The Word Made Flesh for Us
A Treatise on Christology & the Sacraments from Hooker’s Laws
Modernized and Edited By Brad Littlejohn and Patrick Timmis with Brian Marr
$18.50 $13.00 – 30% off in our Christmas sale!
About this book
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.
Paperback | xl + 105 pages | 5×8 | Published April 25, 2024 | ISBN 978-1-949716-33-7
BULK ORDERS: If you are interested in a bulk order, we offer a 50% discount and $10 shipping for orders of 10+ books OR orders containing 5+ copies of a single book. We also offer a 60% discount and free shipping for orders with a gross retail value over $500. To place a bulk order, please contact [email protected].
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From The Book
“We only use sacraments in this life. But because they concern a far better life, they are accompanied by the grace which works salvation. Sacraments are the powerful instruments of God to eternal life. Our natural life consists in the union of our body with our soul; our supernatural life in the union of our soul with God. Because there can be no union between God and man without a mediator who is both, we should first consider how God is in Christ. Then we must turn to how Christ is in us, and how the sacraments serve to make us partakers of Christ. (The weightiness of this topic will not allow us to be brief on these points.)”
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“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
refomed theological seminary
TABLE OF CONTENTS
i
Introduction
xxix
Editorial Approach
1
What Are Sacraments? – Chapter 50
5
The Divinity of the Incarnate Son – Chapter 51
9
Christological Heresies – Chapter 52
17
Christ’s Two Natures – Chapter 53
23
The Glorification of Christ’s Humanity – Chapter 54
31
Is the Incarnate Christ Omnipresent? – Chapter 55
41
Christ’s Mystical Union with the Church – Chapter 56
53
The Necessity of Sacraments – Chapter 57
59
The Rite of Baptism – Chapter 58
63
Is Baptism Necessary? – Chapter 59
67
Christ Commands Baptism – Chapter 60
77
The Rite of Confirmation – Chapter 66
91
The Eucharist – Chapter 67
About the Editors
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.
Praise for this work
“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
“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
“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
“Brad Littlejohn and Patrick Timmis present a readable and lucid modernization of one of the key sections of the fifth book of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. This is a most welcome republication from one of the most learned and most irenic theologians of the Reformation period.”
HANS BOERSMA
Nashotah House Theological Seminary
“The Word Made Flesh For Us would be an ideal book for a small-group study or even for a follow-up study after a membership class. Indeed, I would not hesitate to use it (and other volumes in the series) in adult Christian education of all kinds. While The Word Made Flesh For Us is indeed beyond simple catechesis, it is only just. It should certainly be required reading for clergy, prospective clergy, and licensed lay ministers. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”
ISAAC REHBERG
The North American Anglican
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