Members only: The Biblical and Patris­tic Foun­da­tions of Anglican Sacra­men­tal­ism as Under­stood by the English Reform­ers

This paper was presented at the Mere Anglicanism conference in Charleston, SC on 1 February 2008 and is published with the kind permission of Elliott House of Studies, copyright holders of the works of Robert Crouse, all rights reserved.

‘Sacraments, by reason of their mixed nature, are more diversely interpreted and disputed of than any other part of religion besides…’. So pronounces Richard Hooker, in the course of his lengthy discussion of Sacraments in Book V of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. ‘By reason of their mixed nature’, he says, for sacraments are somehow by their very nature a mixture or conjunction of the natural and the supernatural, of the divine word and the natural element, of the finite and the infinite, of the outward sign and the inward grace. They are means or instruments of human participation in the divine life:

Thus Hooker prefaces his discussion of the sacraments by six chapters devoted first to an exposition of Chalcedonian Christology, showing how the divine and human are conjoined in Christ without confusion of natures, and then to a consideration of our participation in Christ,

The sacraments are not merely teaching devices, ‘to teach the mind, by other senses, that which the word doth teach by hearing’ (Laws 5.58.1) but ‘means effectual whereby God when we take the sacraments delivereth into our hands that grace available unto eternal life, which grace the sacraments represent and signify’. (Laws 5.57.6)

Hooker’s careful grounding of sacramental theology in orthodox Chalcedonian Christology is no doubt peculiar to him in its systematic character, but at the same time represents a constant theme in reformed Anglican doctrine in the 16th and 17th centuries, drawn from Patristic sources. The authority of the ancient Fathers in the interpretation of Scripture is fundamental for these Reformers. Bishop Jewel, Hooker’s early patron, puts it this way, in his Treatise of the Sacraments: