⭐ His place on this thread is unusual. Article XI of the Thirty-nine Articles, as Olson sums it up, clearly affirms justification by grace alone through faith, and on this point, Olson notes, he agreed entirely with Luther, Cranmer and the Thirty-nine Articles — but he set this principle in a framework very different from Luther's. Olson records that he grew up in a Reformed setting, turned Anglican while studying at Oxford, and was quite sympathetic to Catholicism.
Below: first his own position, then the church’s verdict — kept separate. A rejected opinion keeps equal weight here.
His own position
⭐ Of everyone on this thread, he explains the terms most clearly. In A Learned Discourse of Justification he divides righteousness into two kinds: “That whereby we are justified is perfect, but not inherent. That whereby we are sanctified, inherent, but not perfect.” As Olson sums it up, the righteousness of justification is neither inherent in the soul nor infused into the soul as the righteousness of sanctification is; it is always and only imputed to us by God, through his free mercy and grace, because of Christ's death and our faith. The righteousness of sanctification is not a merit that puts us right with God (as Catholics think), even though, Olson adds, the two are tangled together beyond unravelling. ⭐ Compare Trent: Trent treated justification and sanctification, as Olson puts it, as two sides of the same coin of salvation, while what Hooker wanted was to give the two sides separate names and at the same time admit that they cannot be pulled apart.
⚠ But he differed from Luther in three substantial ways, and none can be left out, or he will be read as a mild version of Luther. First, as Olson reports, he held that Roman Catholics who deny justification by grace alone through faith out of ignorance can be saved. Second, human beings can take part in the event of their own salvation by freely accepting God's grace — that is, on the line of grace and free will he stood on the synergist side; he spoke of election and even of predestination, but held, in Olson's summary, that they rest on God's foreknowledge, not on a predestinating decree of the eternal God. Third, ⭐ the point that most troubled English low-church Protestants: he accepted, Olson notes, the catholic and orthodox idea of salvation as deification, and often described salvation as a process in which human nature slowly comes to share in the divine nature through the sacraments. ⚠ At the same time he expressly rejected the Catholic view that the sacraments work ex opere operato (by the work performed).
⭐Scripture and tradition — he gave the middle way a structure. He held to Article VI of the Thirty-nine Articles — in Olson's summary, that Scripture has absolute and supreme sovereignty and authority over Christian faith and practice. ⚠ But he also acknowledged a ladder of authority. As Olson explains it, Hooker did not deny the special place of Scripture as the source and standard of Christian theology and life, but he acknowledged several layers of authority, ranked from greater to lesser, beginning with God, then Scripture, the laws of the state and the individual conscience.
⭐ See clearly what this structure means: he did not demote Scripture; beside Scripture he acknowledged other levels of authority, each in its own place. ⚠ His Puritan opponents, though, took it as opening a back door — as Olson notes, his Puritan enemies thought him a Catholic in waiting.
⚠ Read this alongside the close of the thread on ecclesiology and authority: the spectrum on that thread has a middle stretch, which describes a position; Hooker's ladder is the earliest structure that position took.
The church’s verdict
Never condemned. The leading theologian of Elizabethan Anglicanism; in March 1585 the queen appointed him Master of the Temple in London. ⚠ But his Calvinist opponents within the Church of England, Olson records, were very dissatisfied with his doctrine of salvation — for exactly the three reasons given above. ⚠ Note also: his Reformed enemies regarded his metaphysical and epistemological framework, as Olson puts it, as anti-Protestant, a revival of medieval Catholic foundations.