The past forty years have seen a series of studies of participation in Richard Hooker's Of the lawes of ecclesiasticall politie, reaching a high watermark in the present volume which argues that ‘Participation illumines the entirety of the Laws: it is the principle behind and implied in every argument; all of Hooker's claims must be read in light of his commitment to participation.’ Dominiak provides a brief history of the Christian concept of theosis or deification – ‘the deiform transformation of believers through their participation in God’ – but it is to Aquinas that he looks as Hooker's primary source, in this matter and for neo-platonic ideas of participation more generally. He ranges confidently over the entirety of the Lawes in pursuit of this theme, setting out to prove the unity and coherence of the work linked by the architecture of participation. He is very strong on the positive role of emotions in Hooker's thought, and the neo-platonic and erotic overtones that he can give to religious desire.

Hooker in the first, foundational book of the Lawes sets out how all true laws are derived from or are copies of eternal law. By reading this systematically as a participation in eternal law in Thomistic fashion, Dominiak imbues Hooker's legally-oriented theology with participatory metaphysics. The difficulty is that although there are clearly passages in book i which demonstrate a neo-platonic theory of participation, they are relatively brief, and there are not the extended references to eternal law and participation one finds in Aquinas, even if Aquinas was one of Hooker's principal sources. Participation is evidently focal for Hooker in his account of the sacraments and salvation, as Dominiak and other scholars ably show, and Dominiak does an excellent job of bringing out the wider neo-platonic aspects of the Lawes. But much medieval and early modern theology was saturated with neo-platonism, and passing references should not be made to yield more than they can bear. It remains the case that there are far more references to participation, analogy and eternal law, and associated terms, in Dominiak's slim volume than in the entirety of the Lawes, leading me to feel that he presses his argument too far. This also applies to the manifold Thomistic references that he detects. The concept of faith formed by love (‘fides formata caritate’), for instance, can scarcely be said to be of especial Thomistic provenance.

One particular theme is that all of Creation participates in and is an analogue of the divine, and so there can be no hollowed-out secular sphere apart from God. With the copious parallels with Aquinas, a picture of Hooker emerges seemingly conducive to the participatory metaphysics of Radical Orthodoxy. Dominiak appears critical, though, of what he identifies as the politically absolutist tendencies in John Milbank's thought, and interestingly, in considering Hooker's ‘politicized metaphysics’ as standing ‘within the genealogy of modern constitutionalism’, suggests therefore that ‘political liberalism, far from being simply individualist, relativist and hubristic, has the theological resources within itself for a renaissance rather than needing a revolution’.

As in so much else, he gives Hooker's references to analogy a Thomistic derivation, contrasted with the univocal concept of being found in Duns Scotus. It should be borne in mind, though, that Duns Scotus did not reject analogy, but rather conceived of univocal concepts as explaining how we can have analogical concepts about God and creatures. There is simply no technical discussion of analogy by Hooker allowing us to know his precise views on this subject, in contrast to, say, Cajetan. A Scottish judgement of ‘not proven’ seems appropriate here. It would be interesting to see Dominiak consider parallels with Hooker's neo-Thomist contemporaries, both Reformed and Roman Catholic, bearing in mind the ways they interpreted and modified Aquinas's thought (including on the will).

Dominiak sees this architecture of participation exemplified in Hooker's view of religious authority, as it emphasises human reason cognitively participating in divine reason through the action of the Holy Spirit. He asserts that exegetes who argue that Hooker rejected the Reformed doctrine that Scripture authenticates itself through the internal witness of the Holy Spirit fundamentally misunderstand Hooker's commitment to this doctrine by ignoring his statements that in matters divine reason must be sanctified by grace – a claim that rather surprisingly overlooks, for example, my own explicit statements on the vital role of grace for Hooker in sanctified (and natural) reasoning.

Dominiak observes how ‘Aquinas's distinction between things evident by themselves (secundum se) and things evident for us (quoad nos) … stands behind Calvin's account of the Spirit's testimony as it establishes scriptural authority for us (apud nos)’ and ‘forms the correct interpretive paradigm for the passages from the Laws about scriptural authenticity’. Yet Aquinas does not apply this distinction himself to Scripture, but rather to God: God's existence is not self-evident in itself and for us (‘per se nota secundum se et quoad nos’) like the first principles of logic, as we do not know God's essence, though since God's essence is his existence it is self-evident in itself (‘per se nota secundum se et non quoad nos’). It is, however, evident for us through His effects, and so God's existence can be demonstrated by the wise. This actually fits rather well with Hooker's analysis, in a way which undermines Dominiak's own argument: for Hooker, that Scripture is the Word of God is not self-evident in itself and for us like the first principles of logic, but it can be proved by reason by the wise through ‘a demonstration sound and infallible’, like the existence of God. Whereas the Reformed doctrine is that Scripture is self-convincing in itself and for us for those taught by the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.

Although he is keen to draw parallels between Hooker and Calvin on the authentication of Scripture, Dominiak also places Hooker in the context of later theologians like Gisbertus Voetius and Francis Turretin. Yet despite much diligent work by him and other recent scholars to relate Hooker to Orthodox Reformed theologians who emphasise the role of the divine in proving Scripture's divinity, Hooker unlike them goes out of his way to separate Scripture from that which provides its authentication: ‘it is not the worde of God which doth or possiblie can assure us, that wee doe well to thinke it his worde’; Scripture presupposes ‘knowledge concerning certaine principles whereof it receaveth us already perswaded … In the number of these principles one is the sacred authoritie of scripture’, etc. Turretin, citing Aristotle's Posterior analytics, argues that Scripture is a first principle which proves itself and so does not have an external reason for its truth; but Hooker explicitly denies this notion.

Dominiak provides an attractive, well-constructed and holistic argument for interpreting Hooker as an orthodox Reformed Thomist, and shows impressive erudition in this monograph. Readers will need to come to their own judgement about the overall Reformed tenor of Hooker's theology, and whether participation is quite as architectonic for Hooker as Dominiak argues.