Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation (T&T Clark Studies in English Theology)

Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity has long been recognised as an influential philosophical, theological, and literary text. While scholars have commonly noted the presence of participatory language in selected passages of Hooker’s Laws, no study to date has traced how participation lends a sense of system and coherency across the whole work. Paul Anthony Dominiak explores how the concept of participation informs and holds together Hooker’s major work. Dominiak analyses how Hooker uses an architectural framework of ‘participation in God’ to build a cohesive vision of the Elizabethan Church as the most fitting way to reconcile and lead English believers to the shared participation of God. Dominiak first explores Hooker’s metaphysical architecture of participation in his accounts of law and the sacraments. He then traces how this architecture structures cognitive participation in God, as well as Hooker’s political vision of the Church and Commonwealth. The volume culminates in a summary that shows how Hooker provides a salutary resource for modern ecumenical dialogue and contemporary political retrievals of participation. "Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity has long been acknowledged as an influential philosophical, theological and literary text. While scholars have commonly noted the presence of participatory language in selected passages of Hooker's Laws, Paul Anthony Dominiak is the first to trace how participation lends a sense of system and coherency across the whole work. Dominiak analyses how Hooker uses an architectural framework of 'participation in God' to build a cohesive vision of the Elizabethan Church as the most fitting way to reconcile and lead English believers to the shared participation of God. First exploring Hooker's metaphysical architecture of participation in his accounts of law and the sacraments, Dominiak then traces how this architecture structures cognitive participation in God, as well as Hooker's political vision of the Church and Commonwealth. The volume culminates with a summary of how Hooker provides a salutary resource for modern ecumenical dialogue and contemporary political retrievals of participation." -- Provided by Publisher Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements Note on the text Abbreviations 1 ‘The participation of God himselfe’: Hooker and the retrieval of participation 2 ‘Most abundant vertue’: Hooker’s metaphysical architecture of participation 3 ‘A drop of that unemptiable fountain of wisdom’: Cognitive participation in God 4 ‘Politique societie’: The politics of participation 5 ‘To resolve the conscience’: Revisiting the architecture of participation Bibliography Index