ABSTRACT
Perhaps more than any other religious figure of the late sixteenth century, Richard Hooker defies the neat binaries of orthodox or reformed, humanist or polemical. Recent scholarship on Hooker has acknowledged a certain level of frustration when trying to categorize his position in religious history. Studies such as Nigel Voak’s discussion of the theologian’s relationship to Reformed theology have stressed the interplay of grace, reason, and ceremonialism in his work have worked hard to render that position even more complex. Voak, among others, argues that Hooker’s thought must be “assessed in relation to Reformed theology” regardless of whether he was “a theologian of the Reformed tradition, or whether he constructed his theology in hostile reaction” to it.1 Many scholars are now relatively comfortable with the idea that Hooker’s work may be a consummate display of at times irreconcilable ideological and practical commitments, while others prefer to emphasize the evolution of his thought, pointing instead to the varied polemical contexts that justify the logic of Hooker’s position at any given point in time.
