page_title: Richard Hooker
section_title: Scholastic thought in a latitudinarian manner
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Hooker / Works / Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie / Scholastic thought in a latitudinarian manner
caption_attribution_description: English: 5164561521564897== Summary == Taken by me (ryan grenzow and released now by me under the GFDL. Richard Hooker statue in grounds of Exeter Cathedral Logan Wenger &amp; Paige
context_page_description: Richard Hooker was an English priest in the Church of England and an influential theologian. He was one of the most important English theologians of the sixteenth century. His defence of the role of redeemed reason informed the theology of the seventeenth century Caroline Divines and later provided many members of the Church of England with a theological method which combined the claims of revelation, reason and tradition.
  Scholars disagree regarding Hooker's relationship with what would later be called "Anglicanism" and the Reformed theological tradition. Traditionally, he has been regarded as the originator of the Anglican via media between Protestantism and Catholicism. However, a growing number of scholars have argued that he should be considered as being in the mainstream Reformed theology of his time and that he only sought to oppose the extremists, rather than moving the Church of England away from Protestantism. The term "Anglican" is not found in his writings and indeed first appears early in the reign of Charles I as the Church of England moved towards an Arminian position doctrinally and a more "Catholic" look liturgically under the leadership of Archbishop William Laud.
context_section_description: Hooker worked largely from Thomas Aquinas, but he adapted scholastic thought in a latitudinarian manner.  He argued that church organisation, like political organisation, is one of the "things indifferent" to God.  He wrote that minor doctrinal issues were not issues that damned or saved the soul, but rather frameworks surrounding the moral and religious life of the believer.  He contended there were good monarchies and bad ones, good democracies and bad ones, and good church hierarchies and bad ones: what mattered was the piety of the people.  At the same time, Hooker argued that authority was commanded by the Bible and by the traditions of the early church, but authority was something that had to be based on piety and reason rather than automatic investiture. This was because authority had to be obeyed even if it were wrong and needed to be remedied by right reason and the Holy Spirit.  Notably, Hooker affirmed that the power and propriety of bishops need not be in every case absolute.
caption: Statue of Hooker in front of Exeter Cathedral
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