The aim of this well-written and original book – essentially the text of Russell's 2009 doctoral thesis – is to liberate Richard Hooker from ‘historical theology with its obsession with categorisation’, and all those who have sought to claim him for one theological tradition or another over the years. In this way, Russell seeks to make his wisdom available to the Church of England and wider Anglican Communion. She sees Hooker as wrestling with many of the questions and concerns that Anglicans have today, ‘questions as to the vision of God, God's very being and God's desire for our lives together’. And just as, she argues, Hooker's theology transcends conventional boundaries and party lines, and the certainties that go with them, so Hooker is calling the Church ‘to abandon certainty – where certainty is concerned with boundaries that exclude and create schism’.

Russell begins with a survey of interpretations of Hooker through the centuries, particularly as a via media, and alternatively as a Reformed theologian. She rightly focuses on the tendency to use Hooker as a means to interpret the Church of England as a ‘flag waver for one's preferred “orthodoxy”’. There is a well-written overview of Hooker's life and writings, including reactions by his contemporaries. Russell is clearly sceptical of modern-day writers who see Hooker as an orthodox Reformed theologian, but this is not because she wishes to claim him for another tradition. She then gives us an extended overview of the Lawes, concluding that it is not simply an apology for Elizabethan Church practices and that it is therefore questionable whether Hooker's identity should be so tightly bound with that of the Church of England. She wishes, in her own words, not to ignore Hooker's context, but to go beyond it.

The second chapter contains a perceptive analysis of Hooker's style and rhetoric, drawing heavily on earlier studies. She is surely correct to argue that Hooker's literary style and techniques are a necessary tool in understanding his theology, against those who assume that they can be safely ignored in uncovering his ideas. Russell though goes further, claiming that ‘persuasion was not the primary purpose of the Lawes at all’, but that Hooker's style in leading the reader to participate in the text brings them closer to participating in God, and so Hooker's style becomes an embodiment of his theology. There is no doubt of the importance of participation in Hooker's theology. But that the central purpose of the Lawes is the ‘transformation of the reader’ as opposed to, say, persuasion or polemics, sits awkwardly for instance with Hooker's vituperative attacks on Presbyterianism in the preface, or stinging irony at the expense of his opponents. The Lawes is a complex text doubtless with numerous purposes, but it is always dangerous to downplay Hooker's polemicism too much in contrast to his supposed irenicism.

The final chapter critiques the view that reason was Hooker's primary, if not sole, arbiter in the life of faith, through a close reading of his sermon on the Certaintie and perpetuity of faith in the elect. The chapter also seeks to practise the ideas that have been set out previously, reading the sermon ‘with a respect for Hooker's choice of words, paying attention to the crucial nature of his style and resisting the urge to categorise his theology’. Russell skilfully examines this and other writings by Hooker on the doctrine of assurance, in the context of Reformed doctrine, and whether Hooker changed his mind. She discusses Reformed views on assurance, with particular reference to the pastoral advice of Richard Greenham. She then critically examines later readings by John Keble, Corneliu Simuţ, myself and Debora Shuger, arguing that the desire to fit Hooker into existing categories results in misinterpretations of his position, which ‘cannot be categorised by any existing classifications’. She then offers her own reading, to which there are considerable merits, emphasising the unity between mind and emotion in Hooker's understanding of how faith adheres to God amidst doubt. Finally, she places this sermon in the context of his earlier and later writings on assurance, but is averse to drawing conclusions as to whether his views developed over time, or what his stance was in relation to Reformed theology. She speaks of a development in his position, but rejects the idea of a change. Indeed, she claims that after reading the sermon ‘it is difficult to then ask the question: “How Reformed was Hooker?” It is as if the question itself is alien to the text …. To strive for a certainty about Hooker's position on assurance is neither possible nor desirable.’

It is here that we come to the heart of this study. Russell states that her aim ‘has been to reveal the deep uncertainty that underlies the life and work of Richard Hooker’, and that his writings ‘defy and transcend categorisation’. ‘In Hooker scholarship the dominant theme has been to discover the “real” Richard Hooker. The thrust of my argument is that this quest is one from which we should withdraw.’ But though there may well be significant ambiguities in Hooker's writings, I am unconvinced that Hooker's views on many matters cannot be stated with considerable confidence; this rather looks like an antipathy towards theological scholarship. As for Russell's dislike of categories, this contrasts starkly with Hooker's scholasticism, with its love of theological categories, as evidenced for instance in his writings on grace and predestination – or indeed his classification of the different types of certainty. For all her care not to misinterpret Hooker and to force alien categories onto his writings, by continually claiming that he is sui generis and transcends the usual categories of theology, and cannot securely be aligned on anything with any religious tradition, there is a danger in ultimately fudging the issues. As for her challenge to the view that ‘Hooker's life and work cannot stand alone. By necessity he must be examined alongside the identity of his Church’, by studying Hooker's relationship with his contemporaries she shows, against herself, what a powerful vehicle this is for understanding Hooker's thought. Given the emphasis that has been placed in recent studies on evaluating Hooker's relationship with the Reformed tradition, it is not surprising that this should now have produced a counter-reaction. In my judgement, this is far too soon. When the time comes when scholars can fairly argue that Hooker's relationship with the Reformed tradition (and, I would add, contemporary Roman Catholicism) has become a stale and exhausted matter, we shall know far more about Hooker's thought and writings than we do now.