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Thomas Hooker, Martin Luther, and the Terror at the Edge of Protestant Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2015

Baird Tipson
Baird Tipson*
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Gettysburg College
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Extract

Toward the end of his nine-year tenure as Fellow, Thomas Hooker awoke in his sleeping quarters at Emmanuel College terrified by a sense of “the Just Wrath of Heaven.” His God, the same God in whom he had always put his trust, had turned against him and was furious at his sinfulness. Dreading divine punishment, Hooker found himself “fill'd. . . with most unusual Degrees of Horror and Anguish.” Alone in the night, Hooker was haunted by the anger of a terrifying God.

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 108 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 530 - 551
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2015 

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References

1 Mather, Piscator Evangelicus, or, The Life of Mr. Thomas Hooker, in Johannes in Eremo (London, 1695) Wing M1117, separate pagination, 5–6, republished in Magnalia Christi Americana (2 vols.; New York: Russell & Russell, 1967) 1:333. “Horror and anguish” were what godly people like Hooker were expected to feel in the face of God's anger. His theological mentor William Perkins said of the damned in hell that “their bodies and soules are tormented with infinite horror and anguish arising of the feeling of the whole wrath of God.” A Treatise Tending unto a declaration in The Workes of That Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ in the Vniuersitie of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins (3 vols.; London: John Legatt, 1616–18) New Short Title Catalogue (hereafter NSTC) 19651, 1:379. Biblical citations in this article will be from the 1611 Authorized Version (KJV).

2 Hooker, The Application of Redemption, By the effectual Work of the word, and Spirit of Christ, for the bringing home of lost Sinners to God. The first eight Books (London, 1656) [Donald Wing, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland, Wales and British America and of English Books Printed in Other Countries 1641–1700 (ed. and rev. Timothy J. Crist et al.; New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982), hereafter Wing] H2639, The ninth and tenth books (London, 1657) Wing H2640, 8:371. To “gaster” was to frighten or terrify.

3 Mather, Piscator Evangelicus, 5-6. Our knowledge of Hooker's wrath experience comes from Cotton Mather, who (erroneously) thought of it as a conversion experience; Mather was relying on a manuscript he had obtained from Eliot (see fn. 1 above for the source). It almost surely occurred in 1617 while Hooker was in his early thirties, for his Hartford colleague Samuel Stone's 1647 funeral poem speaks of “the peace he had full thirty years agoe” [italics in original].The poem occurs in the introductory material to Hooker, A Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline (London, 1648) Wing H2658, sig. C3v.

4 I use the term “extreme Augustinianism” rather than the conventional “Calvinism” because it describes a style of theology that both comprehends the positions of a number of theologians—the Luther of De servo arbitrio and the Catholic Cornelius Janssen were both extreme Augustinians—and may differ from Calvin's, as Perkins's did in some regards. Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued both that “Anglicanism is a word best jettisoned by historians” and that “Calvinism ought to go the same way.” “Protestantism in Mainland Europe: New Directions,” RQ 59 (2006) 698–706, at 702. Patrick Collinson concurred, writing that the term “‘Calvinism’ no longer serves the purposes of serious ecclesiastical historians.” “The Fog in the Channel Clears: The Rediscovery of the Continental Dimension to the British Reformation,” in The Reception of Continental Reformation in Britain (ed. Polly Ha and Patrick Collinson; Proceedings of the British Academy 164; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) xvii–xxxvii, at xxxiii. For Hooker's life and influence, see Tipson, Baird, Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 In The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the Literature of Religious Despair (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), John Stachniewski takes a literary-critical approach in analyzing the prevailing “godly” religious culture that this article approaches theologically.

6 Lindbeck, George, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984) 34Google Scholar. The term verbum externum, meaning here speech that comes from outside the self, looms large in the theology of Luther. Lindbeck was strongly influenced by the theology of Karl Barth.

7 Usually translated as On the Bondage of the Will, the title literally means “on enslaved choice.” I cite here the standard Latin edition in D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (ed. J. K. F. Knaake, et al.; 121 vols.; Weimar, 1883) [hereafter W. A.] vol. 18, English translation in The Bondage of the Will (trans. J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston; Westwood, N. J.: Fleming Revell, 1957).

8 W. A. 18:684, 707; Bondage, 169, 201–2. Fidei summus gradus, credere illum esse clementem, qui tam paucos salvat, tam multos damnat;. . . qui tantam iram et iniquitatem ostendit (18:633; Packer and Johnston, Bondage, 101). Absurdum enim manet (ratione iudice) (W. A. 18:707; Bondage, 201); Haec dictabit ratio non esse boni et clementis Dei (W. A. 18:708; Bondage, 201); hoc offendit quam maxime sensum illum communem seu rationem naturalem, quod Deus mera voluntate sua homines deseret, induret, damnet, quasi delectetur peccatis et cruciatibus miserorum tantis et aeternis, qui praedicatur tantae misericordiae et bonitatis etc. (W. A. 18:719; Bondage, 217). Si autem id movet, quod difficile sit, clementiam et aequitatem Dei tueri, ut qui damnet immeritos, hoc est, impios eiusmodi, qui in impietate nati, non possunt ulla ratione sibi consulere, quin impij sint, maneant et damnentur (W. A. 18:784; Bondage, 314). Later Lutherans moved away from statements such as these, which seemed to imply predestination to damnation.

9 Si cuncta fiunt necessitate, nonne merito Hierosolyma poterat respondere deploranti domino: Quid inanibus lacrimis te maceras? . . . Cur nobis imputas, quod tua voluntate, nostra necessitate factum est? Tu volebas nos congregare et idem in nobis nolebas, cum hoc ipsum operatus sis in nobis, quod noluerimus. Atqui in verbis domini non accusator in Iudaeis necessitas, sed prava ac rebellis voluntas: Ego volui congregare, tu noluisti. Erasmus, De Libero Arbitrio ΔΙΑΤΡΙΒΗ, sive Collatio, Quellenschriften zür Geschichte des Protestantismus 8. Heft (ed. Johannes Walter; Leipzig: A. Deichert'sche Buchhandlung, 1910) 39, English translation in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation (trans. E. Gordon Rupp Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969) 59.

10 Huius itidem Dei incarnati est flere, deplorare, gemere super perditione impiorum, cum voluntas maiestatis ex proposito aliquos relinquat et reprobet, ut periant. W. A. 18:689; Bondage, 176.

11 W. A. 18:684, 707; Bondage, 169, 201–202.

12 Fidei summus gradus, credere illum esse clementem, qui tam paucos salvat, tam multos damnat; . . . qui tantam iram et iniquitatem ostendit,. . .. W. A. 18:633; Bondage, 101.

13 Nec nobis quaerendum, cur ita faciat, sed reverendus Deus, quo talia et possit et velit. W. A. 18:689; Bondage, 176.

14 Gerrish, B. A., “‘To the Unknown God’ Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of God,” in The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) 136Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., 137.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., 137–138. Gerrish distinguishes between what he calls “hiddenness I” and “hiddenness II”; my references here are to “hiddenness II.”

19 For example, Gerrish speaks of “a long period of relative neglect” of Luther's notion of a hidden God. “To the Unknown God,” 133.

20 A good example would be the first-rate article by Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Der Einfluß des Anfechtungserfahrung auf den Prädestinationsbegriff Luthers,” Kerygma und Dogma 3 (1957) 109–39. For a critique of the conventional distinction between the “young” and the “old” Luther, see Kaufmann, Thomas, “Der ‘alte’ und der ‘junge’ Luther als theologisches Problem,” in Luther und das monastische Erbe (ed. Bultmann, Christoph, Leppin, Volker, and Lindner, Andreas; Tübingen: Mohr Seibeck, 2007) 187–205Google Scholar.

21 Nunc autem nobis spectandum est verbum relinquendaque illa voluntas imperscrutabilis. Verbo enim non dirigi, non voluntate illa inscrutabili oportet. De Servo Arbitrio W.A. 18:685; Bondage, 170–71.

22 Luther describes the three rules in the preface to an edition of his German writings. The three rules were oratio, meditatio, tentatio, “Vorrede zum 1. Bande der Wittenberger Ausgabe u. 1539,” W. A. 50:657–61, English translation in Career of the Reformer IV, Luthers Works (trans. Robert R. Heitner; Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1960) 34:285–87; Es gehören gar starcke Geister da zu, solche puffe [Anfechtungen] auszuhalten, “Fastenpostille 1525. Euangelium auf den ersten Sontag nach Epiphanie,” W. A. 17/2:20, English translation in Sermons on Gospel Texts for Epiphany, Lent, and Easter. Sermons of Martin Luther (trans. John N. Lenker; 8 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992) 2:37.

23 Fastenpostille 1525. “Euangelium auff den ersten Sontag nach Epiphanie,” W. A. 17/2:16–32; Sermons 2:32–53; “Auf den andern Sontag der fasten Euangelion. Matthei 15 [21–28]," W. A. 17/2:200–204, in Sermons 2:148–54; Genesisvorlesung, W.A. 42–44, ch. 32:21–24b and ch. 22:1–11, English translation in Lectures on Genesis, Luther's Works vols. 1–8 (trans. George V. Schick and Paul D. Pahl; 55 vols.; Saint Louis: Concordia, 1958–1966) 6:125–38 and 4:91–122.

24 Zuvor war sie bis in Himel erhaben, itzt ligt sie plötzlich in der tieffen Helle und in solchem schrecken und hertzleid, das sie möcht verzweivelt und gestorben sein. W. A. 17/2:19 (1525); Sermons, 2:36. In another sermon, Luther made it clear that Mary was representing the whole church: Maria sey Christliche kirche. W. A. 10:140; English translation in Luthers Works (trans. John Kunstmann; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974) 52:39.

25 Eben damit zum höhesten schrecken lesst, davon sie jre höheste freude haben. . . . er wolle uns den Herrn Christum aus dem Hertzen reissen. . . . Also das unser Gewissen fület, es habe jn verloren, und als denn zappelt und zaget, als sey es eitel zorn und ungnade gegen im. W. A.. 17/2:20; Sermons 2:37.

26 Anfectung und leiden, . . . Welche man pflegt zu nennen desertionem gratiae. Da des menschen Hertz nicht anders fület, denn als habe jn Gott mit seiner Grade verlassen und wolle sein nicht mehr. Und wie er sich hin keret, sihet er nichts denn eitel zorn und schrecken. Ibid.

27 Dis ist gar eyn harter puff [=Anfechtung], wenn sich Gott also Ernst und zornig erzeugt und syne gnade so hoch und tieff verbirget . . .. Das sie dunckt, er wölle nicht halten, was er geredt hat, und seyn wort lassen falsch werden,. . .. W. A. 17/2:201 (1525); Sermons 2:150.

28 Ist das nicht eyn donnerschlag, der beyde, hertz und glauben auff tausent stucken zuschlüge, wen es fület, das Gotts wort, darauff es bawet, sey nicht von yhm gesagt, es gehe andere an? W. A. 17:202; Sermons 2:151.

29 Da gibt er yhr schlects fur, sie sey der verdampten und verlornen eyne, die nicht solle mit den auserweleten gerechnet werden. W. A.17:203; Sermons 2:151–52.

30 Quid si Deus mutavit sententiam, me reiecit, et fratrem recipit in gratiam? W. A. 44:99 (probably 1542); Genesis 6:133; Deus, qui ostendit se adversarium, quasi velit eum occidere et privare promissionibus et benedictione, eamque tradere fratri Esau. Ibid.

31 Sentit se derelictum a Deo, aut Deum sibi adversari et irasci. W. A. 44:100; Genesis 6:134. In ipso sensu irae Dei:. . .. W, A, 44:103; Genesis 6:139

32 Tentatio maxima. W.A. 43:200 (1539–40); Genesis 4:91. Gravius igitur tentatur Abraham, quam Maria Hierosolymis amittens filium. W. A. 43:203; Genesis 4:94.

33 Sine dubio poenitet Deum promissionis, alioqui sibi non contradiceret, vel ego insigno aliquod peccatum commisi, quo Deum graviter offendi, ut retractet promissionem. W. A. 43:202; Genesis 4:92–93.

34 Deus, qui antea summus amicus videbatur: nunc videter factus inimicus et Tyrannus. W. A. 43:202; Genesis 4:94. Odit me Deus, quod desperationis est occasio. W. A. 43:202; Genesis 4:93.

35 Colludit [Deus] hic cum suo Patriarcha et eius filio,. . .. W. A. 43:218; Genesis 4:115. An eum diligamus super omnia, et possimus eum iratum sic ferre, sicut libenter ferimus benefacientem et promittentem. W. A. 43:202; Genesis 4:93.

36 Steven Ozment suggests that “it was popular religious practice, centered on the sacrament of penance and known to Luther from his childhood, and the traditional theology taught at Erfurt [where Luther received his bachelor's and master's degrees], both the dominant Ockhamism and the persisting Thomism, that magnified for him, as it did for so many others, the tension between divine mercy and divine wrath.” The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, Conn.: Yale, 1980) 227.

37 Sie thut solch unfreundlich und hart geberde Christi aus den augen, lesst sich das alles nich yrren, nympts auch nicht zu synn, sondern bleybt stracks und fest ynn yhrer zuversich hangen an dem guten gerüchte, das sie von yhm gehort und gefasset hatte, und lesst nicht abe. W. A. 17/2:201–2; Sermons 2:150.

38 Das sie sich soll so nackt auszihen und lassen alles, was sie fület, und alleyne am blossen wort hangen, ibid.

39 Impugnabatur quidem, et tentabatur fides eius. Sed defintionem tamen firmiter tuebatur: Ego habeo promissionem. W. A. 44:100; Genesis 6:134.

40 Deus cum sanctis suis ad exemplum Iacob aliquando solet colludere, quod ad ipsum attinet, lusu prorsus puerili. Nobis autem longe aliter apparet, quos ad hunc modum tentat. W. A. 44:97; Genesis 6:130.

41 Non enim tentat Deus, ut occidat, sed ut recreet, confirmet, corroboret. W. A. 44:101; Genesis 6:136.

42 Talia exempla docent nos, quod fides non debet cedere nec cessare urgendo et instando, etiam in ipso sensu irae Dei:. . .. W. A. 44:103; Genesis 6:139.

43 E.g., quasi dicat: cum sit deus vitae et salutis, et haec opera eius propria, tamen ut haec operetur, occidit et perdit, quae sunt opera ei aliena, quo perveniat ad opus sum proprium. Operationes in Psalmos. 1519–1521, W. A. 5:63–64; English translation in Works on the First Twenty-Two Psalms, 1519–1521, (composite trans.) Luther's Works 14:335.

44 Gott strafft ynn zweyerley weyse, Ein mal ynn gnaden als eyn gütiger vater, und zeytlich. Das ander mal ynn zorn also eyn gestrenger richter, und ewig. Wenn nu Gott den menschen angreyfft, so ist die natur so schwach und verzagt, darumb das sie nicht weis, ob sie Gott aus zorn oder gnaden angreyfft, . . .Die sieben Bußpsalmen, W. A. 18:480; English translation by Arnold Guebert in The Seven Penitential Psalms, Luther's Works 14:140. It would have been more accurate to translate the German “Mensch” as “person” rather than “man.”

45 Sic in omnibus aliis tentationibus faciendum est, ubicunque enim contrarium a promissione experimur, certo statuamus, cum se aliter ostendit Deus, quam promissio sonat, esse eam tantam tentationem, nec ideo hunc baculum promissionis patiamur nobis extorqueri e manibus. . . . Hic quid aliud facias, quam ut dicas, scio me baptisatum, et promissam mihi a Deo propter filium gratiam? Haec promissio non mentietur, etiamsi in exteriores tenebras abiiciar. W. A. 43:203; Genesis 4:94–95.

46 Gerrish, “To the Unknown God,” 137.

47 Ozment, Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 198–200. As noted above, the notion that a person's salvation depended entirely on the trustworthiness of God's word of promise, rather than primarily on any quality in her that might “deserve” God's favor, was a part of the Ockhamist heritage that Luther continued to uphold. See Ozment, The Age of Reform, 244, 61–62.

48 David Hoyle writes of Hooker's Cambridge as “a university dominated by the reformed protestant theology of William Perkins.” Reformation and Religious Identity in Cambridge, 1590–1644 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007) 25. Peter Iver Kaufman takes for granted that Perkins was “the most influential English theologian” at Cambridge during the late 16th century. “‘Much in Prayer’: The Inward Researches of Elizabethan Protestants,” JR 73 (1993) 163–82, at 166. For Perkins's overall influence see the statistics in the appendices in Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University, 2000). Patrick Collinson called Perkins “the most widely read of English divines,” “England and International Calvinism, 1558–1640,” in International Calvinism, 1541–1715 (ed. Menna Prestwick, Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) 197–223, at 222. In the opinion of Charles Hambrick-Stowe, Perkins was “the greatest theologian of the [Puritan] movement,” “Practical Divinity and Spirituality,” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (ed. John Coffey and Paul C. H. Lim; Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2008) 191–205, at 194. Popular libels against Perkins led Arnold Hunt to conclude that “he was regarded as the main English exponent of predestinarian theology, and that his name. . .had become popularly associated with a particular school of theology not just in academic circles but in the consciousness of many who had never read his writings.” The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640 (New York: Cambridge University, 2010) 364.

49 Perkins, A Treatise of Gods Free-Grace and Mans Free-will in Works 1:725.

50 Ibid., 724.

51 Ibid., 726

52 Ibid.

53 Perkins, Exposition of the Symbole, in Works 1:287; Nos enim ipsi in quotidiana bestiarum mactatione & laniena iniusti esse nolumus, neque reuera sumus: Dei tamen respectu non sumus tanti, quanti bovis vel culix est; De Prædestinationis Modo et Ordine (Cambridge: John Legatt, 1598) NSTC 19682, 25, in Works 2:611. See also A Godly and Learned Exposition of Christs Sermon in the Mount, where Perkins compared God to a man who had a flock of sheep and might “sende some of them to the fatting for the slaughter, and others keepe for breede.” “The basest and least creature is something in regard of man,” he continued, “but man is nothing vnto God.” Works 3:251, see also 63, and A Godly and Learned Exposition vpon the Whole Epistle of Iude in Works 3:597.

54 Later Lutherans like Jacob Andreae and Neils Hemmingsen found it “unjust and cruel”: verentes fortasse ne deum iniustum & crudelem facerent, cited in Armilla Aurea (Cambridge: John Legatt, 1592) NSTC 19656, 337, in Works 1:107: “uviust and vnmerciful.” A few pages later Perkins calls his own doctrine duriorem. Armilla Aurea 348, in Works 1:110.

55 Harsnett, “A Sermon Preached at S. Pauls Cross,” in Three Sermons Preached by the Reverend, and Learned Dr.Robert Stuart, . . .To which is ad[d]ed, a fourth Sermon, Preached by the Right Reverend Father in God, Samuel Harsnett, Lord Arch-Bishop of Yorke (London, 1656) Wing S5527, 133 (italics in original).

56 Ibid., 141.

57 Ibid., 136.

58 Ibid., 136–137. Lake, Peter, “The ‘Anglican Moment’? Richard Hooker and the Ideological Watershed of the 1590s,” in Anglicanism and the Western Christian Tradition (ed. Platten, Stephen; Norwich: The Canterbury Press, 2003) 90–121Google Scholar, 229–33, at 109, argues for the importance of this sermon, as do Fincham, Kenneth and Tyacke, Nicholas, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547 – c. 1700 (Oxford: Oxford University, 2007) 84–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. William Perkins repeatedly tried to refute this argument, e.g., Works 1:287–88; 3:63; 3*:298.

59 Harsnett, “Sermon,” 163–65, emphasis on “could” mine.

60 Harsnett seems to have drawn some of his ammunition from second-generation Lutherans like the Danish theologian Neils Hemmingsen, see Tyacke, Nicholas, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987) 20, 38–39, 59Google Scholar.

61 Delumeau, Le catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris: Presses universitaire de France, 1971); English translation as Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire (trans. Jeremy Moiser; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977), La Peur en Occident (XIVe–XVIIIe siècles): Une cite’ assie'ge'e (Paris: Artheme Fayard, 1978), Le Péché et la Peur: la culpabilisation en Occident, XIIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Artheme Fayard, 1983); English translation as Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture 13th–18th Centuries (trans. Eric Nicholson; New York: St. Martin's, 1990).

62 Hooker, The Soules Humiliation (London, 1637) NSTC 13728, 88; Soules Preparation, 216; The Vnbeleevers Preparing for Christ (London, 1638) NSTC 13740, 183; Soules Humiliation, 206; Soules Preparation, 86.

63 The Paterne of Perfection: Exhibited in Gods Image on Adam: And Gods Covenant made with him (London, 1640) NSTC 13726, 202.

64 The Soules Exaltation A treatise containing the soules union with Christ, on I Cor. 6. 17. The soules benefit from vnion with Christ, on I Cor. 1. 30. The soules justification, on 2 Cor. 5. 21 (London, 1638) NSTC 13727, 234.

65 The Vnbeleevers Preparing for Christ, 36.

66 The Soules Implantation (London, 1637) NSTC 13731, 242.

67 The Danger of Desertion: Or A Farvvell Sermon of Mr Thomas Hooker, Sometimes Minister of Gods Word at Chainsford in Essex; but now of New England. Preached immediately before his departure out of old England (London, 1641) Wing H2646 (reprinted in Thomas Hooker: Writings in England and Holland, 1626–1633, ed. George H. Williams, Norman Pettit, Winifred Herget, and Sargent Bush Jr. [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975]) 12.

68 Soules Humiliation, 88.

69 The Sovles Preparation for Christ (London, 1632) NSTC 13735, 216.

70 Perkins, Of the Calling of the Ministerie: Two Treatises in Works 3:*434. A Treatise Tending unto a declaration, in Works 1:365.

71 Unbelievers Preparing, 49.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid., 51.

74 Ibid., 83.

75 Soules Preparation, 27.

76 The Soules Implantation, 168; see also The Sovles Vocation or Effectval Calling to Christ. (London, 1638) NSTC 13739, 212, 498; Soules Implantation, 97.

77 The Soules Humiliation, 6, see also 107–108 and 112.

78 The Sovles Preparation for Christ (London, 1632) NSTC 13735, 159, see also The Application of Redemption 10:700 and 10:409.

79 The Sovles Humiliation, 112. This last citation comes from sermons that Hooker himself prepared for the press.

80 The doctrine had surfaced periodically during the medieval centuries, particularly in mystical circles. In a fascinating recent dissertation, “The Deconstruction of Hell: A History of the Resignatio ad Infernum Tradition” (Ph. D. diss., Syracuse University, Department of Religion, 2013, http://surface.syr.edu/rel_etd), Clark West has explored the periodic recurrence of what he terms a “parrhesiastic” version of resignatio ad infernum. In parrhesiastic resignatio ad infernum, Christians defy God's wrath by their willingness to share the pains of hell in solidarity with the damned. This was a tradition on the edges; West finds that most Christian exegetes found ways of side-stepping the implications of Paul's willingness in Rom 9:3 to be cut off from Christ for the sake of his brothers. The few mainstream thinkers who, like Hooker (and Luther, as we shall see), took Paul's outcry seriously generally preached what West calls a “domesticated” resignatio. Rather than offering a means whereby an individual could participate in a communal challenge to God's authority, the domesticated version confined its application to her personal salvation or damnation. For a brief discussion of what West terms a domesticated resignatio ad infernum see pp. 300–308. Garry Wills explains parrhēsia briefly in Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (New York: Doubleday, 2000) 308–9.

81 Students of American religion will recall that Samuel Hopkins (1721–1803) embedded resignatio ad infernum into his doctrine of “disinterested benevolence.” Hopkins famously wrote that a Christian “cannot know that he loves God and shall be saved until he knows he has that disposition which implies a willingness to be damned, if it be not most for the glory of God that he should be saved.” A Dialogue between a Calvinist and a Semi-Calvinist, included in Sketches of the Life of the Late Rev. Samuel Hopkins (ed. Stephen West; Hartford, 1805) 150, cited in Joseph Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981). Conforti discusses disinterested benevolence on pp.109–24, but see also Jauhiainen, Peter, “Samuel Hopkins and Hopkinsianism,” in After Jonathan Edwards: The Course of the New England Theology (ed. Crisp, Oliver D. and Sweeney, Douglas A.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012): 107–17 at 114–16Google Scholar.

82 Diui Pauli apostoli ad Romanos Epistola, W. A. 56:1–528; English translation in Luther: Lectures on Romans. The Library of Christian Classics 15 (trans. Wilhelm Pauck; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961).

83 Tales enim Libere sese offerunt in omnem voluntatem Dei, etiam ad infernum et mortem aeternaliter, si Deus ita Vellet tantum, . . .Nunc autem nemo scit, an Deum pure diligat, Nisi experiatur in se, Quod etiam salutari non cupiat Nec damnari renuat, Si Deo placeret. W. A. 56:391; Lectures 262, see also W. A. 56:388; Lectures 255.

84 Carlstadius aliquando dixit: Si scirem, das mich unser Herr Gott wolt verdammen, so wolt ich in die hell hinein traben. Sed est impie dictum. Deus dicit: Thue und glaub, was ich dir sage; das ander las mich machen. So wollen sie es vor wissen sine ad extra verbum. W.A. Tischreden 1:174–75 no. 403; English translation by Theodore G. Tappert in Luthers Works 54:64. On Luther's change of heart see Pannenberg, “Einfluß des Anfechtungserfahrung,” 126–30.

85 Richard Muller would concur that the abolition of the penitential system provoked Protestant concern about personal assurance of salvation. “The use of a practical syllogism, namely, of various aspects of the doctrine of salvation that could be framed syllogistically for the sake of personal assurance, arose in a context in which a Protestant language of the order and pattern of salvation challenged churchly authority and removed the security once afforded by the more externalized aspects of late medieval understanding of penance, good words, and merits.” Calvin and the Reformed Tradition, 245. Speaking in particular of clerical celibacy, Peter Brown suggests that “there is a tendency to view the history of Christianity in the early Middle Ages in terms of a top-down model. On this top-down model, clerical power is seen as always triumphing over the laity—and usually with results of which we disapprove. Such a view is to be strongly resisted.” Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 A. D. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012) 519. Brown suggests (p. 515) that it was pressure from the laity, who insisted that the church create some mechanism “to obtain the forgiveness of one's sins through the intercession of others,” that led eventually not only to clerical celibacy but to a penitential system through which a priest could intercede with God to guarantee the penitent's favor in God's eyes. The scholarly literature on the effectiveness of the late medieval sacrament of penance is enormous, but one could do worse than begin with the conclusions of Tentler, Thomas, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977) 363–70Google Scholar.

86 One never knew, of course, whether one might “fall from grace” in the future, but one could count on God's favor at least at the moment of the priest's absolution.

87 In 1670, for example, Giles Firmin, who had known Hooker in New England, wrote that the writings of the godly lineup of Hooker, his son-in-law Thomas Shepherd, his mentors Perkins and John Rogers, and Daniel Rogers, had “caused great troubles among Christians” because in their explanations of the origin and nature of faith, they required something akin to resignatio ad infernum. Firmin, The Real Christian, or a Treatise of Effectual Calling (London , 1670) Wing F963, sig. B3v.

88 Gerrish, “To the Unknown God” 147. Gerrish goes on to suggest that people today experience the hidden God “in the dark possibility that [they are] lost in a boundless and senseless universe.” In grasping “the possibility of affirming the meaning of life in spite of this anxiety” they “come closest to the faith of Luther and Calvin” (148).