The seventeenth century is a very important period in the formative history of the Anglican Church. This book by Brian Douglas, a research professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture in the Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia, highlights the worldwide expansion of the Anglican Communion after the break with Rome in the previous century. The author, himself an Australian Anglican priest, explores the sacramental theology of Richard Hooker and George Herbert. For students of that period who may know little about these men, with this reviewer included, it is a revelation.
In his introduction, Douglas tackles the central question of how the Christian worshipper and believer may know Almighty God. Many Anglicans in the seventeenth century, especially within the Puritan party of the Church, stressed the Scriptures as the final and infallible revelation of the nature of God. They minimized the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Thinkers, however, such as Hooker and Herbert, as the author claims, explore ‘abundant life’ as participation in Christ. He affirms that they express this reality as a sacramental poetic based on the philosophical concept of moderate realism.
The challenge for readers is to come to grips with such terms as ‘sacramental poetic’ and ‘moderate realism’. Douglas gives a lucid explanation of the thinking of scholars such as Regina Schwartz and Patrick McGrath in their book Towards a Sacramental Poetics (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), as well as Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, in his Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Canterbury Press, 2007). This book is most valuable for those who may not have access to the writings of these people.
But above all the challenge is to explore the writings of Hooker and Herbert themselves. Hooker’s great work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, is well known but little read, though a noted modern Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis, greatly admired it, perhaps for its language rather than its theology. George Herbert is best known through some of his poems which are sung as hymns in many churches.
The notes attached to the various chapters should be carefully explored as they contain many valuable resources. In the chapter discussing Richard Hooker, for example, a major study by Paul Dominiak called Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation (T&T Clark, 2020) is an important volume, worthy of consideration.
The structure of the book is simple and clear. In the first chapter Douglas explores moderate realism as an example of sacramental poetics. Successive chapters deal with Hooker and then Herbert. The recent biography of George Herbert by John Drury, Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert (Penguin, 2014), is essential to understanding his work.
Anglicans who may identify themselves with modern forms of Puritanism will do well to seek to come to grips with the important voices of Hooker and Herbert, as the author concludes. He reminds us of the abundance of God’s grace, using a sacramental poetic and its inherent moderate realism. To probe the reality of God with mind as well as heart is a challenge for Christians in the consumerism of the modern world. This book is an important study for Anglicans.
