Richard Field (theologian)
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Richard Field (1561 — 1616) was an English ecclesiological theologian associated with the work of Richard Hooker.
Field was a close friend and associate of Hooker, who was the pre-eminent Anglican theologian of his day, and one of the most influential figures in Anglican history. Field's major work, Of the Church (1606), was an affirmation of the Church of England against the Roman Catholic Church. Field maintained that Anglican piety and polity continued the pre-Tridentine Catholic conciliar tradition.
Field's apologetic literature attacked what he saw as the elevation of Scholastic opinion into articles of necessary faith, and the emergence of an exalted view of the Roman primacy over the conciliar authority. He concluded that modern Roman Catholicism was echoing the errors of Donatism in its claim to exclusive purity. Field was also at the forefront of the (ultimately successful) argument that Anglicanism should accept the decrees of the first seven ecumenical councils as binding.
