Richard Hooker and John Calvin

At a time when the theology of the reformed English Church was in the process of formation, Richard Hooker was compelled by the pressure of puritan argument to come to terms with Calvin's theological legacy and the Genevan experiment in theocracy—upheld by English reformists as the perfect mode...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of ecclesiastical history 1981-01, Vol.32 (1), p.19-28
Main Author: Avis, P. D. L.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:At a time when the theology of the reformed English Church was in the process of formation, Richard Hooker was compelled by the pressure of puritan argument to come to terms with Calvin's theological legacy and the Genevan experiment in theocracy—upheld by English reformists as the perfect model of a reformed Church. Hooker himself had been schooled in Calvinist theology: his nineteenth-century editor, John Keble, suggested that his earliest work revealed him to be still under the spell of the puritan divines who looked to Calvin and his successor Beza for their inspiration. Another nineteenth-century commentator, F. D. Maurice, observed that Hooker not merely reverenced but trembled before the name of Calvin, pointing out that ‘the caution and hesitancy of Hooker in finding fault with the foreign Reformer, when he was most disposed to be severe upon his English imitators, show how much the metaphysics of the Institutes governed his mind.’
ISSN:0022-0469
1469-7637
DOI:10.1017/S0022046900033996