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The Word Made Flesh for Us
Davenant Press

The Word Made Flesh for Us

A Treatise on Christology & the Sacraments from Hooker’s Laws

by Richard Hooker

Consider how God is in Christ.

In this fifth volume of a multi-year translation project by the Davenant Institute, we present key sections from Book V of Hooker’s

Laws

, in which Hooker thoroughly yet succinctly lays out the Reformed yet catholic perspective on both Christology and the sacraments. Long regarded as both the theological and rhetorical high point of the

Laws

, these chapters provide a survey of the church’s historic teaching on the person of Christ and our union with him, as well as an irenic defense of Reformed distinctives over against the Catholic, Lutheran, and anti-sacramental alternatives.

Yet this is no dry theological tract: Hooker’s descriptions of Christ, baptism, and especially the eucharist are among the most stirring passages penned during the English Reformation. Book V of the

Laws

is as valuable today as it was when first written for the edification of the church, the sharpening of the mind, and the enrichment of the soul.

$18.50
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About the Author

Dr. Bradford Littlejohn

(Ph.D., University of Edinburgh) is the Founder and former President of the Davenant Institute. He also works as a Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and has taught for several institutions, including Moody Bible Institute-Spokane, Bethlehem College and Seminary, and Patrick Henry College. He is recognized as a leading scholar of the English theologian Richard Hooker and Has published and lectured extensively in the fields of Reformation history, Christian ethics, and political theology. He lives in Landrum, SC with his wife, Rachel, and four children.

Patrick Timmis

(Ph.D., Duke University) is Assistant Professor of English at Hillsdale College. He writes primarily on the literature of the long English Reformation, and is a licensed Reader and Catechist in the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word.

Brian Marr

is an editor and researcher at Canon Press and an enthusiast of Reformation theology.

“The Word Made Flesh For Us is a wonderful modernization of Richard Hooker’s sixteenth century classic that somehow succeeds in making the work more accessible even as it preserves the breviloquence of its English prose. The editors’ choice to focus on Christology and the sacraments is inspired: there is an obvious connection between the hypostatic union (God was in Christ), the mystical union (Christ is in us), and the sacraments (divinely ordained means for cementing this union). Moreover, with its conceptual distinctions and logical inferences, Hooker’s Christology is a veritable masterclass in theology that is as analytic as it is orthodox.”

Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“The Elizabethan era was a period of significant controversy in the Protestant Church of England. As the present edition of Book V of Richard Hooker’s Laws attests, the controversy between what we would today call “Anglicans” and “Presbyterians” was, in many respects, a debate internal to the Reformed tradition about how best to apply shared principles of Reformed Christology and sacramental theology to questions about the church’s order and worship. The Davenant Press is once again to be commended for making a work of great historical and theological interest available to a wider audience in a readable and affordable edition.”

Publication Details

  • Publisher: Davenant Press
  • ISBN: 978-1-949716-33-7
  • Publication Date: April 25, 2024
  • Pages: 105
  • Author: Richard Hooker
  • Price: $18.50

Endorsements

  • “The Word Made Flesh For Us is a wonderful modernization of Richard Hooker’s sixteenth century classic that somehow succeeds in making the work more accessible even as it preserves the breviloquence of its English prose. The editors’ choice to focus on Christology and the sacraments is inspired: there is an obvious connection between the hypostatic union (God was in Christ), the mystical union (Christ is in us), and the sacraments (divinely ordained means for cementing this union). Moreover, with its conceptual distinctions and logical inferences, Hooker’s Christology is a veritable masterclass in theology that is as analytic as it is orthodox.”

    — Kevin Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

  • “The Elizabethan era was a period of significant controversy in the Protestant Church of England. As the present edition of Book V of Richard Hooker’s Laws attests, the controversy between what we would today call “Anglicans” and “Presbyterians” was, in many respects, a debate internal to the Reformed tradition about how best to apply shared principles of Reformed Christology and sacramental theology to questions about the church’s order and worship. The Davenant Press is once again to be commended for making a work of great historical and theological interest available to a wider audience in a readable and affordable edition.”

    — Scott Swain, James Woodrow Hassell Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary

  • “Davenant press’ modernizations of Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity are essential reading for ministers and lay people. In this volume, Hooker’s Christology has clear resonances of John Calvin and his work on the two natures of Christ is masterful. His treatment of the necessity of the sacraments is a treasure for anyone seeking doctrinal clarity from one of the leading reformed English scholars of the late sixteenth century. Anglican readers will be especially interested in Hooker’s defense of the Rite of Confirmation and will draw conclusions about the value of Confirmation in our modern liturgical order. Littlejohn and Timmis have gifted us with the rediscovery of Richard Hooker’s wisdom, freshly accessible to modern readers.”

    — Julian Dobbs, Diocesan Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word

  • “In the contested terrain of post-Reformation theology, the work of Richard Hooker in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity serves as a significant landmark. Its accounts of Christology and of the sacraments are particularly noteworthy: scripturally resourced, contextually aware, and carefully argued, they articulate a Reformed yet irenic position that not only spoke powerfully to his own time but will also repay careful study today. For this reason, it is a delight to see published in the present volume a new edition of these compelling sections of Hooker’s magisterial work. There is much here to ponder and engage.”

    — Paul T. Nimmo, King’s Chair of Systematic Theology, University of Aberdeen

More Endorsements (1)
  • “Richard Hooker’s towering Elizabethan prose, and the challenge of finding an affordable copy, has rendered his work doubly difficult to access. This new translation of his sacramental theology from selected passages of Book Five of the Laws overcomes both impediments. The translators put Hooker’s Elizabethan rhetorical style and idiom into dynamic and contemporary English without losing any of the original genius. Hooker’s sacramental theological vision of how God is in Christ, and how Christ is in us, sings into a luminous modern translation. It offers an invaluable devotional and ecumenical resource for all Christians keen to retrieve the riches of their tradition. It ensures that the past still speaks to us, and that Hooker’s vision will not pass away as in a dream.”

    — Paul Dominiak, Senior Tutor, Jesus College Cambridge

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