs from the Puritans (Presbyterians) of his day in the relation of Scripture and reason.

He is much nearer to Thomas Aquinas than to say Walter Travers or Thomas Cartwright or even to John Calvin or Theodore Beza. All these men agree that the Scripture delivers to us knowledge from God and that this knowledge is not available anywhere else in a world infected by sin. That knowledge pertains unto the identity of God as a Trinity of Persons, the Incarnation of the Second Person, our Lord Jesus Christ, the nature and means of salvation, the Christian hope and the mystery of the Church.

But Hooker departed from many of his fellow Elizabethans, especially the Puritans, in asserting that Scripture does not destroy nature but perfects it, that Scripture presupposes reason and requires its use and that Grace presupposes nature. For Hooker reason was God’s greatest gift to human beings, enabling them to understand God’s plan for the whole of reality, to situate themselves within it and to specify proper moral forms of human activity. This approach to Reason is rather different than that which is attached to the modern expression “Scripture, tradition and reason,” where reason is separated from Scripture and seems to be that understanding of reason’s place that we find in modern philosophy since the Enlightenment and the work of Immanuel Kant.

By “the voice of the Church” he meant the major decisions of ecumenical councils and of national churches which relate to important matters on which Scripture is silent or only supplies hints – e.g., the structure and content of Liturgy in terms of Rites and Ceremonial. These rules are morally and spiritually binding on Christians, part of the Christianity to which they are attached by providence and grace.

They are not things indifferent left to the individual conscience.

Conclusion
We may note that Hooker did not normally use the word “tradition” in a positive sense. Like many in his day, for him it referred to that which is merely human and had been added by Rome as an authority independent of Scripture and reason.

As to the extension of the three-legged stool into a four-legged so that it now is Scripture, tradition, reason and experience, we may say that this is much removed from where Hooker (and the standard divines of the C of E in the 17th century) sat. They would have found the claim incomprehensible that modern experience of (sinful) life is a major source of Revelation from God superseding or correcting that which Scripture interpreted by right reason has delivered to us.