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Update 45 pages 12-13.
In Update 45:
Still an issue,
Godparents,
S.E. London,
Perry,
1662 Confirmation,
Funerals,
Liturgy,
Hooker,
Andrews.
Baptism - sharing in the life of God
The teachings of Richard Hooker (1554-1600), with grateful thanks to the Rt Rev'd Dr Kenneth Stevenson, Bishop of Portsmouth. Summarised by the editor from chapter 4 of "The Mystery of Baptism in the Anglican Tradition", Kenneth Stevenson, Canterbury Press 1998.
Richard Hooker was born four years before the accession of Elizabeth I, and died three years before her death. After study at Oxford he became Master of the Temple Church in London in 1585, where he soon became locked in controversy with his Puritan colleague Walter Travers. It seems he soon tired of perpetual arguing, moving to Hampshire in 1591 and Kent in 1595. He is nowadays best known for his great work The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which appeared in 1593 (vols 1-4) and 1597 (vol 5, by far the longest). (Vols 6-8, published in 1648 and 1661, may have been edited.)
Near the beginning of the work comes his central theme: “God is our felicity and bliss ... desire leadeth unto union with what it desireth ... therefore are we happy when fully we enjoy God, even with everlasting delight; so that although we be men, yet being unto God united we live as it were the life of God”. This union with God is not just uplifted feelings or doctrinal convictions, but is made by Christ through the Spirit, and effected in public worship and above all through the sacraments. “Whether we preach, pray, baptize, communicate ... or whatever, as disposers of God’s mysteries, our words, judgements, acts and deeds are not ours but the Holy Ghost’s.” In other words the participation and conjunction operate because the sacraments are God’s, not ours.
All this is a far cry from the views of many who read this magazine, so why print it? To understand the present Church we must study its history, and to see the weaknesses of arguments it is necessary to understand them. Let’s unpack!
The sacraments are examined in detail in vol 5, which may have originally been much shorter, and expanded at the request of friends so as to answer aspects of the Puritan Admonitions to Parliament (1572). If so, chapter 58, on the meaning of baptism and its objective character, originally said it all: “Grace intended by sacraments was a cause of the choice” (i.e. of God’s choice of us as his children). The sacrament conveys God’s grace because that is God’s intention and the sacrament is his action, not the minister’s. The strength of this view is that there is no doubt about whether the response of faith is ‘strong enough’ - but its weakness is that the place of faith is eclipsed or even lost.
Water is used at baptism because of its life-creating and life-sustaining properties: “there is a reason for the fitness of the elements themselves”. The sacrament needs three features: the grace which is offered, the element which signifies the grace, and the word which expresses what is done by the element. Hooker trusts “the known intent of the church generally” to provide this word - but again the reader will notice that explicit faith is missing.
Finally in ch 58, Hooker admits that there are “things accessory, which are the wisdom of the church to order” in the baptism liturgy: so godparents and the signing of the cross etc. aren’t absolutely necessary from the bible, although they are still good things.
The following chapters answer Puritan points. John 3:5 is discussed (chs 59-60), and Hooker maintains that if Jesus said Nicodemus should be baptized then it is certainly necessary for us (against the Puritans who said he didn’t so it isn’t.) Indeed, how can people even see the kingdom of God without this? The purpose of the sacrament of baptism is that they may “obtain that saving grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness, and also that infused divine virtue of the Holy Ghost, which giveth ... their first disposition towards future newness of life.” It seems the logic here is that baptism is needed to open our eyes so that we can ask spiritual questions - but if so, I wonder how the unbaptized Nicodemus was able to ask such questions?
Puritans disapproved of private baptisms and midwives baptizing - but Hooker points out (chs 61-62) that neither of these is unbiblical, and if baptism is objective then midwives can administer it. On infant baptism (chs 63-64) he uses covenant language and the ancient tradition of interrogation to argue in favour of godparents, pointing out that Puritans also baptized infants. The sign of the cross (ch 65) is helpful and ancient, even if not explicitly biblical), and confirmation (ch 66) he also thinks is apostolic. But he does not mention the most obvious feature of the BCP about confirmation, namely the opportunity to profess the faith which was professed by proxy at baptism.
In a way, Hooker can be described as “high Calvinist”. For him, the sacrament of baptism throws the divine seed into the human heart, and as God wills it to grow, it cannot fail to do so. The strength of this view is the assurance of salvation in which Article 17 exults, and the solid grounding in imputed and infused grace which make the foundation of a changed life. But its weakness is its failure to explain why it is possible for the baptized to fall away - something which ought to be impossible if Hooker is right.
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