“The mind of man always desires to know the truth with as much certainty as the nature of the subject permits,” wrote Richard Hooker in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. The craving to know, and to know for certain, is a temptation for Christians as much for anyone. In fact, because God’s Word is sure and certain, Christians are particularly tempted to imagine that we can be sure of ourselves in anything we set our minds to. False certainty, however, leads either to disastrous pride or crippling doubt. The task of Christian hermeneutics and Christian ethics, argues Richard Hooker, is that of rightly attuning our level of certainty to what the matter permits: acting in confidence but not presumption; deferring to authority without blindly trusting either it or our own reason. In this course, we will study the first four books of Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in Modern English for a primer in Hooker’s theological and ethical method, a method as urgently needed today as it was in the 1590s.

(Note: Your registration for this course will include a free copy of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in Modern English, vol. 1)

Taught by Dr. Bradford Littlejohn, a leading expert on the thought of Richard Hooker. Runs 2/3-4/10/20. You can view the syllabus here. For more details, email Brad at b.littlejohn@davenantinstitute.org.