SOURCE: Clark, J. P. H. “The Trinitarian Theology of Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection. Book Two.” In Langland, the Mystics, and the Medieval English Religious Tradition, edited by Helen Phillips, pp. 125-40. Suffolk, England: D. S. Brewer, 1990.

In the following essay, Clark examines the second book of The Scale of Perfection, notes that it is more Christocentric than the first book, and explains its concern with perfect and imperfect humility.

Walter Hilton is a pastor rather than a speculative theologian. His higher education was in Canon Law rather than in Theology as such. But he is familiar with the commonplaces of technical theology, more specifically of a rather conservative Augustinian theology whose affinities have yet to be fully worked out, a task which can only be properly fulfilled as more of the Cambridge academic theology of his day is identified and studied. Beyond this, his contemplative interest leads...