Conclusion
We have traced a fewlines in Hobbes’s development that led through the years in Paris. It seems fair to say that, although he accommodated himself to the new intellectual and social parameters within which he lived, he did not greatly change the address of his studies, at least as regards religion and politics, and his eye remained fixed on the English political situation. But, while he grew both as a theorist and in his willingness to express what he recognized were controversial views, he likely long suppressed his true views regarding the materiality of God for fear of social opprobrium and religious persecution. He did not change his views, however, as is evident in his avowal and defense of them late in life.
The link we have presumed between his theology and his physics is largely undeveloped in the English Leviathan, so there is an unstated content at work behind the text. This may be one reason why some have sought to read double meanings into it, though we may doubt whether its avowal was necessary for his purposes in that work or would have helped its reception. When he states his views, the link is described from within strictly delimited noetic parameters.
In the 1651 text, the ‘God of causes’ does however play a prominent role in his theory of the public person as public theologian by way of the religion of ‘rational worship.’ These elements mark the culmination of several themes that were present in The Elements, developed in De Cive and then elaborated in Leviathan with an innovative and striking theory about Aristotle’s theory of language and its influence in Christian theology.
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References
See Diary of John Evelyn ed. by William Bray vol. 4 (London: Bickers and Son, 1906), pp. 26. Evelyn says his acquaintance with Hobbes had been of long duration, and he notes another visit with him in England on Dec. 14, 1655, saying he ‘had been long acquainted in France;’ op. cit., p. 80. But, on February 4, 1679, Evelyn notes a sermon preached by the Dean of Salisbury, Dr. Pierce, on I John 4:1, ‘Try the spirits...,’ during which the preacher ‘inveighed against the pernicious doctrines of Mr. Hobbes;’ op. cit., p. 347. A powerful controversialist, Pierce (1622–1691) had suffered during the Civil War as a royalist divine and returned to England to serve as Charles II’s chaplain-in-ordinary; he became dean of Salisbury on May 4, 1675.
Hobbes described the necessity of his reconciliation in the ‘Review and Conclusion’ that linked Leviathan to the circumstances of the Engagement Controversy: Leviathan 4. Conclusion. 7.720: By this also a man may understand, when it is, that men may be said to be conquered; and in what the nature of conquest, and the right of a conqueror consisteth: for this submission is it implieth them all. Conquest, is not the victory itself; but the acquisition by victory, of a right, over the persons of men. He therefore that is slain, is overcome, but not conquered: he that is taken, and put into prison, or chains, is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy, and may save himself if he can: but he that upon promise of obedience, hath his life and liberty allowed him, is then conquered, and a subject; and not before... Likewise, if a man, when his country is conquered, be out of it, he is not conquered, nor subject: but if at his return, he submit to the government, he is bound to obey it. So that conquest (to define it) is the acquiring of the right of sovereignty by victory. Which right, is acquired, in the people’s submission, by which they contract with the victor, promising obedience, for life and liberty. Apart from the ‘Review,’ whose political tendencies are difficult to specify historically, the teaching of the English Leviathan bore most clearly on English political circumstances obtaining some time significantly prior to its publication; see Glenn Burgess, ‘Contexts for Writing and Publication of Hobbes’s Leviathan,’ History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 675–702, and M.M. Goldsmith, ‘Hobbes’s Ambiguous Politics,’ History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 639–673.
Quoted from the translation of The Life of Thomas Hobbes that appeared in Interpretation 10 (1982): 1–7. In fact, probably much as he wished, he was soon immersed in controversy and would remain so for most of the rest of his long life. As Goldsmith recounts, all of his three treatises on government came out in England and in English between February, 1650, and May, 1651; see M.M. Goldsmith, ‘Hobbes’s Ambiguous Politics,’ History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 639–673, and Philip Milton,’ Did Hobbes Translate De Cive?,’ History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 627–639. And, while he was likely responsible only for the appearance of Leviathan, he enjoyed a notoriety that belies his claim to have retired to ‘utter peace.’
As Hobbes says in his posthumously published defense against John Wallis, Considerations Upon the Reputation &c Thomas Hobbes: [Hobbes] was the first that had ventured to write in the King’s defence; and one, amongst very few, that upon no other ground but knowledge of his duty and principles of equity, without special interest, was in all points perfectly loyal. The third of November [1640] following, there began a new Parliament, consisting for the greatest part of such men as the people had elected only for their averseness to the King’s interest. These proceeded so fiercely in the very beginning, against those that had written or preached in the defence of any part of that power, which they also intended to take away, and in gracing those whom the King had disgraced for sedition, that Mr. Hobbes, doubting how they would use him, went over into France, the first of all that fled, and there continued eleven years, to his damage some thousands of pounds deep. See EW IV, p. 414. In being first, Hobbes must have preceded Secretary Windebank’s flight on December 10 of that year; see M.M. Goldsmith, ‘Hobbes’s Ambiguous Politics,’ History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 639–673, p. 640.
See generally Quentin Skinner, ‘Hobbes and His Disciples in France and England,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 8 (1966): 153–167.
Hobbes had not asserted the materiality of God in the 1651 text; see Leviathan 1.12.7.170. The issue had however likely arisen in the famous exchange of letters with Descartes, which took place just before and after his arrival in France in 1640. See below, pp. 257ff. See also Agostino Lupoli, “Fluidismo’ e Corporeal Deity nella filosofia di Thomas Hobbes: A propositio dell’hobbesiano ‘Dio delle cause’,” Rivista di storia della filosofia 54 (1999): 573–609; Cees Leijenhorst, ‘Hobbes’s Corporeal Deity,’ Nuove prospettive critiche sul Leviatano di Hobbes ed. by Luc Foisneau and George Wright (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004), pp. 73–96, and Martinich’s discussion, op. cit., pp. 163ff.
In his essay De Carne Christi, written in 208, Tertullian wrote against Marcion, who believed that Christ was not actually born of the flesh but was a phantasm of human form. In defending the orthodox belief in the incarnation, Tertullian expressed the famous paradox, certum est, quia impossibile: it is certain because it is impossible. On Tertullian, see G.C. Stead, ‘Divine Substance in Tertullian,’ Journal of Theological Studies 14 n.s. (1963): 46–66.
See my ‘Authority and Theodicy in Hobbes’s Leviathan,’ Nuove prospettive critiche sul Leviatano di Hobbes ed. by Luc Foisneau and George Wright (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004), pp. 175–204.
‘And so, just at the point where the scholastics wanted to seem most subtle, they most showed their dullness. If they had been sharp thinkers, they would easily have found the distinction between the cause of something that is done and its author. The author of that which is done is he who orders that it be done; the cause is he through whose powers it is done.’ In his The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, Hobbes also stated this view in vindicating God’s freedom and immunity from sin: The Bishop had argued in this manner: ‘If there be no liberty, there shall be no last judgment, no rewards nor punishments after death.’ To this I answered, that though God cannot sin, because what he doth, his doing maketh just, and because he is not subject to another’s law, and that therefore it is blasphemy to say that God can sin; yet to say, that God hath so ordered the world that sin may be necessarily committed, is not blasphemy. And I can also further say, though God be the cause of all motion and of all actions, and therefore unless sin be no motion nor action, it must derive a necessity from the first mover; nevertheless it cannot be said that God is the author of sin, because not he that necessitateth an action, but he that doth command and warrant it, is the author. And if God own an action, though otherwise it were a sin, it is now no sin. See EW IV, p. 138. Romans 9 takes up the question of divine forgiveness and condemnation, as at verses 13–18: As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
In chapter three of the Decameron, in a dialogue between ‘A’ and ‘B,’ Hobbes argues against the existence of the void in nature as inconsistent with God’s presence in nature: A. It is hard to suppose, and harder to believe, that the infinite and omnipotent Creator of all things should make a work so vast as is the world we see, and not leave a few little spaces with nothing at all in them; which put altogether in respect of the whole creation, would be insensible. B. Why say you that? Do you think any argument can be drawn from it to prove there is vacuum? A. Why not? For in so great an agitation of natural bodies, may not some small parts of them be cast out, and leave the places empty from whence they were thrown? B. Because He that created them is not a fancy, but the most real substance that is; who being infinite, there can be no place empty where He is, nor full where He is not. See EW VII, p. 89.
For a discussion of Hobbes’s distinction between ‘argument’ and ‘oblation,’ see Zarka, op. cit., pp. 88ff.
EW IV, pp. 305. Saying that God is corporeal seems to attribute a characteristic to God that is not negative but descriptive of His nature. On this point, see below, n. 87.
See EW IV, pp. 309–310. See the path-marking essay of Agostino Lupoli, ‘“Fluidismo” e Corporeal Deity nella filosofia di Thomas Hobbes: A propositio dell’hobbesiano ‘dio delle cause’,’ Rivista di storia della filosofia 54 (1999): 573–609, and Cees Leijenhorst, ‘Hobbes’s Corporeal Deity,’ Nuove prospettive critiche sul Leviatano di Hobbes ed. by Luc Foisneau and George Wright (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004): 73–96.
See below, n. 87.
Ibid.
See Malcolm, Correspondence, liiiff. and pp. 60ff.
See Malcolm, op. cit., p. 100.
See Correspondence, Letter 32.
In reporting the letter in his splendid edition of Hobbes’s correspondence, Malcolm recognizes that the plural ablative form ‘corporeis’ requires that the adjective modify both ‘anima’ and ‘Deo,’ but he attributes the claim that God is corporeal not to Hobbes but to Descartes, by way of a logical extension. See Malcolm, Correspondence vol. 1, pp. 54ff. One reason for this judgment is evidence drawn from a treatise on optics (‘Latin Optical MS’) written perhaps at or near the same time, in which he excludes God, Who is inconceivable, from being corporeal (‘excepto Deo... inconceptibili’). This judgment as to Descartes’ possible action prompts some questions regarding both the intentions behind Hobbes’s letter and his philosophic development. The notion of a corporeal God was quite foreign to Descartes at any correspondence indicates that Descartes was not always a good reader of other people’s ideas, it would be surprising if he attributed so striking a departure from the theological tradition to Hobbes without clear indication on Hobbes’s part. Or, even if the assertion was lacking, Descartes may have drawn the logical inference which Hobbes intended; Hobbes had after all first stated his materialist conception of the soul in The Elements of Law, written prior to leaving England. Also, fears at associating himself with Hobbes’s theological views on God are a more reasonable ground for the rupture between the two men than some others, for example, the fear or claim of plagiarism, though Descartes felt concern on this point, though not of course regarding the corporeality of God. See Lupoli, art. cit, and Correspondence, Letter 34, n. 5. Descartes, who lived in Holland from 1628 till 1646, at times in Leiden, no doubt knew of the fracas that arose there concerning Conrad Vorstius; in line with James I’s insistence, the German theologian had been condemned by the Synod of Dort in 1619 and deprived of his professorship at the city’s university. At the time of the exchange with Hobbes, Descartes was embroiled in controversy over the introduction of his own thought at the University of Utrecht. In 1641, following publication of the Meditations on First Philosophy, its rector, Gisbert Voetius (1589–1676), accused him of atheism and sought a ban on his thought from the city magistrates. When the magistrates summoned Descartes to appear, he refused, and a judgment was passed against him. Owing to the intervention of the French ambassador and the Prince of Orange, the magistrates had to be satisfied with a decree forbidding any public argument for or against the thinker’s ideas. See K. van Berkel, ‘Descartes in debat met Voetius. De mislukte introductie van het Cartesianisme aan de Utrechte Universiteit (1639–1645),’ Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde, Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Techniek 7 (1984): 4–18. (Though I cannot argue the point here, I do not believe the comments on the soul in the Anti-White necessarily constitute an interpretive difficulty.) Certainly, Hobbes need not say in the letter everything that he put in the treatise, and he may have changed or developed his views in the presumed interim. And, what one says in a letter differs from the material of a treatise; Hobbes may have wanted to express himself more freely in the former than the latter, for a variety of reasons, for example, the different addressees. He esteemed Descartes and may have wanted to draw attention to his own brilliance, as through bold assertions, which might have been expected to cause apprehension to Charles Cavendish, a recipient of the treatise. The exchange gives ample indication that Hobbes misjudged his French correspondent, but this fact is not conclusive as to Hobbes’s intentions. Moreover, it is no argument against attribution to Hobbes that he says that God is incomprehensible; he commonly makes this statement and nonetheless has a great deal about God, as we have already seen above, p. 256. Descartes’ Latin requires an attribution, and it seems to me more likely that Hobbes made the assertion in the letter, together possibly with a retraction, not unlike the one that follows the natural hypothesis given in the Answer, or that he at least gave Descartes to understand that intention. The difference between the letter and the Appendix of 1668 would then be that Hobbes in the earlier writing withheld from stating what was a probable or even inevitable conclusion of his thinking, apparent, if to others, then likely to him; whereas, in the later work, he avowed it and, as in theAnswer, hastened to restrict its epistemic force. The 28 years that divide the treatise and the letter from the Appendix and Answer would then mark a development less in Hobbes’s thought than in his willingness to express it. We should count his longest exile not to have been political but intellectual. If, by 1640, Hobbes advanced the corporeality of the soul and of’ spirits,’ as in the Elements, nothing prevented him from at least entertaining the corporeality of God and advancing it as a thesis with his interlocutors. And, to the extent that the incorporeality of spirit bore on his theory of superstition and demonic possession and their impact on political obligation, much impelled him, if not to describe God as corporeal, then to refute any other description of His nature as warranting its application to ghosts, angels and devils.
See Martinich, op. cit., pp. 163ff., and, most importantly, Lupoli art. cit., pp. 575ff.
See Correspondence, p. 100, quoting from a letter from Descartes to Mersenne: Otherwise, having read at leisure that last paper by the Englishman, I have become completely convinced of the truth of the judgment which I expressed about him in my letter to you a fortnight ago; and I think it best if I have nothing to do with him and therefore refrain from replying to him. For if his character is as I suspect, we could scarcely communicate without becoming enemies. So it is better for us, him and me, to leave it there. I also beg you to communicate as little as possible to him of those of my opinions which you know, and which have not appeared in print. For, unless I am very much mistaken, he is aiming to make his reputation at my expense, and by devious means.
See the profile of Mersenne given by Malcolm, Correspondence, pp. 862–865.
By this point in his development, Hobbes had also already given considerable attention to both demonstrative science and politics: the first, by way of his well-known ‘discovery’ of Euclid’s geometry, some time between the end of 1629 and November of 1630 (Schuhmann, Chronique, p. 36); the second, through the publication of his translation of Thucydides in 1630, whose purpose was to make evident the follies of Athenian democracy to his fellow-citizens, in the wake of Charles I’s submission to Parliament’s demand for the Petition of Right in 1628 and the beginning of the Personal Rule in 1629 (Schuhmann, Chronique, p. 35).
The catalogue listed books from the Bodleian Library at Oxford under the following rubrics: De Scientiis, De Grammatica et Linguis, De Arithmetica et Numeris (with ten editions with commentaries on Euclid’s Elementa), De Geometria et Mensuris, De Astronomia, De Astrologia, De Perspectiva, Tractatus philosophici miscellanei etc., De ReMilitari, Politica. See Schuhmann, Chronique, p. 35.
On this point, see Arrigo Pacchi, Convenzione e ipotesi nella formazione della filosofia naturale di Thomas Hobbes (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1965), pp. 23–25; James Jay Hamilton, ‘Hobbes’s Study and the Hardwick Library,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (1978): 445–453, and especially Arrigo Pacchi, ‘Una “biblioteca ideale” di Thomas Hobbes: Il ms. E2 dell’archivio di Chatsworth,’ Acme: annali della facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell’università degli studi di Milano 21 (1968): 5–42. Malcolm notes that Pacchi misidentified the handwriting of the manuscript as being Hobbes’s, whereas it is actually the very similar hand of his friend, John Payne; see Malcolm, Correspondence, p. 874. He suggests that the list was either drawn up by Payne at Hobbes’s request for pedagogical purposes or that the manuscript came into Hobbes’s possession after Payne’s death in 1651. Whether it was the former or latter, both men in the 1630’s must have delved into what were some of the standard texts on these questions, of such great interest since the Renaissance, so it does not seem unreasonable to ascribe an interest in them to Hobbes. As is clear, his mechanistic understanding of science was advanced in direct opposition to the occult sciences promoted in some of these works, as he must have known. Whichever is the case, however, they give an indication of the discourse within which Hobbes’s science was debated, even later by those in the Royal Society who advocated some form of supernaturalism. On Boyle and Glanvill, see above, ‘The Haunting of Thomas Hobbes.’ As is easily the case, because mechanism and materialism won out and given the great success of science in our era, we fail to realize how contestable and deeply controversial Hobbes’s theories remained throughout his life.
See Pacchi, op. cit, pp. 155ff.
On Cardano, see Anthony Grafton, ‘Girolamo Cardano and the Tradition of Classical Astrology,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 142 (1998): 323–354.
Ibid.
The desire to reduce physical phenomena of matter and motion is evidenced early in Hobbes’s thinking, but cf. Stewart Duncan, ‘Hobbes’s Materialism in the Early 1640’s’ forthcoming in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
On this, see above, ‘The Haunting of Thomas Hobbes.’
On accommodationism, see Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit, 1770–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 13ff.; for its presence in Calvin, see Ford Lewis Battle, ‘God Was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity,’ Interpretation 31 (1977): 19–38.
In Leviathan, Hobbes would avoid attributing materiality to God, speaking of the ‘grossness of visible bodies;’ see Leviathan 1.12.7.170. If our surmise regarding his true belief in his 1640 letter to Descartes is correct, then it is perhaps correct to say that these texts contain a dissimulation or at least an equivocation sub silentio. If we allow that he said what he meant and meant what he said, then perhaps he did not say all that he might have.
On this point, see above, ‘The Haunting of Thomas Hobbes.’
For Hobbes’s theology of promise, see Introduction and Leviathan 3.35.13.448, 3.36.4.454 and 3.38.4.481. On the theology of promise within modern Protestantism, see Ronald F. Thiemann, Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1985 pp. 145ff.
See J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Thomas Hobbes: Atheist or Enthusiast?,’ History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 737–749.
See p. 260.
See above, ‘The Haunting of Thomas Hobbes.’
See Sommerville, George Wright (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004) op. cit., pp. 156ff.
For the startling thesis that Aristotle was a ‘refined polytheist,’ teaching that the gods had concern for mortals, see Richard Bod’eüs, Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals trans. by Jan Garrett (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000).
Leviathan 1.4.13.105.
Cf. Luther’s statement in his Large Catechism: On the other hand, you can easily see and judge how the world practices only false worship and idolatry. For no people has ever been so reprobate as not to institute and observe some divine worship; every one has set up as his special god whatever he looked to for blessings, help, and comfort... [T]hus every one made that his god to which his heart was inclined, so that even in the mind of the heathen to have a god means to trust and believe... Therefore the heathen really make their self-invented notions and dreams of God an idol, and put their trust in that which is altogether nothing. Hobbes and Luther agree in asserting that idolaters make up their gods, but both differ from Calvin. Luther saw in it the sin of work-righteousness; Calvin placed stress on the material/spiritual distinction. For Luther, see Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther trans. by Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), pp. 126–129. For Calvin, see Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977), pp. 51–65, and Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 197–212, esp. p. 209. The materialist Tertullian condemned both astrology and magic as idolatrous; see Tertullian, De Idololatria Critical Text, Translation and Commentary byW.H.Waszink and J.C.M. VanWinden (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), §§9.1–10.1. See also Leviathan 3.36.2.451, 4.45.4.659 and 4.45.23.671 et seqq.
Leviathan 2.26.21.322.
For the progress of Greek demonology in both Jewish and Christian contexts, see Leviathan 3.38.6.485, 4.44.3.628, 4.44.16.638; 4.45.16.657; 4.45.2.658; 4.45.4.659, and 4.47.15.708.
See Leviathan 1.4.13.105, 3.36.2.451 (citing St. Paul, 1 Timothy 4:1, on the ‘doctrine of devils’) and 4.46.18.691.
On apophasis, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 36, 40–56, 94, 137–138, 197–198 and 200—214, and his recent treatment, What Has Athens To Do with Jerusalem?: Timaeus and Genesis in Counterpoint (Ann Arbor, ML: The University of Michigan Press, 1997).
See, for example, Leviathan 1.7.3.131: No discourse whatsoever, can end in absolute knowledge of fact, past, or to come. For, as for the knowledge of fact, it is originally, sense; and ever after, memory. And for the knowledge of consequence, which I have said before is called science, it is not absolute, but conditional. No man can know by discourse, that this, or that, is, has been, or will be; which is to know absolutely: but only, that if this be, that is; if this has been, that has been; if this shall be, that shall be: which is to know conditionally; and that not the consequence of one thing to another; but of one name of a thing, to another name of the same thing. On the hypothetical character of first philosophy in Hobbes, see Yves Charles Zarka, Philosophie et politique á l’âge classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), pp. 24ff.
For a sympathetic but, in my view, erroneous, interpretation of Hobbes’s intentions, one may see the 1865 work of Frederick Albert Lange, The History of Materialism and Criticism of its Present Importance trans. from German by Ernest Chester Thomas; third edition introduced by Bertrand Russell (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1925). Tracing the history of materialist ideas from the Greek atomists to the 1860’s, Lange deals with issues about which Karl Marx wrote, though there is very little reference to Marx, who nonetheless criticized the book in a letter to Engels (March 11, 1865), saying that it was ‘confused; Malthusianism mixed with Darwinian; flirts with all sides-but there are some nice things against Lassalle and the bourgeois consumers’ co-operative fellows.’ Nietzsche is said to have read Lange.
See p. 254. For Thomas’ discussion of God as first cause, see ST I.12.12 and I.44.1; for his discussion of God as cause of sin, see ST I.II.79.1.
One might mention Taylor, Hood and Warrender in this connection. See also the work of Norberto Bobbio, Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition trans. by Daniela Gobetti (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 118ff. Blumenberg says that Hobbes understands the natural human situation as that of the Roman princeps legibus solutus; see Blumenberg, op. cit., p. 218. But, the individual is bound by natural law in the state of nature, if he or she knows it, as is the sovereign in the commonwealth, though punishment of the sovereign’s violations of the natural law look to correction by God, not by the subject. On natural, ethical obligation, see Alan Ryan, ‘Hobbes and Individualism,’ Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes ed. by G.A.J. Rogers and Alan Ryan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
For a discussion of Hobbes’s Trinitarianism, see above, ‘Hobbes and the Economic Trinity.’
On this, see ‘1668 Appendix,’ Introduction et passim.
For faith as the ‘gift of God,’ see Leviathan 2.26.41.332; 3.42.11.527; 3.43.7.613; 3.43.9.64, and 3.43.19.622.
This distinction featured in Hobbes’s prior political works, though its development in those texts cannot be dealt with here. On natural theology in De Cive, see Richard Tuck, ‘Hobbes’s “Christian Atheism”,’ Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment ed. by Michael Hunter and David Wootton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 111–130.
On divine omnipotence, see Luc Foisneau, Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000).
While the existence of God as first cause cannot be demonstrated, it can be proven. Thus, Hobbes says in the Anti-White (XXVI, 1):ἀϕιλοσόϕως faciunt qui profitentur se demonstraturos quod Deus existit. (They do so unphilosophically who say that they will demonstrate that God exists.), though he nonetheless offers proofs of God’s existence. On demonstration in Hobbes, see the discussion given by A.P. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 346ff. Though it is expressed in various ways, that the existence of God can be known while His nature cannot seems to me the orthodox position in Christianity, at least so much as is not mystical.
Scripture also figures in his discussion of the difference between paganism and Christianity; see Leviathan 4.45.24.672.
Law, for the Protestant Hobbes, is the result of sin, so that, where there is no sin, there is no law: In the kingdom of God after this life, there will be no laws; partly, because there is no room for laws, where there is none for sins; partly, because laws were given us from God, not to direct us in heaven, but unto heaven. See De Cive 17.§8.263.
For this dating, see Franck Lessay’s translation of An Answer, De la liberté et de la nécessité (Paris: Vrin, 1993), pp. 10ff.
See The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance EW V, esp. pp. 233ff. See also Sergio Landucci, ‘La Potenza e la Giustizia di Dio,’ La teodicea nell’età cartesiana (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1986), pp. 99–126, and Martinich, op. cit., pp. 273ff. Note what the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) says of God’s eternal decree and causality, in defense of human freedom and responsibility: God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. Hobbes would return to the question of the eternal decree in his 1668 Appendix; see 1668 Appendix,’ Introduction and §§24ff.
See EW V, 105.
See EW V, 139.
On Leibniz, see Patrick Riley, Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), and, by the same author, ‘Leibniz’s Political and Moral Philosophy in the Novissima Sinica,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999): 217–239. On Hegel, see Laurence Dickey, Hegel: Religion, Economics and the Politics of Spirit, 1770–1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
‘Sense supernatural’ is Hobbes’s way to affirm that all events, even the miraculous, are caused, even if by divine agency, through material means. Faith too is imparted through material means; see Leviathan 3.32.6.411.
If there is an ancient source for Hobbes’s natural theism, it is more Stoic than Platonic, Aristotelian or, certainly, Epicurean. Of course, in contrast to Plato, he stresses creation ex nihilo; in contrast to Aristotle, he believes God has concern for worldly affairs, and, in contrast to Stoicism, he stresses God’s transcendence. See, for example, Appendix §24 and nn.
See the work of Werner Jaeger generally and specifically, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers: The Gifford Lectures 1936 trans. by Edward S. Robinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).
On this point, see above, ‘The Haunting of Thomas Hobbes’ and Wright, ‘Authority and Theodicy in Hobbes’s Leviathan,’ Nuove prospettive critiche sul Leviatano di Hobbes ed. by Luc Foisneau and George Wright (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004), pp. 175–204.
In that the ‘magnitude and beginning of the world’ and thus of humans are questions not susceptible to rational demonstration, they must be determined by the sovereign. See Elements of Philosophy, EW I, p. 410.
Prior to their covenant with God, the Israelites had the same obligations as all others under the laws of nature: Leviathan 3.42.37.545: The question now is, who it was that gave to these written tables the obligatory force of laws. There is no doubt but they were made laws by God himself: but because a law obliges not, nor is law to any, but to them that acknowledge it to be the act of the sovereign; how could the people of Israel that were forbidden to approach the mountain to hear what God said to Moses, be obliged to obedience to all those laws which Moses propounded to them? Some of them were indeed the laws of nature, as all the second table; and therefore to be acknowledged for God’s laws; not to the Israelites alone, but to all people. The force of natural obligation, in that it stems from a deliverance of reason, acting under the stimulus of scientific curiosity, is no more, but also no less, than the force of the words, definitions and syllogisms by which we come to the insight that God is first cause. In this sense, Hobbes can claim the political theory of Leviathan as an instance of the science of civil philosophy.
See above, p. 271.
See Appendix, §168.
It is quite possible for men to be ignorant of the laws of nature, just as they are ignorant of the laws of mathematics. On the mathematical character of the natural laws, see John Rogers, ‘Hobbes, Sovereignty and Consent,’ Nuove prospettive critiche sul Leviatano di Hobbes ed. by Luc Foisneau and George Wright (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004), pp. 241–248.
On this point, see above, Introduction to Appendix.
See above, pp. 268ff.
Cf. John Pocock, ‘Time, History and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes,’ Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (NY, NY: Atheneum, 1973), pp. 148–201, and Patricia Springborg, ‘Leviathan and the Problem of Ecclesiastical Authority,’ Political Theory 3 (1975): 289–303.
On this point, see below, p. 287.
That the natural kingdom of God is shown not to be a real kingdom only through the example of the ‘prophetic kingdom’ is evidence in my view of the failure of Hobbes’s political theory. For, he has breached the limits of intelligibility defining each of the two spheres, whose co-existence, so to speak, was possible only by way of distinction and separation. While it is true that Hobbes distinguishes the language games of theology and philosophy, as Leijenhorst says, Zarka seems more accurate in saying, with respect to Hobbes’s description of God as corporeal, that, ‘C’est bien plutôt un blasphème, le blasphème d’une raison qui veut sortir des limites du connaissable.’ If philosophy, that is, science, deals with that which is demonstrable and if that which is demonstrable is only that which an artificer makes, in that we do not make God, we cannot know His nature, corporeal or not. See Leijenhorst, George Wright (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004) art. cit., p. 87, quoting Yves Charles Zarka, ‘Espace et représentation chez Hobbes,’ Recherches sur le XVII e siècle 7 (1984): 159–180, p. 175. On making in Hobbes, see Arthur Child, Fare e conoscere in Hobbes, Vico e Dewey. Introduction by E. Garin (Naples: Guida, 1970), and, more generally, the brilliant series of articles published by Michael Foster in Mind, now collected in Creation, Nature, and Political Order in the Philosophy of Michael Foster (1903–1959) ed. by Cameron Wybrow (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1992). Similarly, just as, in his later writings, he is drawn to identify God as corporeal and to specify how God is active in nature as a corporeal entity, so earlier, in the political theory of the English Leviathan, Hobbes is drawn to elide the difference between the two kingdoms by rectifying his theory of the natural kingdom of God, with its natural ‘laws,’ through reference to His prophetic kingdom. It is quite true that Hobbes underlines the absolute divorce between theology and philosophy, as famously in the first chapter of De Corpore. But, unless we are willing to say that his political theory is not (civil) philosophy, given the role which his natural theology plays in government and law, we must admit that Hobbes postulates but does not maintain a’ sharp distinction between philosophical and religious discourse about God,’ as Leijenhorst asserts; see Leijenhorst, art. cit., p. 94. Within the space of their reconciliation, he cannot maintain the faith/knowledge distinction, though his political theory in general and the formal universality of the natural laws in particular depend upon his success in doing precisely that. See within, p. 307. On the deductive character of Hobbes’s political science, see Gigliola Rossini, ‘The Criticism of Rhetorical Historiography and the Ideal of Scientific Method: History, Nature and Science in the Political Language of Thomas Hobbes,’ The Languages of Political Theory in Early-modern Europe ed. by Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 303–324.
This is how he explained himself in debate with Bishop Bramhall regarding Leviathan 1.15.41.216, discussed above, p. 276: [Bramhall:] Yet, to let us see how inconsistent and irreconcileable he is with himself, elsewhere reckoning up all the laws of nature at large, even twenty in number, he hath not one word that concerneth religion, or hath the least relation in the world to God. As if a man were like the colt of a wild ass in the wilderness, without any owner or obligation. Thus in describing the laws of nature, this great clerk forgetteth the God of nature, and the main and principal laws of nature, which contain a man’s duty to his God, and the principal end of his creation. [Hobbes:] After I had ended the discourse he mentions of the laws of nature, I thought it fittest in the last place, once for all, to say they were the laws of God, then when they were delivered in the word of God; but before, being not known by men for any thing but their own natural reason, they were but theorems, tending to peace, and those uncertain, as being but conclusions of particular men, and therefore not properly laws. EW IV, p. 284. He then goes on to cite De Cive’s fuller discussion of how the laws of nature may be derived from scripture. (Hobbes always uses the word ‘theorem’ in a sense nearer to ‘postulate,’ as in geometry and thus science, than to ‘hypothesis,’ or to ‘theory.’) Thus, contrary to Gauthier, the two ‘definitions’ of the laws of nature are not two definitions but two ways of viewing the status of the laws of nature: the first, without the aid of revelation; the second, under its guidance. The difference between them lies for the Christian in what intervenes between them, namely, the onset of the Gospel; this is Hobbes’s rendering of the experience of conversion. Gauthier’s discussion of the laws of nature also omits both the role of revelation and the relation between the faith/belief distinction and the distinction between God as person and God as cause. See Gauthier, op. cit., pp. 35. Similarly, it should be clear that Hobbes has not ‘equivocated;’ cf. Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 126.
Cf. Mark Murphy, ‘Deviant Uses of Obligation in Hobbes’s Leviathan,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 11 (1994): 281–294. It would be desirable to place Hobbes’s project and procedures in the larger historical perspective of natural law theory and explicitly to address the Taylor-Warrender-Hood line of interpretation; I hope to write on these questions in the future. See Stephen A. State, ‘Text and Context: Skinner, Hobbes and Theistic Natural Law,’ The Historical Journal 28 (1985): 27–50.
Wittgenstein criticized Frazer along this line; see P.M.S. Hacker, ‘Developmental Hypotheses and Perspicuous Representations: Wittgenstein on Frazer’s Golden Bough,’ IYYUN The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 41 (1992): 277–299.
And, as he said of writing Leviathan in his Seven Philosophical Problems: It was written in a time when the pretence of Christ’s kingdom was made use of for the most horrid actions that can be imagined; and it was in just indignation of that, that I desired to see the bottom of that doctrine of the kingdom of Christ, which divers ministers then preached for a pretence to their rebellion: which may reasonably extenuate, though not excuse the writing of it. EW VII, p. 5.
The linking of Catholic with Presbyterian is not original to Hobbes. Note what John Maxwell said in his ‘Sacro-sancta Regum Majestas, Or the Sacred and Royal Prerogative of Christian Kings’ of 1645: The calamities which the authors and abettors of the paradoxes have brought upon us, and the present distemper and distress we are cast into, are equal to those we have recorded in authentic [hi]story were set on foot betwixt Gregory the Seventh and Henry the Fourth; betwixt Innocent the Fourth and Frederick; betwixt Boniface the Eighth and Philip king of France. The Puritan and Presbyterian by their independent ecclesiastical sovereignty will act as much mischief ere it be long, if God in mercy do not the current of their fury and malice; as in many ages past, the pope of Rome hath done by his unjust and usurped tyranny over and above kings. It feareth me, the tragedies of Munster and this time shall never be forgotten. ‘Munster’ refers to the famous take-over of that city by the Anabaptists, led by Thomas Müntzer. On Müntzer, see James M. Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and the Community of Goods (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994).
A reference to Matthew 12:43ff.: When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.
Chapter 30 of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), ‘Of Church Censures,’ states: The Lord Jesus, as king and head of His Church, has therein appointed a government, in the hand of Church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate. It is perplexing that Hobbes, in 1651, should be concerned with the Presbyterians after Pride’s Purge in 1648 had ended their political importance. He might have seen in them a tendency that ecclesiastically minded people might seek to give effect to in the future, to the prejudice of both the rights of political sovereigns and the evangelical character of the Christian religion. More likely, this emphasis in the English Leviathan predated Pride’s Purge and shows the various strata of thinking evident in that text. For, the stress upon Aristotle and his influence in Catholic theology does not fit well with the Presbyterians, though it may bear on some of the Anglican theologians whom Hobbes knew. And, in sorting out Hobbes’s ambiguous politics, we must not forget that, while English politics figured in his thinking, it did not determine it; the central line of attack in Leviathan is against Aristotle and ‘church divinity,’ quite possibly because this was of greatest interest to Hobbes as perhaps the set of problems in which he felt he could make the most significant contribution. See Quentin Skinner, ‘Conquest and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy,’ The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement, 1646–1660 ed. by G.E. Aylmer rev. ed. (London: 1974), pp. 79–94; Glenn Burgess, ‘Contexts for Writing and Publication of Hobbes’s Leviathan,’ History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 675–702;M.M. Goldsmith, ‘Hobbes’sAmbiguous Politics,’ History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 639–673; Jeffrey R. Collins, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Blackloist Conspiracy of 1649,’ Historical Journal 45 (2002): 305–331, and Johann Sommerville, ‘Hobbes and Independency,’ Nuove prospettive critiche sul Leviatano di Hobbes ed. by Luc Foisneau and George Wright (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004), pp. 155–174.
See Leviathan 3.42.3.429 et seqq., and 3.43.7.613.
See Leviathan 3.33.21.425.
See Heiko Oberman, ‘The Theology of Calvin,’ The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1992), pp. 234–239, esp. p. 237.
Ibid.
See Patrick Preston, ‘Catharinus versus Luther, 1521,’ History 88 (2003): 364–378 and, by the same author, ‘Ambrosius Catharinus’ Commentary on the General Epistle of St. Jude,’ International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 2 (2002): 217–229.
See Canon 21, Sessio Sexta de Justificatione, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English translation by Rev. H.J. Schroeder, O.P. (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1960), p. 323.
On these points, cf. Jürgen Overhoff, ‘The Lutheranism of Thomas Hobbes,’ History of Political Thought 18 (1997): pp. 604–623, and ‘The Theology of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan,’ The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51 (2000): 527–554. But see also Basil Hall, Humanists and Protestants, 1500–1900 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), esp. chapter 7, ‘The Early Rise and Gradual Decline of Lutheranism in England 1520–1600,’ pp. 208–236. Overhoff misconstrues some details of the exchange with Descartes, discussed above, n. 22: for one, the aborted exchange was in no sense ‘comprehensive;’ for another, Descartes did not say that questions of religious orthodoxy were not important for him, and finally, as Letter 45 shows, he did not indicate to Mersenne the belief that the corporeality of the soul necessarily led to the corporeality of God, though he may have thought so. This telescopes what Descartes said. Further, Overhoff asserts what Hobbes denied, namely, that the Bible was the ‘ultimate yardstick by which Aristotle’s or any other man’s philosophical views [on the soul] were to be measured.’ He separates philosophy and religion and thoroughly discounts the Bible as a source of philosophic truth. What for Overhoff is the ‘traditional notion of a spiritual afterlife’ in an incorporeal eternity is in fact not that traditional, either among the ancients, Christians in general or, as he notes, Luther in particular; see Introduction and Appendix, §46 et passim. Hobbes never urged acceptance of any doctrine, especially transubstantiation, even though it was unreasonable; he held no doctrine of Christianity to be contrary to reason, if some were above it. See Leviathan 2.30.6.379 and 3.32.2.409. Transubstantiation he called a greater fraud than those played by Pharaoh’s magicians; see Leviathan 4.44.11.633.
The debate over this doctrine, especially in its relations to the rise of Hitler and what Meinecke called the ‘German catastrophe,’ has been voluminous. See, for example, Gerhard O. Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate: An Interpretation of its Historical Development (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1969). See Milbank’s discussion, The Word Made Strange (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 219ff.
A reference to II Samuel 4:5, ‘David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years.’ As Oberman says of Calvin, ‘God ‘advances’ his Kingdom and ‘makes it grow’: there is development. The climax, however, is not brought about only through intra-ecclesial evolution, but through God’s extra-ecclesial intervention as well. In the ascension, Christ as Mediator ascended to the royal throne and assumed the rule over his Church through the Word and Spirit. Yet, as the Son of God, he had already ruled from the beginning of creation as the ‘aeterna sapientia Dei, per quam reges regnant’;’ Ibid.
See Oberman, ibid. Theodore Beza (1519–1605), successor to Calvin at Geneva and champion of the Presbyterian theory of ecclesiastical power over temporal sovereigns, was as incorrect as Bellarmine, Hobbes insists, in asserting that ‘the Kingdom of God by Christ is already in this world:’ Leviathan 4.44.17.639ff.: The most difficult place to answer, of all those that can be brought, to prove the kingdom of God by Christ is already in this world, is alleged, not by Bellarmine, nor any other of the Church of Rome; but by Beza, that will have it to begin from the resurrection of Christ. But whether he intend thereby, to entitle the Presbytery to the supreme power ecclesiastical in the commonwealth of Geneva, (and consequently to every presbytery in every other commonwealth,) or to princes, and other civil sovereigns, I do not know. For the presbytery hath challenged the power to excommunicate their own kings, and to be the supreme moderators in religion, in the places where they have that form of Church government, no less than the Pope challengeth it universally. The words are (Mark 9. 1), Verily I say unto you, that there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power....[I]f the kingdom of God began (as Beza on that place [Mark 9:1] would have it) at the resurrection; what reason is there for Christians ever since the resurrection to say in their prayers, Let thy kingdom come? It is therefore manifest, that the words of St. Mark are not so to be interpreted. There be some of them that stand here (saith our Saviour) that shall not taste of death till they have seen the kingdom of God come in power. If then this kingdom were to come at the resurrection of Christ, why is it said, some of them, rather than all? For they all lived till after Christ was risen. See also Leviathan 3.42.7.525ff.
See Dominique Colas, Civil Society and Fanaticism: Conjoined Histories trans. by Amy Jacobs (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 142ff.
On faith as the gift of God, see Leviathan 2.26.41.332; 3.42.11.527; 3.43.7.613; 3.43.9.614, and 3.43.19.622. On the doctrine of prevenient grace, see Ronald F. Thiemann, Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985).
On how historical data become saving faith, see above, Introduction to the 1668 Appendix, n. 86.
Of course, there can be no secular conception of politics or society: the division into secular and sacred collapses in Hobbes, who in any case requires subjects to swear an oath before God as condition for entrance into the commonwealth. See Leviathan 3.39.5.498, ‘Temporal and spiritual government, are but two words brought into the world, to make men see double, and mistake their lawful sovereign;’ and Leviathan 1.14.31.200, Answer EW IV, p. 291, and Appendix §142. Hegel offers a comparison on the question of whether or in what sense there can, or must, be a Christian society, grounding itself, in his case, on Sittlichkeit; on this point, see Dickey, op. cit., passim but esp. pp. 96–112, 144, 152, 157, 160–162, 183–184, 227–228, 246, 273–274, 320 and 352.
For a comparison between Hobbes and Richard Hooker on divine, positive laws, see S.A. State, Thomas Hobbes and the Debate over Natural Law and Religion (New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Incorporated, 1991), pp. 75ff.
This way of construing the relation of natural law and Christian religion relates the divine commands to specific people and times. Salvation history is thus necessarily historical and particular, though this fact in no sense diminishes its importance. By contrast, the formality of the natural laws assures their universal application to all people and in all times, Christian or not. On this point, see below, n. 165.
On this point, see John Milbank, op. cit., pp. 219ff. For a different view, see Sam Black,’ science and Moral Skepticism in Hobbes,’Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (1997): 173–207.
See above, Appendix §137.
See Leviathan 2.30.3.376: And because, if the essential rights of sovereignty (specified before in the eighteenth chapter) be taken away, the commonwealth is thereby dissolved, and every man returneth into the condition, and calamity of a war with every other man, (which is the greatest evil that can happen in this life;) it is the office of the sovereign, to maintain those rights entire; and consequently against his duty, first, to transfer to another, or to lay from himself any of them... Secondly, it is against his duty, to let the people be ignorant, or misinformed of the grounds, and reasons of those his essential rights; because thereby men are easy to be seduced, and drawn to resist him, when the commonwealth shall require their use and exercise.
This is how Hobbes put this question in De Cive: For if one command somewhat to be done under penalty of natural death, another forbids it under pain of eternal death, and both by their own right, it will follow that the citizens, although innocent, are not only by right punishable, but that the city itself is altogether dissolved. For no man can serve two masters; nor is he less, but rather more, a master, whom we believe we are to obey for fear of damnation, than he whom we obey for fear of temporal death. It follows therefore that this one, whether man or court, to whom the city hath committed the supreme power, have also this right; that he both judge what opinions and doctrines are enemies unto peace, and also that he forbid them to be taught. EW II, p. 185.
On this point, see Richard Tuck, ‘The Civil Religion of Thomas Hobbes,’ Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain ed. by Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 120–138, esp. p. 130. Doing away with the notion of hell was not, in my view, a therapeutic device to reduce men’s fears; the loss of eternal life though eternal death would be a matter for some concern. Hobbes’s account of these matters in chapter 38 of Leviathan bespeaks several motivations. But there can be no doubt that the question has political relevance: Leviathan 3.38.1.478: The maintenance of civil society, depending on justice; and justice on the power of life and death, and other less rewards and punishments, residing in them that have the sovereignty of the commonwealth; it is impossible a commonwealth should stand, where any other than the sovereign, hath a power of giving greater rewards than life; and of inflicting greater punishments, than death. Now seeing eternal life is a greater reward, than the life present; and eternal torment a greater punishment than the death of nature; it is a thing worthy to be well considered, of all men that desire (by obeying authority) to avoid the calamities of confusion, and civil war, what is meant in Holy Scripture, by life eternal, and torment eternal; and for what offences, and against whom committed, men are to be eternally tormented; and for what actions, they are to obtain eternal life.
For a discussion of Hobbes’s doctrine of the church, see Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches trans. by Olive Wyon (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976), vol. II, pp. 649ff.
As he says, Leviathan 3.43.22.624, ‘There can therefore be no contradiction between the laws of God, and the laws of a Christian commonwealth.’
Leviathan 2.17.13.227: This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that mortal god, to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defence.
See De Cive 15.§18.222. On divine and human worship, see Wright, ‘Authority and Theodicy in Hobbes’s Leviathan,’ Nuove prospettive critiche sul Leviatano di Hobbes ed. by Luc Foisneau and George Wright (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004), pp. 175–204.
On this, see Ronald Thiemann, Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise (Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985).
Moral skepticism in Hobbes may not have the significance or origin often cited, for one source of moral skepticism is the Christian prophetic tradition itself. The question of the so-called ‘third use’ of the law has engaged the attention of a number of modern students of Luther, including Pinoma, Aulen, Wingren, Nygren and Bring in Scandinavia and Althaus, Ebeling, Elert and Schlink in Germany. The issue is whether Luther describes a use of the law as a foundation for Christian social ethics, the so-called usus didacticus, to be distinguished fromboth the usus theologicus, whose function before God is to accuse and frighten the sinner, and the usus civilis, whose function is civil and political regulation. This ‘third use’ would be to inform believers as to what they must do in this world by prescribing normative structures and behaviors aimed at sanctification, so that to deny this function is to deny that there is or ever will be a social order identical with the kingdom of Christ. Asserting this is the gravest fault which Hobbes condemns in interpreters of the Bible: Leviathan 4.44.4.629: The greatest and main abuse of Scripture, and to which almost all the rest are either consequent or subservient, is the wresting of it, to prove that the kingdom of God, mentioned so often in the Scripture, is the present Church, or multitude of Christian men now living, or that being dead, are to rise again at the last day. According to William H. Lazareth, those texts in which Luther seems to advocate the usus didacticus, for instance, the Second Dispute against the Antinomians of 1538, are forgeries. Those of undoubted authenticity describe only a two-fold use of the law; these include the Explanations of the Ninety-five Theses of 1517, On Secular Authority of 1523, Against the Heavenly Prophets of 1525, the Small Catechism of 1529, the Lectures on Galatians of 1531, the Smalkald Articles (pt. iii, art. ii) of 1537, and the Formula of Concord (art. v) of 1577. Both Melanchthon’s Loci Communes of 1533 and Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion of 1536 describe a three-fold use of the law and in this way depart from Luther’s view. Indeed, the Smalkald Articles of 1537 may represent Luther’s explicit distancing of himself from them. See Werner Elert, ‘The Third Use of the Law,’ The Lutheran World Review I (1949): 38–48, and William H. Lazareth, Christians in Society: Luther, the Bible and Social Ethics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001). Lazareth, in rejecting the called ‘third use,’ found in the Formula of Concord, sides with the so-called Gnesio-Lutherans, who opposed the ‘Philippists,’ that is, the followers of Philip Melanchthon. These issues may seem recondite, but note this charged comment in the current The Christian Statesman, http://www.natreformassn.org/statesman/01/retreat.html: Modern Reformation’s September/October 2000 article by Michael Horton, ‘Defining the Two Kingdoms: One of Luther’s and Calvin’s Great Discoveries,’ signals the dramatic inroads of retreatist Lutheran amillennialism into the Reformed camp and publicizes the proto-Calvinistic abandonment of biblical law.
For an analysis of the theological use of λόγος in Philo and in Christian theology, see Pelikan’s discussion in What Has Athens, op. cit., esp. pp. 67–110. On the theology of promise, see James S. Preus, ‘Old Testament Promissio and Luther’s New Hermeneutic,’ Harvard Theological Review 60 (1967): 145–161, followed by the same author’s From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969).
See Leviathan 4.47.21.712.
On the question of evangelical liberty, see Klaus-M. Kodalle, ‘“Sterbliche Götter”: Martin Luthers Ansichten zu Staat, Recht and Gewalt als Vorgriff auf Hobbes,’ Hobbes Oggi ed. by Andrea Napoli (Milan: F. Angeli, 1990), pp. 123–142.
See Leviathan 4.43.22.624. Cf. Paul Dumouchel, ‘The Political Problem of Religion: Hobbes’s Reading of the Bible,’ English Philosophy in the Age of Locke ed. by M.A. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 1–27.
For an analysis of modern interpretations of sacrifice, including that of Girard, see John Milbank, ‘Stories of Sacrifice,’ Modern Theology 2 (1996): 75–102.
On this point, see Walter Burkert, op. cit. See also below, note 137.
On Xenophanes, see Harald Anton Thrap Reiche, A History of the Concepts ϑεοπϱεπής and ίεϱοπϱεπής (diss. presented 1955, Harvard University Department of Classics).
On this point, see Burkert, op. cit., p. 246.
Note Hegel’s statement: Those who look upon the essence of nature as pure inwardness, and therefore inaccessible to us, take up the same line as that ancient creed which regarded God as envious and jealous; a creed which both Plato and Aristotle pronounced against long ago. All that God is, He imparts and reveals; and He does so, at first, in and through nature. See The Logic of Hegel trans. by William Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 254. See also Paul Lakeland, The Politics of Salvation: The Hegelian Idea of the State (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984), and Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994).
Kant, in the second critique, vindicates such autonomy against conceptions very like those Hobbes describes. On this point, see Paul Tillich’s development of what he calls ‘theonomous ethics’ in Systematic Theology vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 84ff., 147ff., and esp. vol. 3, pp. 249ff.
Note Martial’s lines in book eight of the Epigrammaton: Qui fingit sacros auro uel marmore uultus, non facit ille deos: qui rogat, ille facit. ‘It is not he who fashions the sacred visages in gold or marble whomakes them gods; hemakes them gods who prays to them.’
See Leviathan 1.3.5.96: The train of regulated thoughts is of two kinds; one, when of an effect imagined, we seek the causes, or means that produce it: and this is common to man and beast. The other is, when imagining any thing whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects, that can by it be produced; that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it, when we have it. Of which I have not at any time seen any sign, but in man only; for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that has no other passion but sensual, such as are hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. In sum, the discourse of the mind, when it is governed by design, is nothing but seeking, or the faculty of invention, which the Latins called sagacitas, and solertia; a hunting out of the causes, of some effect, present or past; or of the effects, of some present or past cause. On curiosity, Heiko Oberman, Contra Vanam Curiositatem: Ein Kapitel der Theologie zwischen Seelenwinkel undWeltall (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1974).
The Latin text, OL, III, p. 86, may help clarify some of the references in the last part of this passage:... atque hoc sine omni fortunarum suarum cogitatione, quarum (scil. fortunarum) sollicitudo et metum gignit et ab inquisitione causarum naturalium animum avertit, simulque Deorum fingendorum occasionem praebet, quot sunt fere qui eos fingunt.
See above, note 63.
As he says in the Six Lessons: Of arts, some are demonstrable, others indemonstrable; and demonstrable are those the construction of the subject whereof is in the power of the artist himself, who, in his demonstration, does no more but deduce the consequences of his own operation. The reason whereof is this, that the science of every subject is derived from a precognition of the causes, generation, and construction of the same; and consequently where the causes are known, there is place for demonstration, but not where the causes are to seek for. Geometry therefore is demonstrable, for the lines and figures from which we reason are drawn and described by ourselves; and civil philosophy is demonstrable, because we make the commonwealth ourselves. But because of natural bodies we know not the construction, but seek it from the effects, there lies no demonstration of what the causes be we seek for, but only of what they may be. See EW VII, p. 183.
See Leviathan 1.6.35.124: Desire to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but man: so that man is distinguished, not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion from other animals; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.
Cf. Thomas’s answer in ST I.12.13 as to whether a higher knowledge of God can be obtained through grace than by natural reason.
Cf. Leviathan 1.12.6.64. Again, the names, ‘Father, King, and Lord’ do not imply personality in the Christian sense because natural reason does not know God as person. In fact, all these names were attributed to Zeus/Jupiter by Plato, Cicero and other ancients, as, for example, during the allegorization of Roman religion by the Stoics, as Hobbes may have known. In a passage parallel to this one in Elements of Law (1.11.2.53-54), Hobbes says, ‘And this is it which all men call by the name of GOD.’ The change from ‘GOD’ to the ‘I AM’ of Leviathan recalls Exodus 3:14, the response of Jahweh in answer to Moses’ request for a name to reveal to the Israelites as the author of His actions.
For a criticism of the ineffability thesis, see William P. Alston, ‘Ineffability’ The Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 506–522. For a criticism of Tillich’s use of the thesis, see Robert C. Coburn, ‘God, Revelation, and Religious Truth: Some Themes and Problems in the Theology of Paul Tillich,’ Faith and Philosophy 13 (1996): 1–33.
This had been Hobbes’s position since at least 1640. Note his statement, in Objectiones (iii, 4), written as a response to Descartes’ notion of innate ideas, as to the capacity of men to know things in their essence or of their languages to embody a world: But what shall we say now, if reasoning chance to be nothing more than the uniting and stringing together of names and designations by the word ‘is’? It will be a consequence of this that reason gives us no conclusion about the nature of things, but only about the terms that designate them, namely, whether or not there is a convention (arbitrarily made about their meanings) according to which we join these names together. On conventionalism, see Arrigo Pacchi, Convenzione e ipotesi nella filosofia di Thomas Hobbes (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1965). Note this statement by Noel Malcolm: ‘[T]he absolute “eternal truths” of nominalism arose from the voluntarist demotion of “essences” from ontology to logic, and the truths of scientific explanation were made hypothetical by the voluntarist insistence that essences demoted in this way were descriptions and not objects of intuitive knowledge;’ Noel Malcolm, ‘Thomas Hobbes and Voluntarist Theology’ Cambridge dissertation 12656 (1985), p. 131. Cf. Norberto Bobbio, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law f Tradition’ trans. by Daniela Gobetti (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 117ff.
See Leviathan 1.7.3.131.
In the course of his discussion of these points, Hobbes refines the conception of the natural ‘kingdom’ of God to include only those beings which are capable of reason; see above, p. 277.
Rational fear of God as first cause differs from irrational, that is, superstitious, fear of divine power to the extent that reason rightly knows, and does not invent, its object, namely, the true God, God as first cause; see Hobbes’s definition of true religion, Leviathan 1.6.36.124; 3.43.7.613, 4.46.4–5.683ff., and 4.47.20.710.
As in the religious realm, ethical/political obligation under the laws of nature is determined by universal, formal laws, given concrete content in domestic legal and political systems. On the derivation of natural law, see John Deigh, ‘Reason and Ethics in Hobbes’s Leviathan,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996): 33–60.
A common wealth without religion is unthinkable for Hobbes because its subjects could not be bound by oath; see Leviathan 1.15.33.201.
On this point, see Lupoli, Fluidismo’ e Corporeal Deity nella filosofia di Thomas Hobbes: A propositio dell’hobbesiano ‘Dio delle cause’,” Rivista di storia della filosofia 54 (1999): 573–609 op. cit., pp. 604ff.
See Leviathan 2.31.34.404.
See above, p. 299.
On this point, see F.C. Hood, The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes: An Interpretation of Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 212ff., 239ff., et passim.
Though he was critical of Hobbes, Samuel Parker made similar points in A Discourse on Ecclesiastical Polity; see Hans-Dieter Metzger, Thomas Hobbes und die englische Revolution, 1640–1660 (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1991), pp. 255ff.
The role of the sovereign as public theologian was given concrete reality during Hobbes’s formative period, when King James’s knowledge of theology and advocacy of the episcopal system were vital political factors. In advocating for the episcopal system and uniform worship, he would be followed by his son, acting through the vigorous but impolitic Archbishop Laud, who, for example, sought to impose the Book of Common Prayer upon the Scottish Kirk. Cf. Gerald M. Mara, ‘Hobbes’s Counsel to Sovereigns,’ The Journal of Politics 50 (1988): 390–411.
See also Leviathan 2.18.16.236, discussing the separation of governmental powers: And this division is it, whereof it is said, a kingdom divided in itself cannot stand: for unless this division precede, division into opposite armies can never happen. If there had not first been an opinion received of the greatest part of England, that these powers were divided between the King, and the Lords, and the House of Commons, the people had never been divided and fallen into this civil war; first between those that disagreed in politics; and after between the dissenters about the liberty of religion; which have so instructed men in this point of sovereign right, that there be few now (in England,) that do not see, that these rights are inseparable, and will be so generally acknowledged at the next return of peace; and so continue, till their miseries are forgotten; and no longer, except the vulgar be better taught than they have hitherto been.
Conscience for Hobbes is originally and properly a form of shared knowledge and only improperly arbitrium; see Leviathan 1.7.4.131. Sovereign power may coerce religious behavior in conformity with its own desires, subject to natural law, without however implicating conscientious, that is, rational, religious scruple on the part of the subject. As Hobbes explains in chapter 26, ‘Divine positive laws (for natural laws being eternal, and universal, are all divine,) are those, which being the commandments of God, (not from all eternity, nor universally addressed to all men, but only to a certain people, or to certain persons,) are declared for such, by those whom God hath authorized to declare them.’ The question, apart from how they may be known, concerns the source of the binding force of the sovereign’s religious laws: Leviathan 2.26.41.331: But for the second, how he can be bound to obey them; it is not so hard. For if the law declared, be not against the law of nature (which is undoubtedly God’s law) and he undertake to obey it, he is bound by his own act; bound I say to obey it, but not bound to believe it: for men’s belief, and interior cogitations, are not subject to the commands, but only to the operation of God, ordinary, or extraordinary. Faith of supernatural law, is not a fulfilling, but only an assenting to the same; and not a duty that we exhibit to God, but a gift which God freely giveth to whom he pleaseth; as also unbelief is not a breach of any of his laws; but a rejection of them all, except the laws natural... [I]n a commonwealth, a subject that has no certain and assured revelation particularly to himself concerning the will of God, is to obey for such, the command of the commonwealth: for if men were at liberty, to take for God’s commandments, their own dreams, and fancies, or the dreams and fancies of private men; scarce two men would agree upon what is God’s commandment; and yet in respect of them, every man would despise the commandments of the commonwealth. I conclude therefore, that in all things not contrary to the moral law, (that is to say, to the law of nature,) all subjects are bound to obey that for divine law, which is declared to be so, by the laws of the commonwealth. Which also is evident to any man’s reason; for whatsoever is not against the law of nature, may be made law in the name of them that have the sovereign power; and there is no reason men should be the less obliged by it, when it is propounded in the name of God. Besides, there is no place in theworld where men are permitted to pretend other commandments of God, than are declared for such by the commonwealth. Christian states punish those that revolt from Christian religion, and all other states, those that set up any religion by them forbidden. For in whatsoever is not regulated by the commonwealth, it is equity, (which is the law of nature, and therefore an eternal law of God) that every man equally enjoy his liberty.
That is, lacks.
Hobbes discusses Paul’s injunction in Romans 13:1–6, to be subject to the higher powers in Leviathan 3.42.10.526 and 3.42.102.589.
Naaman and Nicodemus, Jesus’ reluctant disciple, were often cited in this period as examples of licit religious dissimulation in the Bible; see Carlo Ginzburg, Il Nicodemismo: Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’Europa del cinquecento (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1970), pp. 61–84. For dissimulation in Bodin, see Diego Quaglioni, ‘Jean Bodino Nicodemita?’ Il Pensiero Politico 17, (1984): 319–334. Quaglioni asserts that religious dissimulation bespeaks its advocates’ awareness of the impossibility of a profound renovation of religious sentiment.
On the necessity of rejecting Aristotle’s ‘localism’ in favor of a theory of natural laws whose force all could recognize, see Richard Tuck, ‘The “Modern” Theory of Natural Law,’ The Languages of Political Theory in Early-modern Europe ed. by Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 99–119.
Hobbes, however, urges sovereigns to lead and prescribe the forms of public worship to be used in their lands; see above, p. 302.
Answer EW IV, p. 340. See Robert Louis Wilken, ‘In Defense of Constantine,’ First Things 112 (2001): 36–40, for a discussion of the intolerance of paganism, especially that of Porphyry. See also Appendix §§133.
For Rousseau, not unlike Machiavelli and Nietzsche, ‘Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that it always profits by such a regime. True Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and do not much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes.’ See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract trans. by G.D. Cole (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952), pp. 436–439. The opposite of such criticism appears in Hobbes, who in fact privileges precisely that freedom of thought which must undermine those’ social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen and faithful subject.’ Ibid. See the seminal article on this subject by Robert N. Bellah, ‘Civil Religion in America,’ Dædalus 96 (1967): 1–21. Hobbes’s appeal to his fellow-citizens is not to their sentiments but to their reason, faith and interest. In emphasizing free thought in this context, he perpetuates precisely that religious inwardness that Marx critiqued in his essay on the Jewish question.
See Leviathan 3.37.13.476.
See Answer, EW IV, p. 339.
See Leviathan 3.42.11.527.
See Leviathan 3.32.5.410.
This element in Hobbes’s thought upset Carl Schmitt, who saw in it the’ seed of death that destroyed the mighty Leviathan from the inside and killed the mortal god;’ quoted in Wolfgang Palaver, ‘Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity,’ Contagion 2 (1995): 57–74, p. 69.
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(2006). Hobbes in Exile. In: Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d’histoire des idées, vol 195. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4468-2_4
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