The Use and Abuse of John Calvin in Richard Hooker's Defence of the English Church

Neelands, David

doi:10.2478/v10297-012-0001-9

Abstract

At times Richard Hooker (1554-1600), as an apologist for the Church of England, has been treated as “on the Calvinist side”, at others as an “anti-Calvinist”. In fact, Hooker and his Church were dependent on John Calvin in some ways and independent in others. Hooker used recognized sources to paint a picture of Calvin and his reforms in Geneva that would negatively characterize the proposals and behaviour of those he opposed in the Church of England, and yet he adopted Calvinist positions on several topics. A judicious treatment of Hooker’s attitude to John Calvin requires careful reading, and an understanding of the polemical use of the portrait of Calvin. Calvin was indeed grave and learned, but he was human and, as an authority, inferior to the Church Fathers, who were formally recognized as authorities in the Church of England.

References

Atkinson, Nigel. Richard Hooker and the Authority of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Reformed Theologian of the Church of England. Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1997.
Beza, Theodore. Life of John Calvin. Edited and translated by Henry Beveridge. Selected Works of John Calvin. Edinburgh, 1844.
Cragg, Gerald R. From Puritanism to the Age of Reason. A Study of Changes in Religious Thought within the Church of England, 1660 to 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950.
Bray, Gerald. Documents of the English Reformation. Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1994.
Search in Google Scholar
Bullinger, Heinrich. The Decades of Henry Bullinger. Translated by H. I. Edited for the Parker Society by Thomas Harding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1849-1852.
Cranmer, Thomas. The Works of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr 1556. Edited for the Parker Society by John Edmund Cox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844.
Fisher, George Park. History of Christian Doctrine. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1896.
Hargrave, O. T. The Doctrine of Predestination in the English Reformation. Unpublished PhD thesis. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, 1966.
Hill, W. Speed, ed. Studies in Richard Hooker. Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve, 1972.
Hooker, Richard. The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker. General Editor W. Speed Hill. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977-1998.
McGrath, Alister E. A Life of John Calvin. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
Neelands, David. “Christology and the Sacraments”, Companion to Richard Hooker. Edited by W. J. Torrance Kirby. Leiden: Brill, 2008, pages 369- 402. 10.1163/ej.9789004165342.i-670.73
_____. “Hooker on Divinization: Our Participation of Christ”, From Logos to Christos. Essays in Christology in Honour of Joanne McWilliam. Edited by Ellen M. Leonard and Kate Merriman. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010.
_____. “Hooker on Scripture, Reason and ‘Tradition’”, Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community. Edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade. Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997.
_____. “Justification and Richard Hooker the Pastor”, Lutheran and Anglican. Essays in Honour of Egil Grislis. Winnipeg: St. John’s College Press, 2009, 167-182.
_____. “Peter Martyr Vermigli and the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England”, A Companion to Peter Martyr Vermigli. Leiden: Brill, 2009, 355-374.
_____. “Predestination”, A Companion to Richard Hooker. Edited by W. J. Torrance Kirby. Leiden: Brill, 2008, 185-219.
_____. “Richard Hooker and the Doctrine of Assurance”, Perichoresis 7.1 (2009): 93-111.
_____. The Theology of Grace of Richard Hooker. Unpublished ThD thesis. Trinity College and the University of Toronto, 1988.
Reid, John Kelman Sutherland. The Authority of Scripture. London: Methuen, 1957.
Search in Google Scholar
Sanderson, Robert. Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1854).
Wendel, François. Calvin (London: Collins, 1965).
Whitgift, John. The Works of John Whitgift, D. D. Master of Trinity College. Edited for the Parker Society, by the Rev. John Ayre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1851-1853.

The Use and Abuse of John Calvin in Richard Hooker's Defence of the English Church

Abstract

Paradigm

My account