"A certain ubiquity": Hooker, Lutheranism, and the Conformist vision

The truth is, if one may venture to say it of one so wise, holy, and venerable, that on this subject, as on the Apostolical Succession, and some others, Hooker was biased by his respect for Calvin and some of his school, in whose opinions he had been educated, and by sympathy with the most suffering portion of the foreign Reformers.

Hooker's Eucharistic doctrine was too close to Calvin.  Keble's words in his On Eucharistical Adoration (1859) summarise what would become a standard critique of Hooker by Anglo-Catholics.  This, of course, represented a profound breach with the Old High Church tradition, for whom Hooker's teaching was merely the self-evident teaching of the English Church on the Holy Sacrament.

What is particularly interesting, however, is to contrast Keble's assessment with contemporary critics of Hooker.  Rather than seeing in Hooker an obviously Reformed account of the Sacrament, the authors of A Christian Letter detected the whiff of Lutheranism, accusing him of maintaining "a certain ubiquity of Christ's manhood and of his body".  They continue:

upon what ground of Scripture it may be proved, that the cooperation of his omnipotent power doth make it his body and blood to us, and in what sense: And whether such phrases doe not help the Popish argument of God's power which they commonly use to approve their transubstantiation.

The reference to transubstantiation here should not deflect from recognising this as a standard critique of Lutheran Eucharistic doctrine, underwritten by "a certain ubiquity".

What are we to make of this accusation?  Was Hooker a closet Lutheran? The suggestion seems entirely ludicrous in face of Hooker's robust critique of Consubstantiation in his famous chapter on the Eucharist.  Instead, we might suggest that something rather more interesting is occurring, something which characterised some of the most interesting expressions of 16th century Reformed Eucharistic theologies: Hooker is attempting to establish grounds for a rapproachment with the Lutherans.  

Brad Littlejohn points to this in his analysis of Hooker's discussion of ubiquity in Book V, chapter 55:

Hooker, while operating within a basically Reformed Christology, seeks to articulate the question of ubiquity in a way that does as much justice as possible to the things the Lutherans wanted to emphasize.

He particularly draws attention to this passage:

Yet because this [human] substance is inseparably joined to that personal word which by his very divine essence is present with all things, the nature which cannot have in it self universal presence hath it after a sort by being no where severed from that which everywhere is present.  For in as much as that infinite word is not divisible into parts, it could not in part but must needs be wholly incarnate, and consequently wheresoever the word is it hath with it manhood.  Else should the Word be in part or somewhere God only and not man which is impossible.  For the person of Christ is whole, perfect God and perfect man (V.55.7).

Littlejohn's summary provides an insight into how Hooker can be understood to be reconciling Reformed and Lutheran concerns:

Thus, wherever the Word is at work–indwelling human souls, in the Eucharist, etc.–there is the human nature at work.  This is what we confess in the doctrine of the ascension–that the human nature has now been glorified to participate in the Son’s reigning over all things–formerly as God, now as God and man.

It is also given further expression as Hooker continues:

And for as much as it is by virtue of that conjunction made the body of the Son of God by whom also it was made a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, this giveth it a presence of force and efficacy throughout all generations of men (V.55.9).

The language of "force and efficacy" is, as Littlejohn notes, "very Calvinian".  This itself, however, is noteworthy as Calvin's Eucharistic theology was an attempt to restate a Swiss Reformed understanding of the Sacrament in a manner alert to Lutheran concerns.   Hooker, cognizant of the Lutheran-Reformed debate after Calvin, and in a more ambitious manner than Calvin, provides the basis for an understanding of the contended notion of ubiquity that is, in the words of Littejohn, "pregnant with significance" for Eucharistic theology.

Hooker's concludes with the hope that he has offered a basis for Reformed-Lutheran reconciliation on ubiquity:

Which things indifferently every way considered, that gratious promise of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ concerning presence with his to the very end of the world, I see no cause but that we may well and safely interpret he doth perform both as God by essential presence of deity, and as man in that order sense and meaning which hath been shown (V.55.9).

We can begin to see, then, that Keble's assessment of Hooker's Eucharistic theology is somewhat flat and banal.  Ironically, the authors of A Christian Letter are closer to the mark, rightly detecting a restatement of Reformed Eucharistic theology in order to embrace Lutheran concerns and insights.  We might, therefore, suggest continuity between Hooker's attempt to establish a shared understanding of ubiquity and Andrewes' expression of a Reformed Eucharistic theology in a Lutheran tone and tenor.

This, of course, also reflects a wider and enduring Conformist concern to maintain a view of Protestant Christendom which embraced the Lutheran churches, opposing a narrow focus on the polity and theology of Geneva.  Finally - and perhaps in more speculative fashion - it might be suggested that it is here, in this desire to give expression to a Reformed Eucharistic theology open to Lutheran concerns and insights, that we find a source of the vitality and vibrancy of the Eucharistic teaching and spirituality of the later Old High Church tradition.