|
Rickard Hooker (November 3rd) is widely considered to be Anglicanism’s greatest theologian. Born in 1553 near Exeter, England, he was admitted to Oxford in 1567 and completed his Master’s degree in 1577. He stayed on at his college as a Fellow, and was ordained a priest in 1581.
Without completing his doctoral degree, Hooker left Oxford in 1584 in favor of a more stable financial situation. He became Rector of a country church and settled in to live the life of a pastor. But that same year, Hooker made a major impression with a sermon he delivered in London at the most famous public forum of the day—the open-air pulpit outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. Just a few months later, in March 1585, he accepted the highly prestigious post of Master of the Temple Church in London. His appointment roused the ire of a noted Puritan minister who had vied for the position.
The fact that Hooker was a staunch champion of the established Church raised the stakes beyond a personal rivalry. In response to the ensuing Puritan broadsides, Hooker wrote his defining masterpiece—Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, arguing for the Church’s “Via Media” between Romanism and Protestantism. This massive, multi-volume work towers over all else in the history of Anglican thought. Grounded in Hooker's vast learning in philosophy and Church history, it is nonetheless practical and applicable for contemporary needs. Here, Hooker set out the classic Anglican formulary of the Church being based on Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.
It is telling that at a time when the English Church was just as removed from Roman Catholicism as from Puritanism, even the Pope was quoted as saying that Hooker’s work “had in it such seeds of eternity that it would abide until the last fire shall consume all learning.” Hooker’s frail health failed him, and he died on Nov. 3, 1600 at the early age of 47.
|
