"Too bright to be obscured": Hooker, the Cambridge Platonists and participation in God
Our reason is a likeness to the divine Logos; similarly, what we come to know gets it being and intelligibility from its participation in God. Since reason is a participation in divine truth in this twofold way, reason is already a sort of revelation (p.318).
In a footnote, Davison points to Kathryn Tanner's equally excellent Christ the Key (2010) providing "illustrative examples on this theme" from the Cambridge Platonists, noting that the agreement with his Thomist account "is striking".
Tanner, quoting from the Cambridge Platonists, says that they were "bucking Enlightenment trends in the understanding of divine agency, God's working ... not identified here with exceptional, occasional interventions that interrupt the ordinary operations of natural processes" (p.279). She quotes Whichcote twice:
reason is always the means of apprehension, and 'that is not revealed, which is not made intelligible';
They are not to be blamed as neglecting or undervaluing the idea of grace ... who remind men that they should use reason and the principles of creation, who those who 'take offence to hear reason spoken of' are mistaken, for these things have a more than human foundation.
Henry More's critique of 'enthusiasm' is also quoted, in which he states that it is deception "to suspect the special presence of God in anything vehement or unusual".
There are perhaps three initial points worth noting regarding the relationship between Davison's Thomist account of participatory reason and Tanner pointing to the Cambridge Platonists. The first is that the "striking" similarities in emphasis and outlook are a reminder of the significance of the Cambridge Platonists - despite their well-known critique of Scholasticism - in sustaining in Reformed and Anglican England a Thomist vision of reason. Indeed, one might say that precisely because they were strong critics of a hardened Scholasticism, they were better able to present Thomas' attractive account of reason.
Secondly, it is also suggestive of the theological roots of Anglicanism during the 'long' 18th century, an Anglicanism frequently dismissed by its Evangelical and Tractarian critics as overly dependent on reason and natural religion. What was being attacked, however, was a rich theological vision of reason and the natural order, rooted in Thomas and shaping an Anglican piety which rejoiced in the created order, and the God-given nature of the domestic, communal, and civic spheres, what C.S. Lewis would later celebrate as a universe "drenched–with Deity". Or, as Tanner puts it, "rather than taking the place of human reason ... divine inspiration works through its exercise".
Thirdly, it reminds us of the importance of Hooker in giving compelling expression to the theological significance of reason and communicating this to Reformed England, subsequently articulated by the Cambridge Platonists. Importantly, this was not Hooker urging a participatory vision of reason against the magisterial Reformation as a proto-Barthian rejection of the natural knowledge of God. Davison reminds us of magisterial Protestantism's robust affirmation of reason and the participatory vision by prefacing his book with words from Calvin: "our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God". Similarly, Tanner points to both the Puritans Richard Sibbes and Richard Baxter maintaining such an account of reason. As Baxter declared, "the Spirit of God supposeth nature, and worketh on man as man". Hooker's role, however, was to give majestic, confident expression to this in a way which captured the theological imagination of the English Church and established a foundation for an Anglican piety which celebrated the ordinary workings of reason:
The light therefore, which the star of natural reason and wisdom casteth, is too bright to be obscured by the mist of a word or two uttered to diminish that opinion which justly hath been received concerning the force and virtue thereof, even in matters that touch most nearly the principal duties of men and the glory of the eternal God (LEP III.8.17).
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