Richard Hooker and the English Reformation

by W.J. Torrance Kirby (Editor)

This collection addresses the substance of Richard Hooker's achievement as a theologian and philosopher in the context of principal themes of English Reformation thought. Five principal loci of Reformation discourse are the relation between the "orders" of Grace and Nature; the doctrines of Providence and Predestination; the Church and the liturgy; sacramental theology; and the polemical cut-and-thrust of the late-Elizabethan context. It is of interest to scholars, seminarians, and students.

359 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2003

About the author

Professor of Ecclesiastical History & Director, Centre for Research on Religion (CREOR)at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

"In 1988 I received a DPhil degree in Modern History from Oxford University for a thesis on the political theology of Richard Hooker. Previously I received BA and MA degrees in Classics (Greek Philosophy and Literature) from King's College and Dalhousie University. Currently I am Professor of Ecclesiastical History at McGill where I have been a member of the Faculty of Religious Studies since 1997. Since 1996 I have been a member of the Centre of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, and since 2005 of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

My principal field of research is Reformation thought, especially of Richard Hooker, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Heinrich Bullinger, and other 16th-century Protestant thinkers; my most recent publications examine theological links between England and the continent in the sixteenth century (my work here concentrates on the influence in England of the Italian, Swiss and French reformers). My research also focuses on the history of Christian Platonism, in the Patristic as well as in the late-medieval and early-modern periods. Currently I am investigating the emergence of the public sphere in early-modern England in the context of preaching at the outdoor pulpit at Paul's Cross in the City of London."