Richard Hooker on Natural Theology and Scripture

We need nothing further than nature and Scripture to find eternal joy.

Evangelical Protestants enthusiastically affirm the “sufficiency of Scripture” for the Christian faith. But how does this doctrine square with the church’s long tradition of “natural theology” which teaches that a surprising amount can be known about God from nature and reason alone?

In this short but incisive book, David Hainess demonstrates how the great English Reformer, Richard Hooker (1554-1600), answered this pivotal question. Usually, Hooker is associated with the questions of natural law and ethics rather than natural theology and the doctrine of God. However, Haines shows that a firm grasp of natural theology underpins Hooker’s teaching on natural law, and that the latter cannot be had without the former. In doing so, he provides not merely a survey of Hooker’s thought, but, via Hooker, a concise and lucid introduction to the whole topic of natural theology and a compelling defense against its biblicist critics.

76 pages.

FROM THE BOOK:

“For Hooker, when man observes the natural world, and rightly comes to the conclusion that the very presence of the sensible cosmos entails that there is an intelligent, provident, and powerful creator, man is neither submitting creation to reason, nor using reason “autonomously” to “judge” as to whether or not God exists. Rather, this is nothing more than the conforming of the human intellect to reality—man is not imposing his own thoughts on creation, but letting creation impose itself on his thoughts, submitting his intellect and will to God’s. In other words, just as accepting the truth of the biblical teaching that Jesus is God incarnate and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world is a submitting of our intellect to the Word of God; just so, the recognition that God exists, and that God is the wise, powerful, provident creator of the cosmos, is a submitting of our intellect to nature—the creation of God. Inversely, just as it is a rebellion against the Word of God to deny that Jesus is God, or that it is through his sacrifice that we are saved, so, it is a rebellion against Reality to deny that God is, and that God is the wise, powerful, provident creator of the cosmos. Natural theology is not man protesting against God and demanding his autonomy from his creator, but rather man submitting to God by acknowledging his existence and something of his character.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction
2. Hooker’s Natural Theology
3. Objections to Natural Theology Old and New
4. Responding to the Errors of the Biblicists
5. Conclusions

Select Bibliography