‘Participation of God Himselfe:’ Law, the mediation of Christ, and sacramental participation in the thought of Richard Hooker

Abstract

Law, in its concept and formulation in the first book of Richard Hooker’ s treatise Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, is fundamental to understanding his subsequent account of sacramental participation in the redeeming work of Christ. Hooker speaks of sacraments and the Atonement in the vocabulary of the magisterial reform, but (perhaps uniquely) understands the same doctrines within the framework of law.1 When Hooker describes law in Aristotelian and teleological terms, he is describing a process of participation. Law has a mediating role, in which the emanation of being through causes results in a return to the First and Final Cause, God. Creatures participate in God through the natural law, but after the fall, man’s participation is restored in the divine law. The centrality of the idea of participation in a work called the Lawes is therefore not surprising. With reference to both the natural and divine laws, Hooker describes participation in the same terms; the difference between the two lies in the way in which participation is brought about, either naturally or supernaturally. Hooker’s account of the Atonement therefore takes into account the idea of law, as a restoration of the participation in God that man was to have enjoyed from the beginning. By virtue of the hypostatic union, Christ is able to carry out the law of man’s nature, as well as offer satisfaction for its original abandonment. In this way he becomes the cause of new life for individuals, who partake of him as effects partake of their cause, and are oriented to their proper end. Christ the Mediator is therefore also the New Law. In the sacramental mysteries, the Holy Spirit derives to particular men the grace enjoyed by Christ’s human nature, causing them to participate in him as he participates in God. The sacramental signs, however, can be only instruments, and not causes of grace, on the analogy that the person of Christ is a cause, but his human nature an instrument, of salvation. Hooker’s treatment of participation, then, relates law to the Atonement and sacraments.