Richard Hooker’s Theory of Natural Law
Part 1
Recently, Protestants have been recapturing classic thinkers in their tradition from the 16th – 18th centuries. Richard Hooker’s was a prominent Anglican theologian active in the late 1500s. His natural law theory, which resembles that of Thomas Aquinas, has been neglected comparatively. This post seeks to provide a clear outline of his theory of law in Book 1 of Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (all quotations/citations are to the edition in modernized English). Interested readers are encouraged to seek the original source. I wrote this post mostly for my own edification, and I do not expect it to interest every reader. This post is the first of a two-part series.
The Types of Law
Like Aquinas, Hooker distinguishes between several types of law and traces the relations between them. Hooker defines a “law” as “that which determines what kind of work each thing should do, how its power should be restrained, and what form its work should take” (50). A law is “a rule that directs something how to act well” (73). It is law that makes things work in their predetermined and orderly way for the good of the whole.
What Hooker calls “the eternal law of God himself” lies at the center of his natural law theory. We discern this law by observing that “[a]ll things … work in a way that is neither unnatural nor random” (50). Everything that moves works toward an end or goal—what the ancient Greeks called a telos. Hooker agrees with classical NLT that the universe and humankind operate teleologically, i.e. in accordance with inbuilt goals. The interconnected, harmonious working of all things constitutes a natural order, derived from God.
Even God’s work is subject to law, but God is distinct in the fact that—unlike every other thing subject to law—he does not receive his laws from a superior. Rather, “only the works and operation of God have Him as both their worker and as their law” (50). God’s own nature imparts a lawfulness to his actions, since he is perfect. “God therefore is a law both to Himself and to everything else” (52). The totality of God’s freely chosen eternal decrees constitute the “eternal law.”
Moreover, God’s own actions are purposeful, not random. They aim at something he deems “good,” since he “works nothing without cause” but rather with “some end in mind,” which is the reason for his action (52). The source of Good does not derive from God’s choice; his choice aligns with what is Good. The “general end” of all his work is “His most glorious and abundant excellent,” which shows itself in a “variety” of “riches” showcasing His “beneficence and grace” (52). God did not create the universe out of need but out of his overflowing desire to shower good gifts on others.
While the universe may seem to be disordered, this is only because finite humans are incapable of perceiving the wisdom embodied in the laws given by God to each of his creations. The laws of nature provide the conditions in which stable life is possible by providing regular amounts of sun, rain, and other natural processes necessary for human and animal life. Any defects in the operation of the universe are the result of “God’s curse due to man’s sin” and cannot be attributed to God’s handiwork or intelligence (57).
After describing eternal law, Hooker proceeds to trace several different kinds of laws, all of which derive from “eternal law.” “Celestial law” rules the Angels, the “law of nature” rules natural agents deprived of a will, “divine law” is the law reveled in the Bible, and the “law of reason” is that which “binds reasonable creatures in such a way that they can plainly perceive it” and freely follow it (54). Finally, “human law” derives from “both reason and revelation as prudential judgments” (54).
The Basic Goods
After describing the eternal laws governing the physical universe and the laws governing angels, Hooker focuses on the “law of reason” that binds human beings. Humans, like “all things,” have a “desire” to become “more perfect,” i.e. to reach “an exquisite excellence of form” by “constantly and excellently doing whatever it is that their kind does” (62). As he says later, “[w]hatever can make our nature more perfect, we call our good” (92). The natural law tradition refers to anything that advances human perfection as “basic goods.” The natural law aims to achieve basic human goods for people, goods which are known by reason and related to the natural needs and inclinations derived from our God-created nature. Finally, “since all goodness proceeds from God,” becoming more perfect means “somehow” achieving “participation in God himself” (62). The natural law begins and ends in God.
There are many different basic goods which all humans pursue naturally. The “fundamental sort of goodness” that all things seek is “their continued existence,” both for themselves “individually” and for their species “through their offspring” (62). Beyond the basic need for survival, humans aspire “to the greatest conformity with God by pursuing the knowledge of truth and growing in the exercise of virtue” (63). Humans, along among the animals, “are by nature so delighted with understanding that we would seek … knowledge purely for its own sake” (74).
The Highest Good
The basic goods are arranged hierarchically. There are three types of goods:
Goods which are useful only because they produce or lead to another good.
Goods which are “genuinely desired for their own sake” but also desired because they “point beyond themselves” or lead to a higher good.
The “highest good,” which is desired only for its own sake.
Using modern terms which Hooker doesn’t use, category 1 contains “instrumental goods,” category two contains goods that are both “instrumental” and “intrinsic,” and category 3 contains goods that are only “intrinsic.” Or we could call the instrumental, mixed, and intrinsic. Examples of purely instrumental goods are money or political office. Mixed goods in category 2 include “health, virtue, and knowledge” (92). All goods are designed to enable us to “reach such a degree of perfection that there is nothing left to wish for” (92). Instrumental goods lead us towards the things that are good in themselves, and mixed goods satisfy us partially but leave us wanting more. The pursuit of basic goods terminates in the highest good, happiness, which is “that condition in which we come to possess as much as possible that which is desired for its own sake and fully contains within it the fulfillment of our desires, which is our highest possible perfection” (93). Happiness is the only purely intrinsic good.
Yet true happiness cannot be found among earthly things, Hooker insists. Perfection has three parts: physical satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction (including both knowledge and virtue), and spiritual satisfaction (94-95). People who care only about physical satisfaction are less virtuous than those who care about intellectual satisfaction as well, but both groups are less virtuous than those who care about spiritual satisfaction too. Moreover, while physical goods (such as health) and intellectual goods (such as knowledge) are both genuinely good and make people somewhat happy, they do not produce true happiness. “If a man’s soul only served to give him physical life, then he would be satisfied with those things that sustain his life,” like the animals are (95). It is not so with humans. Even people who have “everything”—power, wealth, pleasure, and fame—want something more.
At this point, Hooker makes an intriguing argument for the existence of the highest good. All people desire happiness and cannot do otherwise, although they do not agree on where to find it. From this sociological observation, he concludes that the desire for happiness is both natural and satisfiable. Moreover, “[i]t is an axiom of nature that no natural desire is utterly incapable of fulfillment” (94). It would be “pointless” for God to “make the hearts of men so yearn for something which they could never have,” and God does not do things pointlessly (94). So perfect happiness must be possible. This view contrasts with that of philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes, who conclude that true happiness is impossible because human desires can never be fully satisfied.
It turns out that happiness consists in a spiritual relationship with God. Since the only “good” which is “infinite” is God, Hooker argues, ultimate “happiness and bliss” consists in “partaking of Him and being joined to Him” (93). We know that physical and intellectual satisfaction are not all there is because “man’s desire would languish unfulfilled if it stopped here, desiring as it does an infinite happiness which no finite thing can offer” (95). Humans are not content with “mere physical continuance” or “the praise of men,” but long “for a food which cannot sustain the body or satisfy the sense, … something divine and heavenly, which he can more guess at than conceive” (95).
The mystery of salvation and the reward of heaven, however, can only be communicated by revelation (i.e. the Bible) and not by natural reason. We require God to show us that which lies beyond this world—that which can satisfy our souls.
Free Will and Evil
Although everyone desires happiness, Hooker argues, not everyone achieves communion with God. Humans are able to turn astray from the natural law because they possess a free will which has the ability to choose between different alternatives. “Choice” for him means that “whatever we do, we also could have left undone” (67). The will is able “to take or refuse anything put before it” (69). But Hooker distinguishes between “will” and “appetite.” Our “[a]ppetite seeks whatever goods are perceived by the senses,” so that we are involuntarily “aroused by passions,” while “the will seeks whatever good reason points out” (68). Reason directs the will “by considering what action is best,” generating “principles of right behavior” (68). Our reason-directed will is able to reject our appetites in order to follow the law of nature.
Despite human ability to grasp the good, we do not always follow it. Human wills sometimes (wrongly) reject what we know is good because of some unpleasant consequences of following it. A person chooses what is evil because it seems better to him than the good does or because the evil action is accompanied by pleasures. For instance, someone might choose to renounce his faith in Christ rather than be persecuted or killed, choosing the good of a pain-free life over religion. Humans can become “slaves to our sense experience” (69). And sometimes the “true worth” of a “precious” thing is “hidden” until one takes the time to examine it, so that our reason makes wrong inferences (69).
Evil results when we turn away from the good or when we desire lower goods more than they are worth. It is wrong for us to fail to reason correctly, to allow ourselves to be caught up in the desires of our appetites, or to allow evil habits to establish themselves in us. A person should desire instrumental goods like money, health, and pleasure “only as much as he needs for the sake of that end” (93). “[U]nless the good we desire for its own sake is also infinite, we do evil when we make it our final good. This is what happens when we place our hopes in wealth or honor or pleasure or anything as our final perfection which is not” (93). Although happiness consists only in a loving relationship with God, in reality most people devote themselves primarily to earthly things and neglect their spiritual good.
The Laws of Nature
Having discussed the theory of law in general, Hooker proceeds to discuss a number of specific laws of nature. But how do we know what these are? According to him, we may use one of two methodologies: “knowing the causes that make something good, or looking at the signs and marks which always accompany things that are good” (72). The first way is better, but the second way is easier and more popular. Thus, following the second path, the primary way to determine what the natural law says is to investigate what people in different cultures and time periods have said about virtue. “The most certain mark of goodness is the general conviction of all humanity,” such that “when nearly all men at nearly all times agree on something” we can presume that it is good, even if we do not understand the reason why it is good (72). Again: “The general and perpetual voice of mankind is as the judgment of God Himself, since what all men at all times have come to believe must have been taught to them by Nature, and since God is Nature’s author, her voice is merely His instrument” (72).
The judgements of reason are “obvious” and self-evident. Through correct reasoning, all people—even non-Christians—can learn the will of God without supernatural revelation (72). Any anyone “with the full use of his wits and in possession of good judgment” can “find out” the precepts of the natural law “if he searches diligently enough” (72). Although some people, through laziness or stupidity, do not comprehend the precepts of the natural law, “no one” to whom a precept is described can rationally “reject it as unreasonable or unjust” (77).
Hooker’s treatment of specific laws of nature, although deliberately cramped, seeks to show that a variety of moral principles have obtained virtually universal assent. These include laws such as “the greater good should be preferred to the lesser good,” “God should be worshipped,” “parents should be honored,” and “we should treat others as we wish to be treated” (73-74). As soon as we hear these laws, they “compel our agreement, and require no further proof or discussion” (74). Another basic principle is that the “soul” should direct the “body,” and that the highest part of our soul should direct the other parts (74). The knowledge of God and the duty to worship Him are natural too (74-75). Our recognition of humans as equal, and our duty to “love others just as much as ourselves,” is also rational (75). “From this basic equality, our natural reason deduces several laws to direct our lives, of which no man is ignorant:” do not harm others, do not “deal harshly” with others, abstain from violence, etc. (75). Many “particular prescriptions” about specific duties (e.g. to abstain from theft, rape, fraud, etc.) flow from the dual commands to love God and to love our fellow humans.
Why Some People Reject the Laws of Nature
Anyone with a theory of ethics must deal with the fact that evil exists Hooker himself is perfectly aware that human cultures often engage in idolatry, violence, and other violations of the laws of nature. “I do not deny,” he writes elsewhere, “that perverted and wicked customs—perhaps beginning with a few and spreading to the multitude, and then continuing for a long time—may be so strong that they smother the light of our natural understanding” (78). Indeed, “so far has our natural understanding been darkened that at times whole nations have been unable to recognize even gross iniquity as sin” (99).
Evil customs derive from a number of sources, such as apathy, ignorance, or weakness of will. Sometimes people are too lazy or too vain to make the effort to understand their faults, or “refuse to make an effort to consider whether their customs are good or evil” (78). People can also err when they misapply clear principles of natural law to specific subjects. A good modern example might be race-based slavery, where White people recognized the truth that humans should not be enslaved, but failed to apply that principle to Blacks, who were seen as less than fully human. However, that fact that people can misunderstanding or disobey the natural law does not imply that reason itself is defective.
For Hooker, a key reason that humans fall short of perfection is defective education. Knowledge of the good is not innate but must be acquired “little by little,” although the ability to learn stems from rational human capabilities (64). “By education and instruction, that is, by forming habits and teaching principles, we make our faculty of reason more apt to judge rightly between truth and error, good and evil” (65). But if education goes wrong or is incomplete, we will choose wrongly. “Since there are so many duties to be done, and so few where the reason can easily and certainly discover the right course, it is no surprise when men choose evil, even when the contrary is knowable. This is how habit often wins out over reason, accustoming us to act as we always have” (69).