Richard Hooker (1554-1600) was an influential theologian and priest in the Church of England. While he opposed the Roman Catholic dogmatic teachings on the Mass and the Eucharist, as well as the Lutheran view of consubstantiation, as with many early theologians, he was inconsistent in his attempt to formulate a theology of the Eucharist.
Kenneth Stevenson, in his book-length treatment of the Eucharist in the seventeenth century, wrote of Hooker’s theology of the Eucharist:
After a brief discussion of the appearance of the risen Christ in John 20, when the disciples recognised him without disputation, he observed that at the Last Supper:
they saw their Lord and Master with hands and eyes uplifted first bless and consecrate for the endless good of all generations till the world’s end the chosen elements of bread and wine, which elements made for ever the instruments of life by virtue of his divine benediction they being the first that were commanded to receive them . . . and . . . those mysteries should serve as conducts of life and conveyances of his body and blood.
Extending the aquatic imagery . . . he remarks: ‘They had at the time a sea of comfort and oy to wade in, and we by that which they did are taught that this heavenly food is given for the satisfying of our empty souls, and not for the exercising of our curious and subtle wits’ (Book V, 67.4) He repeats the theme of presence and participation, and the eucharist as ‘the wellspring out of which this life floweth’ (Book V, 67.5).
But it is not always easy to pin Hooker down. For he goes on to say, from one corner of his mouth, that ‘the real participation of Christ body and blood is therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament’ (Book V, 67.6), and yet later on he waxes even more lyrical than usual;
Christ assisting this heavenly banquet with his personal and true presence doth by his own divine power add to the natural substance thereof supernatural efficacy, which addition to the nature of those consecrated elements changeth them and maketh them that unto us which otherwise they could not be; that to us they are thereby made such instruments as mystically yet truly, invisibly yet really work our communion or fellowship with the person of Jesus Christ as well in that he is man as God our participation also in the fruit, grace and efficacy of his body and blood, whereupon there ensueth a kind of transubstantiation in us, a true change both of soul and body, an alternation from death to life. (Book V, 67.11)
It is as if Hooker were (if the image is not inappropriate here) trying to have his eucharistic cake and eat it. In the former passage, he states implacably that Christ’s presence is to be sought in the communicant. But in the latter he affirms that consecration does set the eucharistic gifts apart, and makes them into something else that they were not before. They become the means whereby our fellowship with one another and with Christ is built up in a manner that cannot be subjected to too great a human scrutiny. (One is reminded of a short statement in his discussion of sacraments in general: ‘Sacraments serve as the instruments of God . . . moral instruments, the use whereof is in our hands, the effects in his.’ [Book V, 57.5])
Perhaps the key lies in what he states in the discussion between these potentially contradictory assertions. First of all, he outlines what he regards as a common ground between all Christians on the sacrament in terms of five truths; that it is a ‘true and real participation of Christ’; that in the eucharist the Holy Spirit is given ‘to sanctify them as it sanctifieth him which is their bread’; that ‘what merit, force or virtue soever there is in his sacrificed body and blood, we freely, fully and wholly have it by this sacrament’; the effect of the sacrament is ‘a real transmutation of our souls and bodies from sin to righteousness, from death and corruptibility to immortality and life’; and finally that although the bread and wine and meagre things in themselves, God’s power is sufficient to bring about his promises (Book V, 67.7) . . . Criticising by implication those who seem to regard the sacrament as ‘a bare sign or figure only’ (Book V, 67.8), he goes on to reapply his ideas to the controversies of the time. He tries to bring the best out of their approaches. ‘All three do plead God’s omnipotency: sacramentaries [i.e. the followers of Zwingli and perhaps also some Calvinists] to that alteration which the rest confess he accomplish; the patrons of transubstantiation over and besides that to the change of one substance to another; the followers of consubstantiation to the kneading up of both substances as it were into one lump’ (Book V, 67.10). And he cites passages from three early Fathers to support his medial line on eucharistic presence. Then in a final section of this chapter, he indulges in an extended fancy, of presenting a rhetorical assertion in quotation marks. It is by far the longest of these in the entire Laws, which is a clear sign that it was of some importance to him. He uses for inspiration a work on the eucharist spuriously ascribed to the third-century North African bishop, Cyprian of Carthage, but actually written by Arnold of Chartres, who lived in the twelfth century and was abbot of Bonneval, and a friend of Bernard of Clairvaux. This leads him to provide an alternative view of the eucharist which might find agreement among Christians:
. . . this hallowed food, through concurrence of divine power, it is in verity and truth, unto faithful receivers, instrumentally a cause of that mystical participation, whereby as I make myself wholly theirs, so I give them in hand an actual possession of all such saving grace as my sacrificed body can yield, and as their souls do presently need, this is to them and in them my body. [For some reason five key words are not printed in italics.]
This introduces into the lengthy concluding reflection, which perhaps ranks among the more wonderful and sublime passages in the whole of Hooker. It ends thus:
. . . what these elements are in themselves it skillet not, it is enough that to me which take them they are the body and blood of Christ, his promise in witness hereof sufficeth, his word he knoweth which way to accomplish; why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this, O my God thou art true, O my soul thou art happy! (Book V, 67.12) (Kenneth Stevenson, Covenant of Grace Renewed: A Vision of the Eucharist in the Seventeenth Century [London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 1994], 28-29, 30-31, italics in original)
