The Journal of Theological Studies Advance Access originally published online on December 24, 2008
The Journal of Theological Studies 2009 60(1):130-177; doi:10.1093/jts/fln148
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English Molinism in the Late 1590S: Richard Hooker on Free Will, Predestination, and Divine Foreknowledge
Oxford
Correspondence: nigel{at}nvoak.freeserve.co.uk
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Abstract |
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Set in the context of the Cambridge debates on grace and predestination in the 1590s, and of the wider controversy in the Reformed and Roman Catholic churches from 1580 to 1620, this article examines how Richard Hooker endeavoured to show the compatibility of his radical views on the freedom of the will and the resistibility of grace with his Augustinian doctrine of predestination. Particular attention is paid to Hooker's late manuscript defence, written shortly before his death in 1600, in which he responded to the charge that his views were heterodox and reminiscent of the dangerous opinions recently spread abroad in England by men like Samuel Harsnet and Peter Baro. The precise extent to which Hooker's views on predestination fell within or outside the Reformed tradition is carefully evaluated, especially as regards the order of the divine decrees and the crucial distinction he makes between God's antecedent and consequent will. Key to understanding this question is Hooker's doctrine of divine foreknowledge, a subject which has received no significant scholarly treatment to date; it is argued that (at about the same time as Jacob Arminius) he incorporated the highly controversial Molinist concept of divine ‘middle’ knowledge (scientia media) into his work.