Scholars continue to debate vigorously the relationship between Christianity and political liberalism. Political liberalism emerged within the context of the Western Christian political tradition. But it is notoriously difficult to identify overt relationships between particular Christian doctrines and the sacred tenets of democratic thought. Most historical accounts describe a winding sociopolitical path full of false starts, unintended consequences, and creative adaptations that led, somehow, from the Christian Middle Ages to the emergence of pluralistic democracy. Often, the English Puritans loom large in these narratives.
Today, religion and liberalism seem all too often to be in irreconcilable conflict. From debates over same-sex marriage and civil religion to the limits of religious liberty and secularity, Christians themselves struggle to navigate conflicts of loyalty: between revelation and reason, God and neighbor, church and state.
W. Bradford Littlejohn dives into these debates by drawing attention to the political theology of a too-often forgotten figure: Richard Hooker (1554–1600). Littlejohn presents Hooker's theology of Christian liberty not only as a coherent alternative to the Puritan political theology of Hooker's day but also as a necessary theological foundation for political liberalism today.
Readers might be skeptical at first. Most American scholars, in particular, who appeal to the sixteenth century to discern the foundations of political liberalism tend to emphasize the Puritans, whose struggle for religious liberty led them across the Atlantic toward the shores of New England. If he is remembered at all, Richard Hooker is remembered as a brilliant yet conservative spokesman for the Elizabethan Establishment and its dogged commitment to the royal supremacy over the English church.
Littlejohn's task is even more challenging insofar as he questions a link commonly made between Christian liberty and democratic freedom. As he points out, Protestant reformers emphatically rejected the notion that liberty before God (that is, justification, the forgiveness of sins) necessitates social or political liberty. A Christian's conscience might render him or her free from God's judgment, but one was still obligated to serve his or her neighbors in the various vocations of life, including social and political subjection. Christian liberty was fundamentally spiritual, not political. On the other hand, Protestants did insist that Christian liberty must be manifest in some public way if it is to be meaningful at all. At the very least, Christians are free to disobey their superiors whenever obeying them would violate God's law. At the most, Christians are obligated to practice their faith in every area of life, including politics. If Jesus is lord of all, then he is lord of society and government, as well as of the church.
It was inevitable, then, that Christian liberty would become the focal point of inexorable conflict within the institutions of sixteenth-century Europe. Littlejohn's basic argument is that Richard Hooker's political theology solved this sixteenth-century problem of Christian liberty and its relationship to political and ecclesiastical authority. If such is the case, he concludes, Hooker might also help Christians navigate the challenges of religious liberty and political authority today.
Littlejohn's second and third chapters explore tensions in the Reformed doctrine of Christian liberty (which were in turn rooted in disagreements about Reformed two kingdoms theology) and describe how these tensions gave rise within England to two opposing viewpoints. On the one hand, defenders of the Elizabethan Establishment argued that Christian liberty pertains only to inward, spiritual matters and that all other matters—matters indifferent—are properly left to the oversight of the appropriate political and ecclesiastical authorities. On the other hand, Puritan critics insisted that all matters addressed in scripture—directly or indirectly, from morals and doctrine to details of worship, discipline, and church governance—are matters of conscience that fall under the authority of scripture and the ministers of the church who must govern according thereto.
At stake here was nothing less than the essence of Christian liberty. The defenders of the establishment—Littlejohn calls them the conformists—argued that liberty of conscience did not extend to indifferent matters, which were to be regulated by proper authorities with little room for dissent. Their Puritan critics, on the other hand—Littlejohn calls them precisionists—undermined liberty of conscience by virtually eliminating the category of indifferent matters altogether. Turning every issue into an issue of biblical—and therefore ministerial—authority, they left little room for Christian individuals or communities to govern themselves. The results were spiritual legalism and, sometimes, theocratic politics.
Littlejohn unpacks Hooker's solution to this problem in chapters 4–6. Hooker, he argues, properly distinguished the different dimensions of Christian liberty and corresponding categories of matters indifferent. Building on classic Thomist understandings of natural, divine, and human law, Hooker articulated an account of liberty and authority that secured meaningful liberty for Christians both as individuals and as communities.
Hooker's account of scriptural authority was integrally related to his understanding of human beings as divine image-bearers who were created to exercise dominion through the exercise of reason. Because scripture (divine law) and reason (natural law) are both gifts of God and essential to human flourishing, they must be interpreted together. In matters essential to salvation, Hooker affirmed, scripture is the church's sole authority; but in many other matters scripture must be interpreted in accordance with reason and the rule of love. For example, scriptural prescriptions regarding church polity are often bound to the circumstances of time and place and not immediately applicable to contemporary Christian communities. Some such matters are entirely morally indifferent. Others are epistemologically indifferent (that is, they are morally significant but scripture offers no definitive word upon them). Either way, Christians must determine matters of polity in accord with prudence and love. “[T]o say that Scripture does not strictly bind us on these matters is in no way to demean or dismiss Scripture, but simply to understand that Scripture necessarily functions differently as the matter differs” (147).
Christian liberty, then, calls Christians to exercise their proper functions as reasoning image-bearers in all areas on which scripture has not spoken definitively. This is true in the outward life of the church and in the outward life of the state.
The problem with this argument, of course, is that in sixteenth-century England most people did not enjoy the liberty to exercise reasonable self-governance over indifferent matters. And, not only was Hooker no democrat; he was a vigorous defender of the queen's supremacy over the church! While Hooker avoided the Scylla of Puritan legalism, then, it would seem that he fell into the Charybdis of authoritarian conformism. This seems to make it unlikely that his theology can provide a foundation for political liberalism.
Littlejohn grants this objection up to a point. But he suggests that Hooker's theology called for those in authority to rule in accord with reason and love such that those under their authority might voluntarily embrace their governance from a standpoint of freedom, rather than brute subjection. Littlejohn calls this the “freedom of the citizen” (264) and explains, “a law justified by appeal to reason could, in principle, be judged and contested by appeal to reason. It is precisely such judgment that Hooker allows and indeed invites, even while warning that clear proof of Scripture or demonstrative reason is needed to overturn laws founded on the probable reason of the whole body politic” (264–65).
Still, Hooker agreed with the Puritans that scripture is essential to the proper functioning of human reason. Contrary to contemporary political liberalism, Hooker believed that all political authority should acknowledge Christ's kingship. This, Littlejohn boldly insists, is no reason to dismiss Hooker. Rather, it is reason to question whether or not political liberalism can survive without Christianity. Littlejohn clearly believes that political liberalism has been built on Christian foundations. “[T]here is no doubt that the liberal order of neighbor-love can long survive without conscious public recognition of the love of God that orders it. But how long? A building whose foundations have been undermined can hold up for quite a while if it is well built, but at some point, it will start to crumble” (271).
Littlejohn offers this final argument somewhat briefly; those who disagree are unlikely to be convinced. But that is not his purpose. His purpose is to present Hooker as a Reformed political theologian of the first rank and to show that Hooker's theology of Christian liberty makes an essential contribution to Protestant political thought. In this he succeeds admirably. As presented by Littlejohn, Hooker's account of liberty and authority, reason and scripture, conscience and community has much to offer to contemporary Protestant political thought. One need not embrace the whole framework to discern within Hooker's political theology crucial dimensions of a Christian political liberalism.
Littlejohn skillfully engages the nuances of the heated sixteenth-century debates over liberty and authority. Historians and political theologians will no doubt continue to debate the relative merits and long-term political impact of Hooker's and the Puritans’ respective political theologies. Littlejohn's work on Hooker's concept of Christian liberty is an important contribution to this conversation.
