Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes and Christianity: A Literature Review

Modern Christian Political ThoughtPOL 644

Dr. David WalshSpring 2015

Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes and Christianity: ALiterature Review

Shaun Rieley

When Thomas Hobbes’s magnum opus Leviathan appeared in 1651 it

caused quite a stir, prompting accusations of atheism and

denouncements of Hobbes as wicked. Since then, he has often been

interpreted as the first political theorist to disconnect

political thought from theology, allowing for the establishment

of secular states that subvert religion to political exigencies.

These interpretations persist despite the fact that Hobbes deals

extensively with theology in Leviathan. This fact has been

interpreted in various ways by those who hold Hobbes to be a

covert secularist atheist, from understanding it as an exoteric

gloss on a esoteric teaching, to viewing it as an open discussion

of the way to use of religion for political power. Recent

scholarship, however, has in some cases, reinterpreted Hobbes as

a theist, a heterodox Christian, and even a relatively orthodox

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Protestant Christian. In this paper we will examine these

divergent interpretations of Hobbes’s political theory and

theology and address the ambiguities in his thought and his

historical setting that lead to these diverse interpretations.

It is fairly undisputed that Hobbes rejects both the

Catholic scholastic thought of the medieval period, and the

classical philosophy of Aristotle. It is also certain that he

was a materialist of some kind – his accounts of epistemology and

philosophical anthropology in the first chapters of Leviathan

confirm this, as does his treatment of angels, souls, and God.

But recent scholarship shows that it is less clear that his

accounts stand outside of orthodox Protestant thought that

flourished after the Reformation both on the Continent, and in

England. In this essay, we will examine some of the various

interpretations of Hobbes’s thought, and its implications for

political philosophy and political theology.

The advent of the Reformation in the early 16th century

upturned many of the authoritative teachings of the Roman

Catholic Church, and – even more disruptively – questioned the

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very teaching authority of the Church in religious matters.

Simultaneously, the Copernican revolution was working a similar

undermining of the Church’s scientific teachings insofar as she

was as a defender of Aristotelian natural philosophy. Thus, the

Church’s authority was being eroded from two sides, leaving a

vacuum waiting to be filled by new teachings.

The loss of the sense of authority associated with the

teachings of Aristotle that had existed since the 13th Century

when St. Thomas Aquinas had synthesized Christian and

Aristotelian thought in his works including the Summa Theologica

and the Summa Contra Gentiles had begun with late Scholastic

thinkers including William of Ockham and Duns Scotus, but were

brought fully to bear in the Reformation with the teachings of

Martin Luther. The Reformers, including Luther, explicitly

attacked the synthesis of Greek and Christian thought, and hoped

to return to the simplicity of Christianity as practiced and

professed by the early Church (at least insofar as they

interpreted those practices and professions). John Calvin

extended this attack, and Hobbes is thought by some to subscribe

to Calvin’s theology. 3

It is important to distinguish between Christian thought as

it was understood through the lens of Reformation thought and the

Christian tradition that had since at least St. Augustine – and

arguably as early as St. John’s gospel – heavily incorporated

Hellenistic philosophy to express Christian concepts. The

undermining of the Hellenist-Christian edifice that culminated in

the Catholic-Scholastic thought of the high Middle Ages by the

Reformation demanded a rethinking of many of the philosophical,

anthropological, theological, and epistemological assumptions

that had been at least latent –if not explicit – in Christian

thought for centuries.

Meanwhile, Aristotelian natural science – which Aquinas and

other Scholastics has incorporated into their theology – was

being challenged by both new discoveries, as well as the

introduction of new methodologies. The triumph of the Copernican

model of the cosmos upset older (Aristotelian and Ptolemaic)

models which held the Earth to be the center of the universe.

This, it was thought, put into doubt theological assumptions

regarding the uniqueness of the Earth and of mankind in creation.

Furthermore, the critique of Scholastic Aristotelianism’s 4

deductive methodology was being mounted by thinkers such as

Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, who advocated for the

substitution of induction for deduction in natural philosophy,

effectively birthing modern natural science.

It was from this intellectual milieu that Thomas Hobbes

emerged. The critique of Aristotelian Scholasticism made

available by the convergence of Protestant thought and Baconian

natural science were the tools Hobbes utilized in his attempt to

create a new science of politics. However, his radical rejection

of Greek thought was not uncontroversial, even among Protestants

who held the Christian tradition (as an interpreter of Scripture)

to be authoritative, and who held materialism to be at odds with

orthodox Christian thought. This led to charges of atheism in

his own day, and he was harshly critiqued. This interpretation

of Hobbes’s thought has continued up through the 20th Century.

However, recent scholarship has challenged this standard

interpretation, instead seeing Hobbes as a radical (if somewhat

unorthodox) Protestant, rather than the atheist that he has been

depicted as since his own day, or at least a sincere theist who

utilized elements of Protestantism as polemic weapons.5

Criticism of Hobbes in his Own Day

In his book The Hunting of Leviathan, Samuel I. Mintz lays out

the contemporary setting into which Hobbes’ Leviathan appeared, and

documents the reactions it engendered from contemporaries. As was

previously mentioned, Leviathan resulted in a great deal of outrage

in his own day, with various scholars and clergymen taking aim at

its premises and doctrines. “Hobbes was a nominalist and a

materialist,” Mintz bluntly states, and Hobbes “elaborated his

system on the basis of a fundamentally nominalistic account of

knowledge and a fundamentally materialistic account of the

universe.”1 Immediately we see serious points of contention

which would have invited criticism.

In his nominalism, Hobbes followed English medieval

Scholastic philosopher William of Ockham, who held that

universals have no real existence – they exist in name only;

hence “nominalism”.2 It is notable that Martin Luther followed

this position as well to an extent, as did other of the 1 Mintz, Samuel I., The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 23.2 As F.C. Copleston put it in describing Ockham’s nominalism: “Universality isnot an attribute of things: it is a function of terms in the proposition.” (Medieval Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row 1961), p. 127))

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reformers, and as such, it would have been somewhat in the

mainstream of much Protestant thinking at the time.

Nevertheless, this position remained controversial, especially in

its extreme forms, and as Mintz points out, the “radical element

in Hobbes’s nominalism...[is that] there are no universals but

names; nor is there a scale or order of values except as is created by the mind of

man.”3 This follows, according to Mintz, because for Hobbes,

“language is an ‘arbitrary institution’, and the meanings of

words are conventional,” such that “the names given to ethical

judgments, such as ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘just’, wicked’, are also

conventional…”4 Because of this, Hobbes jettisoned the notion of

natural law as it had been traditionally understood as derived

from nature or nature’s God. Law, for Hobbes, is by convention;

no law is “natural” in the sense of prior to the establishment of

the social contract. “What Hobbes had done is secularize the

traditional concept of natural law,” writes Mintz.5 That is,

Hobbes has removed it from any idea of it being derived from a

divine source, and, because of the relativization of values

3 Mintz, pp. 24-25, emphasis mine.4 Ibid.5 Mintz, p. 27

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correlated with his nominalism, from any concept of it being

ordered to a summum bonum. This, says Mintz, was tantamount to

atheism for many of Hobbes’s contemporaries, and was seen as “an

attack on specifically Christian values.”6 This removal of

natural law from a divine origin – and its implied atheism –

outraged many of the contemporary commentators Hobbes, as Mintz

notes: “Natural law, the critics declared, is absolute and

immutable; its final arbiter is God, not man; it is not the

creation of the civil magistrate; it precedes positive civil law,

and positive law presupposed it. It is morally well and

logically binding, laid up in the bosom of God.”7

Hobbes’s critics also attacked his materialism. Hobbes

materialism, like all materialism, holds that the true

constitution of reality is material; reality, is, at is most

fundamental level, comprised of matter. This essentially means

that “mind” or “spirit” are simply non-existent in any

fundamental way, and that to any extent that they can be said to

exist, they are parasitical on matter, and motion is simply

6 Mintz, p. 28.7 Ibid.

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understood in purely mechanical terms. Taken to its logical

conclusion, this way of viewing the world eliminates the

possibility of final cause, and even free will.

Descartes, another philosopher who advocated for a

mechanistic view of nature, recognized this and demurred,

separating mind from matter in his famous res cogitans/res extensa

dichotomy in order to preserve free will and final cause in the

mind. Hobbes has no such scruples, and holds that all things are

reducible to matter – even mind. It is interesting to note, as

Mintz points out, that nowhere in Hobbes’s corpus does he attempt

to prove that the cosmos is reducible to matter:

His materialist assumptions rest on no surerfoundation than his sincere belief that theywere true. He identified matter withsubstance, and on the basis of this was able toshow that ‘immaterial substance’ is acontradiction in terms. But his assumptionthat there can be no other substance thanmatter is gratuitous and unproved.8

8 Mintz, p. 67. For an interesting discussion of the meaning of Hobbes’ lack of attempted proof on this point, see Robert P. Kraynak’s essay “Hobbes and the Dogmatism of the Enlightenment” inModern Enlightenment and the Rule of Reason, John D. McCarthy, ed. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998), pp. 77-91

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At any rate, Hobbes’s materialism engendered strong

reactions from his contemporaries, not least because

materialism had long been associated with the atomistic

philosophy of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius – ancient

philosophers radically opposed to a cosmology consistent

with a Christian understanding. But the objections went

beyond that association. Mintz quotes Bishop John Bramhall

as representative of Hobbes critics on the matter: “by

taking away all incorporeal substance, [Hobbes] taketh away

God himself…Either God is incorporeal, or he is finite, and

consists of parts, and consequently is no God.”9 It is

notable that, unlike today, materialism and atheism were not

synonymous, and Hobbes does, of course, claim to believe in

God, albeit a “material” God. But, as Mintz quotes Bishop

Bramhall, materialism is “that main root of Atheisme, from

which so many lesser branches are daily sprouting up.”10 In

other words, materialism leads to atheism, but is not identical

with it. Nevertheless, for Hobbes’s contemporaries, even

9 Mintz, p. 67. Quoted from John Bramhall, The Catching of Leviathan in Works (Dublin, 1676), Tome III, p. 87310 Ibid.

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promoting a philosophy that tended toward atheism was often

branded atheistic.11

Hence, since its beginning, the philosophy of Hobbes

has been, at the very least accused of being atheistic in

tendency if not in fact. This interpretation has become, as

Willis B. Glover quotes John W.N. Watkins, “the orthodox

undergraduate view of Hobbes.”12 20th century scholarship,

however, began to uncover a side of Hobbes rarely seen

prior: a Hobbes who, while somewhat unorthodox, was not far

afield of the mainstream Protestant thought of his time.

Even the goal of the Hobbesian project has come under

dispute, with some arguing that he means to definitively

detach political legitimacy from theological sources and

create a scientific, rationalistic, and secular basis for

political theory, and others arguing that he is attempting

to reconcile Christianity with modern science, and still

11 A.P. Martinich has demonstrated that “atheist” was an epithet hurled about haphazardly in Hobbes’ day. See his The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 19-30. This work will be discussed in more detail later.12 Glover, Willis B., “God and Thomas Hobbes” in Hobbes Studies, K.C. Brown, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 141

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others asserting that he aims to purge Christianity of the

Hellenistic influences that had crept in since the time of

the early Church – especially in Scholasticism – and return

to a simple, primitive form of Christianity.

Interpretations of Hobbes: Anti-Christian Secularist

In 1936, then-relatively unknown German political

philosopher Leo Strauss published a book entitled The Political

Philosophy of Hobbes, which provides an interpretation of

Hobbes’s political philosophy, and a very early development

of Strauss’ method of skeptical “reading between the lines,”

that is, looking for textual inconsistencies and applying a

hermeneutic of suspicion based on the assumption that

thinker of the first tier are unable to openly convey their

teachings due to political hostility.13 It is in this

context that Strauss interprets Hobbes. It is interesting

to note, however, that Strauss’ interpretation ultimately

varies little from the interpretations of Hobbes’s thought

proffered by Hobbes’s peers. At any rate, Strauss asserts

13 For more on Strauss’ understanding of “reading between the lines” see his essay “Persecution and the Art of Writing”, Social Research, 8:1/4 (1941) pp. 488-504

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In order to hide the dangerous nature of[Hobbes skepticism about the possibility ofknowledge of God], to keep up appearance thathe attacked only scholastic theology and notthe religion of the Scripture itself, Hobbesfought his battle against natural theology inthe name of strict belief in Scriptures andat the same time undermines that belief byhis historical and philosophical criticism ofthe authority of the Scriptures.14

Strauss then contends that Hobbes’s increasing Biblicism was

an indication of Hobbes increasing doubt of the possibility

of natural theology; that is, Hobbes relies on an extreme

form of Protestant thought, centering on the doctrine of

sola scriptura, to advance his skeptical philosophy undetected

to all but the most astute readers. Hobbes’s tendency,

according to Strauss, is “to replace natural theology with a

pretended revealed theology.”15 Hobbes, then, is insincere in

his professed Christianity, in Strauss’ interpretation, and

only utilizes the language of Protestant Christianity in

order to advance his real agenda of atheistic scientific

rationalism, by undermining the possibility of theology

(understood as knowledge of God) and the reliability of

14 Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1936),p. 7615 Strauss (1936), p. 77 (Emphasis Mine).

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revelation, through Scripture or otherwise.

Strauss’ interpretation is repeated – though shortened

– in Strauss’ influential work Natural Right and History.16

There, Strauss admits to ignorance of Hobbes’s “Private

thoughts,” but makes clear that “[Hobbes’s] natural

philosophy is as atheistic as Epicurean physics.”17

Hobbes’s “philosophy as a whole may be said to be the

classic example of the typically modern combination of

political idealism with a materialistic and atheistic view

of the whole,”18 according to Strauss. However, Strauss

does little to explain why, if he is in fact an atheist

intent on undermining the edifice of Christian thought,

Hobbes opts to engage in extensive Biblical exegesis in the

second half of Leviathan (and elsewhere) other than the

somewhat implausible suggestion that it solely represents a

cover for his true radicalism.19

16 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).17 Strauss (1953), p. 170.18 Ibid.19 As we will see, other interpreters of Hobbes have criticized this explanation as improbable given that someone looking for this kind of cover would likely aim to incite as little immediate controversy as possible. As we have seen, that was certainly not the case.

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Thomas Pangle, a noted student of Leo Strauss, takes

up this question in an essay entitled “A Critique of

Hobbes’s Critique of Biblical and Natural Religion in

Leviathan.”20 In that essay, Pangle examines the “puzzle” of

Hobbes’s rhetorical strategy in Leviathan, asking the

question “Which is Hobbes’s deepest intention: to show that

his teaching is in accord with Scripture; or, to show how

far it departs from Scripture, and how unreasonably

demanding and vindictive the scriptural morality is?” The

remainder of the essay is dedicated to demonstrating that

Hobbes’s Biblicism is less than sincere, and aimed at

undermining the authority of Scripture, rather than showing

itself to be in line with the teaching of the Bible. “No

doubt Hobbes provides for himself…a thin veil of apparently

earnest Biblicism” says Pangle, “and the parameters of one

or another Christian outlook.”21 Still, “Hobbes’s biblical

interpretation is…sharply provocative and unsettling…and it

seems clear that Hobbes intends to incite controversy.”22 20 Pangle, Thomas, “Critique of Hobbes’s Critique of Biblical and Natural Religion in Leviathan”, Jewish Political Studies Review, 4:2 (Fall 1992), pp. 25-57.21 Pangle, p. 3122 Ibid.

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Despite Hobbes’s extensive engagement with the

teachings of the Bible in the second half of Leviathan (and

elsewhere), Pangle holds that that engagement is ironic:

“Hobbes provides an anti-biblical argumentation consisting

in a detailed and painstaking exegesis that claims to

expose, from the Bible itself, the total inadequacy of the

biblical faith as a sensible guide to human life.”23 The

fact that “the detailed discussion of the Bible and revealed

doctrine in Parts Three and Four of Leviathan comes after the

elaboration of Hobbes’s own doctrine of human nature,

natural law, and sovereignty means, for Pangle, that it is

inessential to Hobbes’s system of thought.24 In other

words, Pangle contends that the fact that Hobbes promulgates

a complete system of political philosophy without recourse

to a divine source in the first two parts of Leviathan – and

only deals significantly with Scripture in the second half

of the work – demonstrates his contempt for the alleged

necessity to root the legitimacy of political order in the

transcendent in Classical and Christian political philosophy

23 Pangle, p. 41.24 Ibid, emphasis original.

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and political theology. Hobbes, in Pangle’s estimation,

first makes Scripture irrelevant in order to explain

political order, and then demonstrates that its teachings

are absurd, and actually inimical to true political order.

Laurence Burns, another student of Leo Strauss who

taught for many years at St. John’s College, Annapolis,

authored the essay on Hobbes found in the History of Political

Philosophy25, edited by Strauss and Joseph Cropsey. In that

essay, Burns offers a slightly different interpretation of

Hobbes than that of Strauss – taking the theology proffered

by Hobbes more seriously – but one that is ultimately

consistent with it. Burns begins by discussing Hobbes’

secular political philosophy in some detail. Toward the end

of the essay Burns turns to Hobbes’s Christian theology,

saying that according to Hobbes, “Because, or so long as,

men believe in the power of other men, acting as ministers

of powers invisible…theology…cannot be separated from

political philosophy.”26 Thus, Hobbes is forced to deal 25 Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph, ed., History of Political Philosophy, Third Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 396-420.26 Strauss/Cropsey, p. 416

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with theology because of the recalcitrant beliefs of men,

not because the nature of political philosophy (or political

theory) demands it.

Very briefly, Burns sketches Hobbes’s tracing of the

history of political order from Creation, to the direct

rulership of God over the ancient Jews: “The first in the

kingdom of God was Abraham with whom God made a contract…

Thus God was instituted as the civil sovereign of the

Jews.”27 God directly spoke to Abraham, giving Abraham

binding authority over his people. Similarly, “in every

commonwealth those with no supernatural revelation to the

contrary ought to obey the laws of their own sovereign in

all external acts and profession of religion.”28 For Hobbes,

then, “the sole article of faith necessary for Christian” is

to believe “That Jesus is the Christ,” and therefore it does

not endanger one’s soul to deny any of the other ancient

beliefs of orthodoxy or associated with the Creeds.

Further, even if one is required by one’s sovereign

27 Ibid.28 Ibid.

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participate in actions that deny the Lordship of Christ –

such as worshipping false idols – it is not it does not fall

on the conscience of the subject, but rather on that of the

sovereign. Thus, “it is never just for Christians, or

anyone else, to attempt to depose even an infidel or

heretical king once he has been established” because that

would violate faith and is “thereby against the law of

nature which is the eternal law of God.”29 At any rate, a

‘church,” as Burns interprets Hobbes, “means nothing more

than a Christian commonwealth,” that is, a commonwealth

headed by a Christian sovereign, which makes it clear that

“the distinction between spiritual and temporal government

is false. All government in this life, both of the state

and of religion, is temporal and under the command of one

civil sovereign.”30

After sketching Hobbes’s theology, Burns asserts that

“”The overall conclusion that Hobbes evidently wanted the

readers of his theology to draw was that there was really no

29 Strauss, Cropsey, p. 418.30 Ibid.

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essential difference between the Word of God as revealed in

the scriptures and the word of Hobbes set down in his

political philosophy.”31 This echoes Pangle’s question

regarding whether the deepest intent of Hobbes’s project is

to reconcile his philosophy with the Christian faith or to

undermine the Christian faith and the authority of

Scripture. While Burns seems to indicate the former is the

case, he goes on to recognize that “one is forced to raise

the question of whether Hobbes believed the truth of his

theology.” He notes that Hobbes does state that existence

ought to be attributed to God, for as Hobbes says “no man

can have the will to honor that which he thinks not to have

any being”. But, Burns continues, “the relation between

truth and worship or honor is by no means unambiguous.”

This is because, as Hobbes says, “all words and actions that

betoken fear to offend, or desire to please, is worship,

whether these words or actions be sincere or feigned: and because they

appear as signs of honoring, are ordinarily called Honor.”32

Hence, Hobbes leaves the possibility that worship and honor

31 Strauss/Cropsey, p. 41932 Ibid, emphasis mine.

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could be feigned, which seems to leave the possibility of

deception with regard to his own beliefs. “Because of these

and many other statements, Hobbes became notorious as an

atheist during his own lifetime.”33 Burns concludes by

suggesting that the most charitable reading of Hobbes is

that “in his dauntless zeal to destroy all opinions which he

believed to be inimical to a proper understanding of the

rights and duties of man, Hobbes showed that, for him,

nothing was more sacred than the pursuit and promulgation of

the philosophic truth.”34

Quentin Skinner, writing in an essay entitled “Hobbes’s

Theory of Political Obligation,”35 attempts to ground his

interpretation of Hobbes in “a methodological as well as an

historical” argument.36 Like Mintz, he aims to analyze the

historical milieu from which Hobbes came, and to which

Hobbes addressed his political theory. In section V of that

essay, he takes up the question of “how a failure to take

33 Ibid.34 Strauss/Cropsey, p. 41935 Skinner, Quinten, Visions of Politics Volume III: Hobbes and Civil Science, (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2001), pp. 264-286.36 Skinner, 285.

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account of [Hobbes’s context] has arguably had a damaging

effect on the exegesis of Hobbes’ political thought, and

notably on the understanding of his theory of political

obligation.”37

Skinner specifically hones in on the notion that some

of Hobbes’s interpreters38 have put forth that Hobbes theory

of political obligation represents a form of deontological

morality. That is, it is derived from duty, rather than

self-interest. As Skinner puts it, on this reading, for

Hobbes “A subject comes to feel obliged, on this reading,

not primarily by making calculations of oblique self-

interest, but rather by acknowledging a prior obligation to

obey the laws of nature in virtue of recognizing them to be

the commands of God.”39 These commands, then, are

intelligible to reason, and are binding by virtue of their

being the command of God, rather than because they are in

37 Skinner, 281.38 Namely, Howard Warrender, John Plamenatz, and F.C. Hood. It should be noted that the views represented by these interpreters, while similar, are not identical – see Plamenatz’s essay Mr. Warreder’s Hobbes and Warrender’s A Reply to Mr. Plamenatz in Brown, pp. 73-100.39 Skinner, p. 281.

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the calculated interest of the contracting individual.

Skinner quotes A.E. Taylor as best summarizing the position

that he seeks to critique – noting that Taylor is the first

interpreter to offer the deontological interpretation of

Hobbes: “Hobbes, we have to assume, ‘meant quite literally

what he so often says, that the “natural law” is the command

of God, and to be obeyed because it is God’s command.’”40

Skinner offers a blunt rejoinder to Taylor’s position:

“I cannot myself find a single passage, at least in Leviathan,

in which Hobbes presents the deontological argument that,

according to Taylor, he ‘so often” enunciates.”41 However,

as was previously noted, Skinner is not particularly

interested in critiquing any particular exegetical reading

of Hobbes. Rather, he wants to examine the context of the

arguments presented by Hobbes. From this perspective,

Skinner deploys an interesting fact:

If Hobbes intended to ground politicalobligation on a prior duty to obey thecommands of God, then if follows that everycontem-porary – every follower, every

40 Skinner, p. 282.41 Ibid.

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opponent, every sympathizer – equally missedthe point of his theory. Furthermore, theywere all mistaken in exactly the same way.42

This is an important point, which serves as a serious

challenge both those who would interpret Hobbes as taking

seriously the connection between his conception of natural

law and God, as well as those (such as Strauss) who would

explain Hobbes’ use of biblical exegesis to mask his

atheism.43 For it seems that if Hobbes’s intention was to

avoid persecution for his unorthodox beliefs, he seems to

have failed, drawing vicious attacks on his philosophy

nearly immediately.

Skinner then drives home his point by citing numerous

examples of Hobbes’s contemporaries, both critics as well as

supporters, commenting on Hobbes’s work. One of these

citations includes a summary of Hobbes’s work in five

principles by a follower of Hobbes, the final of which is

“That there is a Desireable [sic] Glory in Being and being

42 Ibid.43 See, for example, Strauss’ comment quoted above (pp. 7-8) that Hobbes deploys his religious language in such a way that it would “hide the dangerous nature of his skepticism” rather than appearing to “attack the religion of the Scripture itself.”

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reputed an Athiest.”44 Many of Hobbes’s critics, Skinner

notes, “go out of their way to emphasize…Hobbes’s ‘thorough

novelty’. They see in Hobbes no element of a traditional

moral outlook.”45 Against those modern commentators who

hold Hobbes forth as an expounder of a traditional doctrine

of natural law or Divine command theory, Skinner retorts:

“to concede [the claim that how Hobbes was understood in his

own time is irrelevant] is to complete the paradox. Hobbes

himself is turned into the least credible figure of all.”

This is because he has to be understood as expounding his

theory of traditional natural law “in a manner so convoluted

that it was everywhere taken for the work of a man prepared…

to ‘take his Sovereign for better, but not for worse.”46

Further, Hobbes “fail[ed] altogether to disown the

alarmingly heterodox writers who cited his authority, or

disarm his innumerable critics by pointing out their

44 Skinner, p. 283.45 Ibid.46 This is, it seems, a reference to the anti-deontological nature of Hobbes theory, as he was understood. In other words, the natural law is not binding because it is given by God, and participates in the Divine Law and Eternal Law (Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II Q 91), but rather because it results from the calculations of rational self-interest.

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complete misunderstanding of his arguments. It becomes

extraordinary that Hobbes never did any of these things.”47

Skinner concludes: “It becomes clear…that however plausible

the deontological interpretation of Hobbes’s theory of

obligation may be as a reading of Leviathan, the price of

accepting it is to remove most of the points of contact

between Hobbes and the intellectual milieu in which he lived

and worked.”48 Hence, Skinner holds that Hobbes must be

read taking into account how he was understood by his

contemporaries, and the meaning of his reaction (or lack

thereof) to their interpretations.

In other words, in order to understand what Hobbes intended

by his work, it is insufficient to fixate on the text of the

work itself; one must also look to the man and context.

Hobbes and Christianity: Reassessing the Bible in Leviathan, by Paul

D. Cooke, presents a book-length treatment of the question

at hand, that is, the relationship of Hobbes and

47 Skinner, pp. 284-285.48 Skinner, p. 285.

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Christianity.49 Cooke’s Hobbes is a subversive anti-

Christian thinker, who was, nevertheless, careful to present

his theory in such a way that, while his most learned

readers would understand his intent (hence the prescience of

both his supporters and detractors), while the “largest

element of his potential readership”50 would remain ignorant

of his true teaching, both because he did not wish to

destabilize society by removing a bulwark that the masses

depended on too quickly, and because he did not want them to

reject his teaching out of hand, instead hoping that it

would act as a slow solvent, eating away at the foundations

of the society resting explicitly on Christian foundations.

Cooke gives three possible interpretations that his

readers may take:

First – one of the outraged indignation oftraditional faith; second – a sense ofskepticism share with Hobbes abouttraditional Christian faith, and an aware ofthe extent of human freedom and isolationfrom anything above man in the universe; and

49 Cooke, Paul D., Hobbes and Christianity: Reassessing the Bible in Leviathan, (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996).50 Cooke, p. 20.

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third, the view he made most room for, thatwhich provided for those who required areligious footing upon which to stand beforetheir full commitment to any newunderstanding of justice and the moral ordercould be expected.51

According to Cooke, astute devout Christian readers would

pick up on the implications of Hobbes’s philosophy, and,

clinging to traditional Christian faith, would attack it.

This accounts for much of the opposition from clerics in

Hobbes’s time. Astute readers who were less devout would

pick up on those same implications and feel emboldened by

Hobbes’s new philosophy. This accounts for the followers of

Hobbes who cited him in opposition to traditional

Christianity. Less astute readers would have their

traditional faith unshaken by the more esoteric teaching of

Hobbes, and would accept Hobbes’s teaching as new, but not

inconsistent with the tradition of Christianity that they

clung to.

Cooke then lays out a brief overview of the controversy

surrounding Hobbes’ relationship with Christianity. In

brief, Cooke says, Hobbes’s thought had been interpreted in 51 Ibid.

28

an atheistic, anti-Christian way since his own day.

However, in 1870 Thomas Hunt published Religious Thought in

England in which Hunt notes that ‘“Hobbes has been a name of

terror to the religious world,’ called ‘atheist, infidel,

monster.’”52 But, Hunt continued, “not only is Hobbes a

professed believer in Christianity, but in the most orthodox

form of it.”53 But, Cooke asserts, it becomes impossible

for Hunt to fully interpret Hobbes with that working

assumption: “Though Hunt affirms Hobbes’s religiosity, at

the end of his survey he cannot deny that Hobbes seems to

belie Christian faith by making the sovereign the originator

of both religion and morality.”54 Nevertheless, Cooke

points to this reinterpretation of Hobbes as the starting

point for a new understanding of Hobbes’ teaching: Hobbes as

pious Christian.

From there, Cooke recounts the growing number of

scholars over the course of the 20th Century who accepted

this position, and expounded upon it, including A.E. Taylor,

52 Cooke, p. 22.53 Ibid.54 Ibid.

29

Howard Warrender, Paul J. Johnson, F.C. Hood, and A.P.

Martinich.55 Cooke, however, emphasizes that his intent is

to show that this position is an untenable reading of

Hobbes, and that these interpretations play into Hobbes’

hands: “Hobbes sought to persuade the largest group of his

readers that the Bible and Christian theology supported his

political teaching based on the human freedom outlined in

the first part of Leviathan…”56 Cooke contends, in other

words, that such interpretations fail to rise to the level

of the perceptive reader who, for better or worse, would

understand the radical implications of Hobbes’ teachings.

Cooke then explicates Hobbes writing, focusing first on

the “Nontheistic Foundation of the First Half” of Leviathan,57

wherein he engages the thesis of Howard Warrender’s Political

Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation, which focuses on

Chapters 13 through 15 of Leviathan. The crux of this

criticism is that Warrender has misinterpreted Hobbes

because of his credulous taking of Hobbes at his word, and 55 We will examine the work some of these scholars in more depth at a later point in the paper.56 Cooke, p. 63.57 The title of Cooke’s Chapter 3.

30

his thesis that in Hobbes’ philosophy “the obligation of the

citizen to obey the civil law…is essentially independent of

the fiat of the civil sovereign”58 because the power of God

obligates even in the state of nature is fundamentally

flawed. After a fairly extended engagement with

Warrender’s thesis, Cooke concludes that Hobbes’ “‘articles

of peace’ found out by reason…are said to be ‘laws of

nature,’ but they are not natural laws in the classical or

medieval sense of the natural law generated by some higher

being or some ideal, but in the modern sense – generated

through impersonal nature.”59

Cooke also critiques Warrender, and others, for failing

to engage the second half of Leviathan. In the second half,

Cooke claims, Hobbes is “addressing unseen interlocutors

among his audience who might be willing to embrace his

science of natural justice, but first demand a defense for

what he is doing that takes their Christian concerns into

consideration or leave their religious predispositions 58 Warrender, Howard, Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 7.59 Cooke, p. 61.

31

intact.”60 In other words, Hobbes lays out a complete

system in the first half of Leviathan, but recognizes that in

order to gain converts he must reinterpret scripture to

demonstrate its compatibility with his system. Further, he

contends that “The purpose of the second half of Leviathan

is to add a justification for community, for purposeful

life, and consequently, for virtue, back into a formula that

fundamentally lacks such motivations for cohesion.”61 Thus,

“The second half of Leviathan…may be understood in part as a

response to invisible interlocutors who demand protection

for the most private yearnings beyond mere protection of

their lives and safety, even while they have been persuaded

of the primary importance of worldly peace and safety.”62

That is, in the first half, Hobbes promulgates a complete,

but reductionistic, theory. In the second half, he

reinstates some of what he has pulled out in the first half,

not because it is theoretically necessary, but because it is

rhetorically useful. The thrust of the argument then, as

60 Cooke, p. 204.61 Cooke, p. 207.62 Ibid.

32

Cooke intimates in the title of the section “The Second Half

of Leviathan as Instruction on How to Tame Religion” is that

the first half of Leviathan…does not clearlydemonstrate how the Leviathan regime is to‘domesticate’ religion to deprive it of thecapacity to disturb peace and safety. Thefirst half of Leviathan contains noinstruction regarding how a religion may be‘tamed to serve human freedom based solely onman’s good in this world.63

Religion, then, in Cooke’s interpretation of Hobbes, does

not supply the basis of political order, but rather is a

force to be subdued in order to prevent religious wars

within the commonwealth. The second half of Leviathan

provides this subduing action by reinterpreting the Bible in

a way that is consistent with Hobbes’s naturalistic account

of political order in the first half, thereby removing many

of the impediments for those who are resistant to his

political philosophy.

Hobbes as a Christian

63 Cooke, pp. 207-208.

33

As was mentioned above, in the early to mid 20th

century, a new interpretation of Hobbes’s thought emerged

among scholars of his work. That interpretation sought to

show that Hobbes, far from being’s an anti-Christian

iconoclast, was instead a sincere Christian who, faced with

the exigencies of his time, rose to the task of squaring

Christian belief with the challenge posed by modern science,

and of finding a way for Christian belief and stable

political order to coexist. What is clear is that Hobbes

intends to attack the Roman Catholic Church, as well as

Aristotelian thought as interpreted through the Catholic

Church and medieval scholastic thought; what is up for

debate is the standpoint from which Hobbes attacks. The

previous interpretations held that it was from a secularist

perspective. The interpretations that we will examine in

this section hold that it is from some sort of post-

Reformation, loosely (or devoutly) Protestant Christian

position.

34

There appear to be two primary ways to interpret Hobbes

as a sincere Christian. The first is that he is simply an

orthodox Christian, even though his views were not

particularly popular in his cultural milieu. This

explains, for those who defend this view, the harsh reaction

Hobbes received in his own time. The second is that he was

a sincere Christian, but not an orthodox one. That is, he

sincerely believed that Christianity was true, but his

conception of it was beyond the pale of orthodox Christian

belief, or was truncated to the point that the fullness of

orthodox Christian belief was lacking from Hobbes’s scheme.

Michael Oakeshott, in his famous essay “Introduction to

Leviathan” agrees with Paul Cooke’s construal of the goal of

Hobbes’s thought (examined above) – that is, that Hobbes

wishes to enlist religion for the maintenance of political

order, and eliminate the elements of religion that tend

toward political discord – but it seems to be the case that

Oakeshott holds out the possibility for Hobbes to be a

sincere Christian. In section 6 (“Political Theology”) of

Section IV (“Some Topics Considered”) of the essay, 35

Oaskeshott contextualizes Hobbes’s project in the broader

scope of Western thought:

Long before the time of Hobbes the severanceof religion from civil life, which was one ofthe effects of early Christianity, had beenrepealed. But the significant changeobservable in the seventeenth century was theappearance of states in which religion andcivil life were assimilated to one another asclosely as the universalist tradition ofChristianity would permit. It was asituation reminiscent at least of the ancientworld, where religion was a communal cultus ofthe communal deities.64

Hobbes, Oakeshott argues, is advocating for a return to the

ancient practice of the cultus, that is, of the religion of

the particular city or society, against the medieval

understanding of a universal Christianity that transcended

any particular society – in other words, he rejected a

“catholic” church in favor of a particularist understanding

of the church. In the wake of the reformation, with the

death of the authoritative position of medieval

Christianity, Oakeshott explains, “There appeared to be two

possible ways out of this chaos of religious belief. There

64 Oakeshott, Michael, “Introduction to Leviathan” in Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund), pp. 73-74.

36

was first the way of natural religion [that is, religion

founded on “the light of natural Reason”]…The other way was

that of a civil religion, not the construction of reason,

but of authority, concerned not with belief but with

practice, aiming not a undeniable truth but at peace.”65

Hobbes’s system rested on the latter.

Hobbes, Oakeshott argues, holds “religious beliefs,”

that is, actual religious beliefs, equivalent with

Christianity. “He was not concerned to reform those beliefs

in the interest of some universal, rational truth about God

and the world to come, but to remove from them the power to

disrupt society.”66 Contrary to Lucrecius’ earlier project

in De Rerum Natura of releasing men from the fears and burdens

of religious beliefs by replacing superstition with true

knowledge, Hobbes was more concerned to make “religion

something not inimical to civilized life.”67 In other

words, Hobbes was not particularly interested in utilizing

theological reasoning to ensure truth in religion – because

65 Oakeshott, p. 75.66 Oakeshott, p. 76.67 Ibid.

37

he was not particularly sanguine about the ability of reason

to lead to true beliefs about religion – but rather was

interested in using theology to buttress his account of the

origin of civilized society, and minimizing the ability of

weak private reason to disrupt social order. If this is

true, it becomes apparent why Hobbes runs the risk of being

understood as either opposed to religion as such (in the

understanding of those who interpret him as a secularist),

or a sincere but unorthodox believer. Hence, defenders of

his orthodoxy are in the minority when considered in the

broad scope of his interpreters.

Paul D. Cooke, in his Hobbes and Christianity,68 helpfully

lays out a brief survey of the rise of the interpretations

departing from the traditional understanding of Hobbes as a

bombastic atheist, barely hiding his contempt for

Christianity but pretending that his criticisms are aimed at

the pagan-influenced scholasticism of the Middle Ages. As

was discussed above, interpretations of Hobbes as a sincere

Christian began in the late 19th century, but rapidly

68 See pp. 17-18 above.

38

expanded through the middle of the 20th Century, culminating

in A.P. Martinich’s 1992 book The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas

Hobbes on Religion and Politics,69 in which Martinich boldly asserts

“My view…is that Hobbes was a sincere, and relatively

orthodox, Christian.”70 But it is Howard Warrender who was

the first to give a book-length treatment of the “sincere

Christian” interpretation of Hobbes.

Warrender’s book, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of

Obligation deals with, as the subtitle indicates, Hobbes’s

theory of obligation, meaning, broadly, it examines what,

for Hobbes, obligates citizens to obey the law and the

sovereign in a political society. As such, he addresses the

issue of Hobbes’s Christianity only incidentally.

Nevertheless, Warrender seems to simply take Hobbes at his

word that he is a sincere theist and Christian – and his

argument proceeds from this premise – for he argues, that

natural laws, which derive from commands of God, apply both

in the state of nature, as well as in society, after a 69 Martinich, A.P., The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics (Cambridge: The University of Cambridge Press, 1992).70 Martinich, p. 1.

39

covenant has been established.71 This is because, according

to Warrender, there is no way to obligate in society if one

is not already obligated in some way outside of it: “A moral

obligation…to obey the civil law cannot logically be

extracted from a system in which man has no moral

obligations before or apart from the institution of that

law.”72 Contrary to how others have interpreted Hobbes,

then, Warrender argues that the laws of nature which Hobbes

enumerates proceed from the commands of God, and men are

obligated to obey them in the state of nature, rather than

merely acting out of self-interest if they so choose: “…

laws of nature are regarded by Hobbes as constituting

obligations for man both in the State of Nature and in civil

society…”73

He lays out Hobbes’s distinction in Leviathan between

three ways in which God governs the world. The first way is

through “a governance over all that exists,” but “this is

not immediately pertinent to the problems of law and moral

71 Cf. Warrender, p. 8072 Warrender, p. 6.73 Warrender, p. 52.

40

obligation.”74 In other words, this “governance” is

extremely general, and has virtually no bearing on the

affairs of humans, aside from the fact that humans are part

of “all that exists”. The second way is through “a natural

kingdom” which is discernible through right reason, and

obliges all who possess that reason.75 The third way is

through “a prophetic kingdom”. This is the way in which

“God governed his chosen people, the Jews, not only by

natural reason but by positive law interpreted by the

prophets.”76 Christians partake in this kingdom through

baptism, which represents a covenant. This comports with

Hobbes’s view that positive law is only binding if it is

preceded by a contract on the part of the parties bound.

Thus, Warrender intimates, natural laws are binding on

all who possess reason, though the positive laws of God are

not. This, then, accounts for the account of natural law

and political legitimacy in the first half of Leviathan

devoid of any explicit theological grounding, while leaving

74 Warrender, p. 83.75 Warrender, p. 84. 76 Ibid.

41

room for a political society which derives directly from

God’s authority, and abides by positive laws promulgated by

God – or at least by God’s prophets. For Warrender, then,

Hobbes’s entire theory stands or falls with his sincere

belief in God and Christianity, because his theory requires

a kind of obligation that holds in the state of nature as

well as in civil society which can only obtain in a world

where the laws of nature are promulgated by God, and

understood and believed by men.

J.G.A. Pocock, who, along Quentin Skinner belongs to a

circle of scholars known as “the Cambridge School,”

nevertheless comes to a very different interpretation of

Hobbes than Skinner. Pocock’s analysis is, in some ways,

related to the analysis offered by Warrender in his essay

“Time, History and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas

Hobbes”.77 Here, Pocock analyzes the distinction between

“history” and “philosophy” (or “science”) in Hobbes’

thought. According to Pocock, philosophy (or “science”), 77 Pocock, J.G.A, “Time, History and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes” in Politics, Language and Time: Essaying on Political Thought and History (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 148-201.

42

for Hobbes, is knowledge of things outside of the temporal –

things which are unchanging, things which are logically

true. “History” on the other hand, consists of things of

“temporal consequence,” that is, things that arise in and

through time.78 Hobbes’s thought, Pocock says, is in a

certain sense, un-historical, but one should be careful

about presuming that this means that the historical has no

bearing on Hobbes’ political thought. Rather, Pocock sees

both “philosophy” and “history” operating in Hobbes. The

first part of Leviathan (Books I and II) represents Hobbes’

unhistorical “philosophical” account of political origins.

The second part (Books III and IV) represents his historical

account. This is because, in the first part, Hobbes gives

an account of how God rules the natural kingdom – including

political natural laws and natural rights which are knowable

by un-historically by reason. In the second part, Hobbes

gives an account of how God rules the prophetic kingdom, that

is, historical workings of God as known through the record

of the Scriptures and his prophets.

78 Pocock, p. 157.

43

Against those who argue that Hobbes did not mean what

he wrote in the second half of Leviathan, Pocock,

acknowledging other interpretations (such as Strauss’) that

discredit the second part as exoteric cover for his esoteric

teaching, states that “the difficulty remains of imagining

why a notoriously arrogant thinker, vehement in his dislike

of ‘insignificant speech,’ should have written and

afterwards defended sixteen chapters of what he held to be

nonsense”.79 He proposes that the orthodox understanding of

Hobbes as an atheist is little more than a prejudice, rather

than derived from what Hobbes actually wrote. He further

points out that “if Hobbes had meant that sacred history

[including Scripture] had no meaning in itself and that the

sovereign might rewrite it to suit the permanent or passing

needs of society, he would hardly have written chapter after

chapter of exegesis with the proclaimed intent of arriving

at the truth about it.”80

79 Pocock, p. 162.80 Pocock, p. 167.

44

The distinction that Pocock wants to draw out is the

different ways in which legitimate governments come about in

each respective kingdom, and the role which covenants play

in each: “In the natural world the covenant sets up

Leviathan, the mortal god…In the prophetic world the people

covenanted with Moses to speak with God for them, and so

obliged themselves to accept as God’s word all that Moses

told them for such.”81 In other words, the first portion of

Leviathan describes the method, ascertained ahistorically by

reason, by which a natural political community comes into

being. The latter portion recounts and interprets the

historical record of the prophetic political community,

established by the prophet of God with the people of God,

and accounts for the way that it continues by way of the

Christian commonwealth in the present, and what will become

of it in the eschaton. Leviathan, Pocock asserts, stresses

the idea that the supreme purpose of Christ’smission is to restore the literal politicalkingdom of God upon the earth that existedfrom Moses to Samuel…since the Jews haverejected Christ’s invitation to reenter the

81 Pocock, p. 170.

45

kingdom, it is now to be exercised over a newpeculiar people, the Christian elect; andthat through the death, ascension andpromised return of Christ, the second kingdomof God is to begin only at his return and atthe resurrection of the saints, which is toend this world and inaugurate a new one.82

In an interesting way, we can see here how Hobbes could

be both a materialist and a sincere Christian, in a way that

is typically not thought possible. For here we see that all

important events in Christianity are reinterpreted as taking

place in the material world. The “kingdom of God” is

understood as a literal kingdom, both in the ancient world,

as well as the modern world, as even in the world to come.

Given that Christianity stresses the essentially

embodied nature of human beings, and because it emphasizes

the resurrection of the body, Pocock says that Christianity

is always drawn toward interpretations that immanitize the

redemption of man. This is results in various

eschatological interpretations which, while combated by St.

Augustine and Catholic tradition, have been picked up by

82 Pocock, p. 172-173.

46

various Protestant sects in order to undermine the

institutional Church. Hobbes’s distaste for the Catholic

Church in general, and the Scholastic thinkers in

particular, causes him to skirt closely to this kind of

millennialism. “Eschatology, prophecy and even

millennialism become weapons in the armory of Protestantism,

whether the Protestant community was seen as a secular

nation organized under a prince, or as a gathered

congregation separated from his obedience.”83 Hobbes, of

course, holds to the former, constructing a “Christian

commonwealth” with the sovereign as the head of both the

Church and the State.

For all that, however, Pocock maintains that “Neither

the use of apocalyptic in Leviathan, nor its mortalism and

materialist literalism, suffice to place Hobbes outside the

mainstream of Protestant thinking.” Nevertheless, “Hobbes’s

thought is anti-sectarian as well as anti-Papal, and it is

here that his role in the Protestant tradition becomes

83 Pocock, p. 178.

47

visibly enigmatic.”84

Hobbes wishes to reduce the content of Christianity to

assent to a single proposition: that “Jesus is the Christ”.

For this he offers various arguments, but, according to

Pocock, Hobbes’s argument is “directed against new presbyter

as well as old priest, and against new saint as well as old

scholastic – against anyone, that is, who may claim that the

process of salvation authorizes civil actions or power in

the present.”85 In this way, salvation is removed from the

Church (as in Catholicism) and it becomes virtually

impossible for one’s salvation to be threatened by a

Christian sovereign, because whatever specific version of

Christian theology the sovereign may enforce, so long as the

subject is not required to repudiate that “Jesus is the

Christ,” his salvation is not endangered, and he loses all

right to refuse civil obedience.

A.P. Martinich’s book The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes

on Religion and Politics, is perhaps the most careful and

84 Pocock, p. 180.85 Pocock, p. 187.

48

comprehensive argument in favor of an interpretation of

Hobbes as a “sincere, and relatively orthodox, Christian.”86

As such, this work represents the most formidable argument

in favor of Hobbes as sincere Christian, not least because

it comprehends and expands upon the scholarship of those

earlier 20th Century scholars who also made the case. This

work effectively and systematically brings all of that

earlier scholarship to bear on the relevant questions, and

pairs it with a rigorous analytic philosophical method, and

with historical context. Because it is so comprehensive,

this paper cannot do justice to the scope of the work.

Thus, we will here examine but a few of the issues that

Martinich takes up with regard to Hobbes and Christianity.

Martinich’s book is divided in two parts: Part I: “The

Religious Background to Hobbes’s Philosophy,” and Part II:

“Law, Morality and God”. Within the respective parts, it is

structured such that issues are dealt with systematically,

chapter-by-chapter. Martinich advances compelling arguments

86 Martinich, p. 1.

49

to show that Hobbes was, in fact, well within the bounds of

Christian orthodoxy.

Martinich begins by defending Hobbes against the

aspersions cast on him by his contemporaries which have been

used as evidence by modern scholars, including his

reputation as an atheist. Against that, Martinich states

that “One piece of prima facie evidence that Hobbes was an

atheist is the fact that some of his contemporaries called

him an atheist. But this is not strong evidence.”87 This

is because, according to Martinich, “The term ‘atheist’ was

used indiscriminately in Hobbes’s day as a term of abuse”88

by those who disagree with another’s opinion. He then goes

through a litany of unquestionably devout individuals who

were nevertheless accused of atheism in their day:

theologians, Catholics (by Protestants), Protestants (by

Catholics), even Christian monarchs such as Queen Elizabeth

and James I.89 And, “since religion and politics were

closely tied in the seventeenth century, ‘atheist’ was also

87 Martinich, p. 19.88 Ibid.89 Martinich, p. 20.

50

a political term,”90 which resulted in political foes

applying it to each other.

He also notes that “atheism by consequence” was also

grounds for being accused of atheism.91 That is, one might

be accused of atheism if he espoused beliefs which were

thought to logically lead to atheism. This, Martinich

believes, is why accusations of atheism from his

contemporaries is not particularly credible. But, he

continues, it is simply incorrect to call someone an

atheist, as the word is used today, who does not consciously

hold to a philosophy which explicitly denies the existence

of a God. This Hobbes does not do. Rather, “before ever

being accused of atheism, Hobbes presented several versions

of the traditional cosmological proofs for the existence of

God, with no hint of sarcasm, parody, or satire.”92

Furthermore, he explicitly denied being an atheist when

confronted with the charge. But finally, and most

importantly for Martinich, is the fact that “much of what

90 Ibid.91 Martinich, p. 23.92 Martinich, p. 27.

51

[Hobbes] wrote presupposes, not merely the existence of God,

but the existence of the Christian God.”93 Martinich,

argues that this is because in parts III and IV of Leviathan,

Hobbes advances arguments regarding the Trinity, Redemption

by Christ, and other specifically Christian concepts without

sarcasm or irony. Rather, his treatments are “ingenious and

novel”.94 Citing the Pocock article discussed above,

Martinich states that “It would have been absurd for Hobbes

to concoct original theories for Christian doctrines if he

were not intellectually committed to them.”95

Rather than discrediting the Christian religion,

Martinich believes that Hobbes’s larger project was to

“reconcile orthodox Christian doctrine with modern science

and a tenable political theory.”96 Because the task of

doing so was immense, and because it represented an

unprecedented project, Hobbes’s arguments may be absurd at

points. But, Martinich maintains, “If his theories are

logically absurd, it is not because he wanted them to be, 93 Ibid.94 Martinich, p. 28.95 Ibid.96 Ibid.

52

but because he was struggling with an enormous problem and

could not see anything better.”97

Martinich further extends his argument by describing

the intellectual milieu of the seventeenth century as one in

which it was very “difficult to be a theoretical atheist –

that is, a thinker who could given [sic] an explanation for

reality that did not include God as an essential part. For

there were virtually no atheistic models of reality from

which a philosopher might draw inspiration to construct his

own.”98 Because of this, “the burden of proof is on those

who say that Hobbes was an atheist.”99

For Martininch, then, Leviathan represents “A Bible for

modern man. For it includes a metaphysics; an epistemology;

a philosophy of man; ethics and theories of politics; a

philosophy of religion; and a philosophy of history.”100 By

providing a full-ranging, self-contained philosophical

system, Hobbes provides modern man with a new Bible, rooted

97 Ibid.98 Martinich, p. 40.99 Ibid.100 Martinich, p. 45.

53

in and justified by his novel interpretation of Scripture,

by which to understand the Cosmos and to order his political

life.

In terms of Hobbes’ moral obligation, Martinich largely

aligns himself with the interpretations of A.E. Taylor,

Howard Warrender, and F.C. Hood. Martinich formulates

secularist interpreters of Hobbes’s moral theory thus: “An

action a is moral if and only if a is derivable by reason

alone as conducive to self-preservation.”101 Against this

interpretation, Martinich contrasts the “religionist”

interpreters of Hobbes’s moral theory thus: “An action a is

moral in virtue of a law of nature if and only if God

commands a to be done.”102 In other words, Taylor, Warrender

and Hood understand Hobbes as a “Divine command” theorist.

Martinich, however, believes that “there is something

right, and something wrong, with each of these views.”103

The latter (religionist) view, he holds, is correct insofar

as it views God as essential to Hobbes’ theory. The former

101 Martinich, p. 71.102 Martinich, p. 72.103 Ibid.

54

(secularist) view is correct insofar as it recognizes that

there is an element of self-interest in Hobbes’ theory.

Both, however, miss that, for Hobbes, each part is necessary

but insufficient for a moral theory, and that the choice

represents a false dichotomy. Martinich therefore asserts

that Hobbes’s moral theory is better represented if it

includes both parts: “An action a is moral in virtue of a

law of nature if and only if God commands that a be done,

and a is derivable by reason alone as conducive to self-

preservation.”104

Martinich’s book is much too detailed to adequately

summarize, but in the concluding section he helpfully

provides an overview of his positions. In sum, Martinich

holds that “In doctrine, [Hobbes] was orthodox. He

explicitly subscribes to the dogmatic pronouncements

formulated in the Christian creeds of the first four

ecumenical councils”.105 He admits that is it, of course,

“always possible for someone to accuse him of heterodoxy,”106

104 Martinich, p. 73.105 Martinich, p. 333.106 Ibid.

55

but points out that Aquinas was also accused to the same

until quite some time after his death. He draws a further

comparison between the projects of Hobbes and Aquinas:

“Hobbes and Aquinas are alike in that they both tried to

reconcile orthodoxy with new philosophical or scientific

theories.”107 The fact that Hobbes was ultimately

unsuccessful – and led to further secularization – should

not be imputed to him as impiety, according to Martinich.

Regarding ecclesiology, Martinich argues that Hobbes holds

to the episcopal system used by the Anglican Church “In part

because it was preferred by the sovereigns of England…[and]

because it did not suffer from the logical objections raised

by the presbyterian and Catholic systems,” that is, the

problem of citizens having more than one sovereign.108

Theologically, Martinich maintains that Hobbes subscribed to

a form of Calvinism, but that as he wrote, Calvinism was

going out of style. Thus, Hobbes ended up receiving attacks

from all sides – Catholic and Anglican anti-Calvinist

scholastics as well as Arminians – making it seem as though

107 Ibid.108 Martinich, p. 334.

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his thought is less orthodox than it is. “The term ‘high

Calvinist’ has been coined to describe someone who was in

favor of the monarchy, an Episcopal form of church

government, and Calvinist theology…The term applies

perfectly to Hobbes.”109

Conclusion

Clearly, the thought of Thomas Hobbes is extremely complex,

and therefore does not admit of simple interpretations. The

fact that such diverse interpretations of Hobbes are

possible and even plausible demonstrates the depth of

Hobbes’s work. But this fact also contains a certain irony:

Hobbes was a thinker who explicitly aimed to eliminate

ambiguities by carefully defining words and applying

rigorous geometric logic. The sheer breadth of Hobbes’s

work, and its unprecedented nature, however, inevitably

leaves open the possibility of difficulties and ambiguities.

At any rate, whatever the status of Hobbes’s personal

relationship with Christianity, there can be little question

that the ultimate outworking of of his philosophy was a 109 Martinich, p. 335.

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marginalization of Christianity and political philosophy in

general. It was this marginalization that, perhaps more

than any other factor, has come to define the modern age.

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