'We have to do with a merciful God, and not with a captious sophister': Richard Hooker and Solus Christus

Wherefore, to resume that mother-sentence, whereof I little thought that so much trouble would have grown, "I doubt not but God was merciful to save thousands of our fathers living in popish superstitions, inasmuch as they sinned ignorantly": alas, what bloody matter is there contained in this sentence that it should be an occasion of so many hard censures! Did I say that "thousands of our fathers might be saved"? I have showed which way it cannot be denied. Did I say, "I doubt it not but they were saved"? I see no impiety in this persuasion ...

On this commemoration of Richard Hooker, we turn to words from his A Learned Discourse on Justification (1585), responding to those who attacked him for affirming that salvation was to be found within the pre-Reformation Roman Church. We might begin by noting Hooker's insistence regarding the salvation of "our fathers", an insistence that surely echoed the Christian instincts of the average parishioner in an Elizabethan parish church. 

Why would that average parishioner in 1585 believe that their forefathers in the pre-Reformation English Church were excluded from salvation? Forefathers - indeed, probably the grandfathers of a vast majority of adult parishioners in 1585 - who were baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity at the same font, who worshipped in the same parish church, who confessed faith in the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, who prayed the Lord's Prayer and recited the Apostles' Creed, who were buried in the churchyard. To deny salvation to such forebears would be an act of profound sectarianism, denying the truth of salvation in Christ: it would be - as Hooker goes on to demonstrate - to declare that something more than Christ is required for our salvation.

In expounding the theological rationale for the instinctive Christian charity towards forefathers in the faith, Hooker was echoing the charity which the Elizabethan Injunctions of 1559 had urged: 

because in all alterations, and specially in rites and ceremonies, there happen discords amongst the people, and thereupon slanderous words and railings, whereby charity, the knot of all Christian society, is loosed; the queen's majesty being most desirous of all other earthly things, that her people should live in charity both towards God and man, and therein abound in good works, wills and straitly commands all manner her subjects to forbear all vain and contentious disputations in matters of religion, and not to use in despite or rebuke of any person these convicious words, papist or papistical heretic, schismatic or sacramentary, or any suchlike words of reproach. 

The Injunctions here assume that these divisions are within "Christian society" - that they are, in other words, between Christians. To state what is obvious, the Injunctions did not regard the confessional differences as insignificant. They did, after all, robustly condemn "wandering of pilgrimages, setting up of candles, praying upon beads, or such like superstition". Care was also taken to direct that clergy "shall read in their churches every Sunday one of the Homilies, which are and shall be set forth for the same purpose by the queen's authority": the Reformation of doctrine was going to be heard from the pulpit. 

But, this was a Reformation within "Christian society". Something of this was also reflected in the opening words of the Bidding Prayer which clergy were to use at divine service:

Ye shall pray for Christ's Holy Catholic Church, that is for the whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the whole world ...

It is a prayer for all of Christendom, beyond the confessional divisions of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Those of the Roman obedience, therefore, were amongst "the whole congregation of Christian people".

Hooker expounded the theological underpinning for this vision, affirming that salvation through Christ was also to be found in the pre- and post-Reformation Roman Church on three grounds. Firstly, because Roman errors, particularly on the matter of good works, were not "a direct denial of the foundation of our faith". Such errors, he maintains, are "a greater distance from the foundation" and - because "we have to do with a merciful God, ready to make the best of that little which we hold well, and not with a captious sophister who gathereth the worst out of everything wherein we err" - they do not exclude from salvation.

Secondly, invoking Aristotle, Hooker points to how theological deductions do not always - indeed, for the vast majority of Christians may very rarely - determine our understanding of the Christian faith:

yet because of that weakness which the philosopher noteth in men's capacities when he saith that the common sort cannot see things which follow in reason, when they follow, as it were, afar off by many deductions.

This is an evangelical wisdom. Looking unto Christ for salvation is sufficient, despite the believer's theological misunderstandings, doctrinal confusions, or lack of knowledge.

Thirdly, and crucially, despite doctrinal error, the pre- and post-Reformation Roman Church affirmed "the foundation", "the very fundamental words" of the Christian confession:

Offer them the very fundamental words, and what one man is there that will refuse to subscribe unto them? Can they directly grant and deny directly one and the selfsame thing? Our own proceedings in disputing against their works satisfactory and meritorious do show not only that they hold, but that we acknowledge them to hold, the foundation notwithstanding their opinion. 

For are not these our arguments against them: "Christ alone hath satisfied and appeased his Father's wrath; Christ hath merited salvation alone"? We should do fondly to use such disputes, neither could we think to prevail by them, if that whereupon we ground were a thing which we know they do not hold, which we are assured they will not grant. Their very answers to all such reasons as are in this controversy brought against them will not permit us to doubt whether they hold the foundation or no. 

Can any man who hath read their books concerning this matter be ignorant how they draw all their answers unto these heads?

That the remission of all our sins, the pardon of all whatsoever punishments thereby deserved, the rewards which God hath laid up in heaven, are by the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ purchased and obtained sufficiently for all men; but for no man effectually for his benefit in particular, except the blood of Christ be applied particularly unto him by such means as God hath appointed it to work by. 

That those means of themselves being dead things, only the blood of Christ is that which putteth life, force, and efficacy in them to work, and to be available, each in his kind, to our salvation.

Finally, that grace being purchased for us by the blood of Christ, and freely without any merit or desert at the first bestowed upon us, the good things which we do, after grace received, are made satisfactory and meritorious.

Some of their sentences to this effect I must allege for mine own warrant. 

If we desire to hear foreign judgments, we find in one this confession:

"He that would reckon how many the virtues and merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ have been might likewise understand how many the benefits have been that are come unto us by him, forasmuch as men are made partakers of them all by the means of his passion: by him is given unto us remission of our sins, grace, glory, liberty, praise, peace, salvation, redemption, justification, justice, sanctification, sacraments, merits, doctrine, and all other things which we had, and were behoveful for our salvation".

The final paragraph above is a quotation from the works of the Dominican theologian Louis of Granada (1505-1588), a significant expression of the foundation of the Christian faith. Indeed, we might even say that Louis of Granada here proclaims Solus Christus. On the basis of this foundation, "our fathers" in the pre-Reformation Church were not excluded from God's saving mercy in Christ. So too those of the Roman obedience in 1585 amongst "the whole congregation of Christian people dispersed throughout the whole world". 

It was not, obviously, a matter of error being unimportant; hence, Hooker acknowledges "the weighty causes of separation between the Church of Rome and us". But error does not exclude us or our forefathers or our neighbours from salvation when the foundation is confessed. To suggest otherwise is to declare that error has greater power than the saving mercy of God in Christ:

It is not their persons, you will say, but the error wherein I suppose them to die which excludeth them from hope of mercy: the opinion of merits doth take away all possibility of salvation from them. What, although they hold it only as an error; although they hold the truth soundly and sincerely in all other parts of Christian faith? ... . Surely, I must confess unto you, if it be an error to think that God may be merciful to save men even when they err, my greatest comfort is my error: were it not for the love I bear unto this error, I would neither wish to speak nor to live.

Hooker set out how Solus Christus allowed the parishioner of the Elizabethan Church to affirm the salvation of their pre-Reformation forefathers - and, indeed, their neighbour of the Roman obedience. Solus Christus was, for Hooker, no encouragement to ecclesial sectarianism. Rather, it underpinned the charity and peaceableness with which the Elizabethan parishioner could remember their forefathers, baptised at the same font and buried in the same churchyard, and relate to wider Christendom, those who confessed saving faith in the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Solus Christus, rather than tearing at and overthrowing the charity of "Christian society", was the rock of that charity. And so, the invocation with which Hooker ended his A Learned Discourse on Justification, and which would be prominent in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, tells of the catholic spirit which flows from "the foundation":

Now the God of peace give you peaceable minds and turn it to your everlasting comfort.