‘By Force of Participation and Conjunction in Him’: John Jewel and Richard Hooker on Union with Christ

Abstract

The author of a Christian Letter cited a passage from John Jewel’s A Reply to Harding’s Answer in which the first major apologist of the Elizabethan Settlement spoke of the role of faith and the sacraments in union with Christ. Andrew Willet, the likely author of this work, quoted it against Richard Hooker in order to show how the latter contravened the sacramental theology of the national Church as interpreted by Jewel as one of the foremost expositors of its doctrine. Jewel, however, in his Reply to Harding’s Answer, enumerates four means of the Christian’s union with Christ: the Incarnation, faith, baptism, and the Eucharist-a fact overlooked in A Christian Letter by its author in his endeavor to impeach Hooker’s orthodoxy. Proceeding from the observation that both Jewel and Hooker believed that the locus of Christian salvation is union with Christ, this essay compares the two divines’ respective views of this union by examining the manner in which they understand the role of each of these means forming and maintaining this union. On the basis of this comparison, the essay argues that A Christian Letter misrepresented Jewel’s position and that Hooker’s view of union with Christ was essentially the same as the late bishop of Salisbury’s, notwithstanding some differences in detail and emphases. The article concludes with the opinion that Hooker represents continuity of a particular soteriological emphasis in the Elizabethan Church that can possibly be traced back to Jewel as a representative of the Reformed tradition stressing this doctrine.

Keywords

• john jewel
• richard hooker
• union with christ
• participation
• sacraments