Hooker believed that the cosmos was an unfolding of the mind of God in a hierarchy of orders or structures. This means that all of creation participates to a degree in the mind of God, including humanity. The reason of God reaches into the mind of humanity or is placed there like a “seed.” To abide with God is for God’s grace to illumine our reason until it fully participates in the divine reason. This is found in Greek philosophy, and is clearly stated for the Christian in the fourth century by Gregory of Nyssa (330-395), who says our guardian angel is a brother to our intellect. Paul apparently had this in mind when he wrote, “My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God’s knowledge of me.” (I Corinthians 13:12). This is all a way of saying that the created order reflects the mind of God, which is discernable to human reason.
Hooker argued this as any person of his times would beginning with the nature of God and moving then to humanity. God is a reasonable creator, he said, and therefore this is evident in what he creates. We today turn this around and say that the mind is the only way we have of transcending our own personal limitations and of making contact with God. In fact, the first thing we attribute to God is mentality. We conclude that God thinks. In this way we begin with humanity and move to God, but like Hooker we believe that by means of our reason we participate in the mind of God.
This is the basis for what is called natural theology. Natural theology holds that humankind can know God to a degree by observing nature, i.e., creation (including ourselves). It is the basis for believing that non-Christians have a certain knowledge of God. It is the reason why Anglicanism does not reject the human sciences, such as biology, geology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, as sources of the knowledge of God. The general principle is, we believe, that there is a continuity between nature and supernature. It is not to say that by the power of our reason we can come to a saving (i.e., one that makes us whole) knowledge of God. Revelation is necessary, as we shall see. Furthermore, we are brought into relationship with God by divine initiative, not by our efforts. The natural world in our thinking is not set over against the divine world. There is no radical discontinuity between God and his creation. Another way of putting this is to say that, contrary to the Reformed tradition, we emphasize the immanence of God as well as his transcendence.
This commitment to reason is perhaps most evident in our attitude toward the “free market place of ideas.” Tests of orthodoxy, heresy trial, censorship of thought and such are generally alien to the Anglican ethos. Our belief is that a sincere pursuit of truth, done collaboratively, ultimately opens us to the mind of God. It is a spiritual exercise, to which God speaks for those willing to hear. For example, if I pursue rationally the study of psychology I believe that it will ultimately lead me to a deeper knowledge of God.
Secondly, in regard to the Scriptures, I will want only to speak to their authority in association with reason and tradition.
God’s revelation is his self-disclosure. The best analogy of God’s revelation is what occurs between two lovers. It is a personal sharing at the deepest possible level. Paul speaks of the relationship between Christ and the church as the relationship between a husband and wife (Ephesians 5:23-33). The Bible is the church’s book and is the record of the personal revelation of God to humanity. The canon of Scripture — i.e., the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, the fourteen of the Apocrypha and the twenty-seven of the New Testament — is the canon not because of any intrinsic quality of those books, but because the church says it is the canon.
The word “canon” comes from the Latin, meaning something by which you measure (e.g., a twelve-inch ruler). So the canon of Scripture is the standard, prescribed by the church, by which the belief of the church is confronted and measured. It is the normative source for understanding God’s revelation. What is essential to comprehending God’s ways with humanity is there. All Christian teaching and reflection begins there. This is why the Anglican Church has always taught that nothing should be taught contrary to Scripture.
To say that nothing should be taught contrary to Scripture is very different, however, from saying that only what is in Scripture shall be taught. Often Protestantism implies, if not expressly affirms, the latter. This is particularly a problem when Scripture is thought to transcend reason. People get into all kinds of binds. Some handle snakes and drink poison on the authority of the later ending of Mark’s Gospel, while others will not allow the use of pipe organs in worship because the Scripture makes no mention of them. A more subtle effort is the attempt to develop a New Testament form of church government, such as Hooker’s adversaries claimed to do (i.e., Presbyterianism).
Scripture for the Anglican is a fundamental source of authority for the church; but apart from reason it is dangerous. It becomes the mirror for the misdirected person to project his or her own opinions and give them the authority of God. The sin of schism is the result.
Thirdly, the Scripture must also be read in the awareness that everyone embodies his or her past and community, that is, their tradition. We cannot escape it. Hooker was skeptical of Puritan individualism, which seemed to miss this truth. The reading of Scripture is something to be done collectively in the light of the tradition. In fact, one way of thinking of the Scriptures is as normative tradition.
“To tradition” means to pass down from generation to generation within the community the church’s lore, that is, her understanding of God’s ways with humanity. The tradition is the product of the ongoing reflection by the church of her experience of God, and consequently it is a living, changing body of thought. It was out of this reflection that over a period of maybe three hundred years the canon of the Bible emerged, and the continuing tradition remains the context in which the Scriptures are to be interpreted.
The canon is misunderstood if it is not seen within the patterns of thought from which it came. This not only applies to what preceded the writing of the books of the Bible, but as well as to the contemporary struggle to express the community’s experience and the unfolding of the implications of the canon in the centuries that followed. Hence the tradition is integral to the interpretation of Scripture.
By implication we do not believe that God’s revelation of himself ends with the closing of the canon in the fourth century. The Scriptures remain normative, but God continues to reveal himself and his will in a manner that enlarges upon what is found in the Bible and in a way that is consistent with the church’s understanding.
This is apparent when we think of the great dogmas of our faith. For example, there is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. No where in the Bible does it teach that God is three persons in one nature. This understanding came several centuries later. The great Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries gave birth to the doctrine that Christ is both God and man in one person or hypostasis. The meaning of the word, “hypostasis,” in New Testament times was the opposite of what it meant in the fifth century, when it came to describe the person of Jesus.
In fact, it may well be that there was always a piece of the church’s teaching which was carried by the tradition alongside the Scripture with no explicit mention in the text of the Bible. Here we are on more tenuous grounds; but I suspect that Christian ascetical teaching as well as the church’s belief in Christ’s presence in the Holy Eucharist are examples. Such areas of our belief are too much a part of the life of the church from the very beginning not to have been a part of the oral tradition all along.
There is a certain imprecision about this threefold authority which has consistently bothered students of Anglicanism. The question arises how the interaction of Scripture, tradition and reason is orchestrated to produce anything resembling an authoritative statement. The answer Anglicanism classically gives is that this is the responsibility of the church’s councils. Where the church gathers to reflect on the Scriptures, in the light of the tradition, to conclude what is a reasonable position is what we mean by a council.
What constitutes a church council? There is no doubt but that we start with the four ecumenical councils of Nicea (325), Constantinople (381),