Coming from an emerging scholar, Littlejohn’s short book introducing the thought of the sixteenth-century post-Reformation divine Richard Hooker represents a staggering and stellar achievement. Once a well-known major work, Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity has suffered a precipitous decline in popular readership after Keble’s Victorian edition went out of print. The modern Folger Library multi-volume edition of Hooker’s collected works is well beyond the price range of the ordinary reader, and even A.S. McGrade’s more recent three-volume edition of the Laws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) still remains prohibitively expensive. The average reader therefore only has inexpensive abridgements available, more often than not focusing on the First, Fifth, and Eighth books of the Laws. Partly due to the relative unavailability of his works, Hooker has therefore become the preserve of a few academic specialists over the past century. Littlejohn’s achievement is to turn back the tide, bring Hooker firmly to the attention of anyone with an interest in theology and Anglican history, and give them an informed but accessible introduction.
Littlejohn aims to draw upon recent scholarly research on Hooker and offer a fresh portrait, both of that theologian’s own context but also for the interest and use of modern churches, especially for people within the protean phenomenon that is ‘Anglicanism’. Littlejohn’s book consists of 12 chapters, which roughly fall into three categories: the first three chapters set the scholarly, biographical and textual contexts of Hooker and the Laws; the fourth through seventh chapters consider particular aspects to Hooker’s identity (Protestant, Polemicist, Philosopher and Pastor); the eighth through eleventh chapters address key themes in Hooker’s work, especially in the Laws (namely, Scripture, Law, Church, and Liturgy and Sacraments); and the final chapter offers a clarion call to modern readers of Hooker as to why he ought to be read. Each chapter is pithy and crisply written, engaged and engaging, never skirting an exegetical issue but also never getting bogged down in historiography or bibliography. Littlejohn’s book epitomizes, in this regard, a masterclass in how to write well, eloquently, and with academic authority and expertise. Without fail, and with great aplomb, Littlejohn achieves what he has set out to do: paint a vivid portrait of a now-neglected figure, give a tour pointing out the salient features of his thought, and bring him to life for the modern reader. Littlejohn never falls foul of the sickly tendency to whitewash Hooker’s views: this book does not serve as a hagiography as Izaak Walton’s seventeenth-century Life of Hooker did, or as many modern works continue to do; it is profoundly perceptive, easy to read, and difficult to put down. His questions at the end of each chapter will help reading groups, and his bibliography will help those who wish to read further.
In this wonderful little book, Littlejohn takes no prisoners and rejects many of the older academic orthodoxies about Hooker as the inventor of Anglicanism and the via media. Instead, Littlejohn casts Hooker ‘as a more or less irenic Reformed theologian’ (p. x). Perhaps Littlejohn’s greatest achievement is to take his reader through what could be a glut of scholarly claims about Hooker with a deft and perceptive light touch. Littlejohn espouses what may be seen as the ‘new orthodoxy’ about Hooker, and persuasively illustrates why Hooker ought to be considered a Reformed scholastic who gives an account of the Church of England’s established orders and lay ecclesiastical supremacy perfectly in accord with, and indeed flowing out of, classical and Reformed doctrinal commitments. While he will not persuade everyone, Littlejohn certainly sets the future agenda of the discussions that will emerge about Hooker’s theology. He also gives a beguiling call as to why we should care about Hooker today: we can learn an ‘extraordinary balance of exclusion and inclusion, of dogmatism and relativism, of history and change, of authority and freedom, of certainty and doubt that gives the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity “such seeds of eternity … that shall last till the last fire consume all learning”’ (p. 195).
It is rare to find next to nothing to fault with a book, but Littlejohn’s Companion is such a gem. There are a few odd phrases and colloquialisms: for example, as he writes about Hooker as a polemicist, apparently a ‘committee meeting in a modern English parish or college’ shows a ‘painfully nonconfrontational politeness’ (p. 77), which is certainly far from my experience of either case as a priest and college Dean. Yet, such minor slips are few and far between, and the scholarly exactitude, charm and clarity of the book shines throughout. At a very affordable price, every theology bookshelf should have Littlejohn’s Companion on it, whether it be that of an academic scholar, priest or lay person. There is no better guide to Hooker on the market and Littlejohn’s book will be the standard introductory text for years to come.
