Hooker, the Bible and pecusa

Over at covenant-communion.net I started a conversation on Richard Hooker with Fr. Michael Russell. The conversation didn't go far because Russell refuses to lay out his interpretation of Hooker with citations from Hooker. This is my initial foray which Fr. Russell has yet to give a substantive response. He's very happy to say I'm wrong; he is not willing at this point to demonstrate how I am wrong. ed.

First, the same edition of Hooker that Michael has had published in a facsimile edition is available online at:

http://anglicanhistory.org/hooker/

Next, beginning in the Preface, Hooker does speak of the use of Scripture for belief and action. One’s salvation is dependent on both, as Hooker says (III,2). Hooker mentions two ways that God leads us into all truth, one that he calls extraordinary and one that he calls common. Revelation and reason are the two ways. I would say that Hookers words on this are highly applicable to the debate on human sexuality: “when men’s affections do frame their opinions, they are in defense of error more earnest a great deal, than (for the most part) sound believers in the maintenance of truth apprehended according to the nature of the evidence which scripture yieldeth..” (III, 10)

pecusa has been taken over by those who all too often read their experience into Scripture rather than allowing Scripture to evaluate their experience.

In Book I, Hooker speaks of Scripture as delivering “many deep and profound points of doctrine as being the main original ground whereupon the precepts of duty depend.” (3) To say that Hooker only believed that Scripture was given to lead us to salvation is to truncate Hooker’s understanding of how salvation draws us into the life of God and how the Holy Spirit uses Scripture to conform our lives to God’s ways. In this section, Hooker mentions the “principal necessary laws of God.” Unlike contemporary liberals, Hooker does not reduce the gospel to love and then expand love to mean anything any person wants it to mean (e.g. pecusa can define gay sex as congruent with Scripture’s view of love).

Several times in Section IV Hooker demonstrates a higher view of Scripture than our contemporary liberals, calling Scripture “the oracles of God” and speaking of “the sacred authority of Scripture.” (xiv, 2) In Scripture, God gives us “the way of life.” (3) In this same part, Hooker mentions that various kinds of truth are contained in Scripture: “natural, historical, foreign, supernatural, so much as the matter handled requireth.” Scripture has “no defect.” (5) Some other phrases of Hooker from this section: “the reverend authority and dignity of the Scripture" (XV, 4), “those oracles of the true and living God” (ibid.). In XVI Hooker speaks of the eternal law of God that we have been given to follow.

I can’t imagine liberals affirming much of this about Scripture or following God’s Word in the manner that Hooker expresses.