An early modern Christology debate

[Reformed Covenanter]

Here we crave of you Maister Hoo[ker]. to explain your own meaning where you say, The Father alone is originally that Deity which Christ originally is not. How the Godhead of the Father and of the Son be all one, and yet originally not the same Deity: And then teach us how far this differeth from the heresy of Arius, who sayeth of God the Son: There was when he was not, who yet graunteth that he was before all creatures, of things which were not. Whether such words weaken not the eternity of the Son in the opinion of the simple, or at the least make the Son inferior to the Father in respect of the Godhead: or else teach the ignorant, there be many Gods.

[Andrew Willet], A Christian letter of certain English protestants, unfained favourers of the present state of religion, authorised and professed in England: unto that reverend and learned man, Mr R. Hoo[ker] requiring resolution in certain matters of doctrine (which seem to overthrow the foundation of Christian religion, and of the church among vs) expressly contained in his five books of Ecclesiastical policy. (Middelburg: Richard Schilders, 1599), p. 6.

I am assuming that Richard Hooker was merely arguing that the Father was the fountain of the Deity rather than advocating Arianism. Calling @BayouHuguenot and @py3ak to the front desk.

 

[py3ak]

He's explaining three ways in which Christ can be said to be a recipient: by eternal generation, by union, and by unction. Of eternal generation, Hooker writes:

"By the gift of eternal generation Christ hath received of the Father one and in number the selfsame substance, which the Father hath of himself unreceived from any other. For every beginning is a Father unto that which cometh of it; and every offspring is a Son unto that out of which it groweth. Seeing therefore the Father alone is originally that Deity which Christ originally is not, (for Christ is God by being of God, light by issuing out of light,) it followeth hereupon that whatsoever Christ hath common unto him with his heavenly Father , the same of necessity must be given him, but naturally and eternally given, not bestowed by way of benevolence and favour, as the other gifts both are. And therefore where the Fathers give it out for a rule, that whatsoever Christ is said in Scripture to have received, the same we ought to apply only to the manhood of Christ; their assertion is true of all things which Christ hath received by grace, but to that which he hath received of the Father by eternal nativity or birth it reacheth not."

Richard Hooker, Of The Laws Of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book 5, Chapter 54

The real difficulty, I think, is in Hooker having written "which Christ originally is not." The parenthesis that follows does clarify, but the choice of words is unfortunate. In isolation you could read that as the Father being God in a sense that the Son isn't, or even more outré, that the Son at some point become God from originally being something else.

But originally there is used in terms of origin, so in the overall context, your surmise about reflecting the Father as the fons deitatis is on point. And Willet doesn't level a charge of Arianism per se, but wants clarity for the sake of the simple and ignorant.

The question of derived and therefore possibly inferior deity is always the possibility that lurks in the background with eternal generation or mentioning the Father as the fountain of deity, and in a not-too distant thread you posted some evidence that some among the Reformed could be uncomfortable with that language. But in answer to the specter one can emphasize: in number the selfsame substance...naturally and eternally given...eternal nativity or birth. And in reply Hooker could underscore that the numerically identical substance and also the relation of eternal generation are how you explain that Father and Son are not two gods but one God, and answer that the ignorant might misunderstand Willet as teaching two monarchies (!) in the Godhead, and in that way two gods.

 

[RamistThomist]

I see him as following the Cappadocians on the monarchia of the Father.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

An observation from Brad Littlejohn on the issue:

Torrance Kirby, on the other hand, has firmly rejected the testimony of the Christian Letter as little better than a run-of-the-mill polemical slander, such as one regularly encounters in theological disputation; after all, the letter seeks to impugn not merely Hooker’s Reformed or Protestant credentials, but even his very Trinitarian orthodoxy, charges which no serious scholar takes seriously.

W. Bradford Littlejohn, Richard Hooker: A Companion to His Life and Work (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), pp 56-57.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

But originally there is used in terms of origin, so in the overall context, your surmise about reflecting the Father as the fons deitatis is on point. And Willet doesn't level a charge of Arianism per se, but wants clarity for the sake of the simple and ignorant.

Yes, the point about Andrew Willet being worried that Richard Hooker's language could deceive the simple seems to have been one of the central concerns of his pamphlet. As I mentioned in the thread concerning the authorship of this tract, Willet seems to have believed that Hooker's softer Calvinism (what we would today call the well-meant offer) was incongruous with predestination. He also sees Hooker as being too charitable to Romanists, though I have read similar things in William Perkins and others. I suspect that these issues were what was really driving Willet's critique.