Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation

by Paul Anthony Dominiak, Karen Kilby (Editor), Michael Higton (Editor)

Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity has long been acknowledged as an influential philosophical, theological and literary text. While scholars have commonly noted the presence of participatory language in selected passages of Hooker's Laws , Paul Anthony Dominiak is the first to trace how participation lends a sense of system and coherency across the whole work.

Dominiak analyses how Hooker uses an architectural framework of 'participation in God' to build a cohesive vision of the Elizabethan Church as the most fitting way to reconcile and lead English believers to the shared participation of God. First exploring Hooker's metaphysical architecture of participation in his accounts of law and the sacraments, Dominiak then traces how this architecture structures cognitive participation in God, as well as Hooker's political vision of the Church and Commonwealth. The volume culminates with a summary of how Hooker provides a salutary resource for modern ecumenical dialogue and contemporary political retrievals of participation.

Genres: Theology

240 pages, Hardcover

Published December 12, 2019

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a description of the platonic glue that holds Richard Hooker's thought together. The in depth discussion of the various modes of creation's participation in God and the tensions between them was very helpful and insightful. Reading and understanding Hooker's platonic vision of reality is especially relevant now as many philosophers, theologians, and historians argue for some form of "re-sacramentalization" of reality.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite good. Recommended for Hooker scholars.