The theology of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan

Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Volumn 51, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 527-555

  Overhoff, Jürgen ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449111008     PISSN: 00220469     EISSN: 14697637     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022046900005157     Document Type: Review

References (71)

1. This has been stressed by James Farr, 'Atomes of Scripture: Hobbes and the politics of biblical interpretation', in Mary Dietz (ed.), Thomas Hobbes and political theory, Lawrence 1990, 172-96, esp. pp. 181-4
2. See also Leopold Damrosch, 'Hobbes as Reformation theologian: implications of the free-will controversy', Journal of the History of Ideas xl (1979), 340
3. J. G. A. Pocock, 'Time, history, and eschatology in the thought of Thomas Hobbes', in his Politics, language and time, London 1972, 176, 182
4. Richard Tuck, 'The civil religion of Thomas Hobbes', in N. Phillipson and Q. Skinner (eds), Political discourse in early modern Britain, Cambridge 1993, 121
5. Thomas Hobbes, The elements of law, naturall and politique, BL, MS Harleian 4235, fo. 44v
6. cf. The elements of law, natural and politic, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies, 2nd edn, intro. M. M. Goldsmith, London 1969, i. 11. 5, p. 55
7. Thomas Hobbes, Objectiones ad Cartesii Meditationes de prima philosophia in Opera philosophica, ed. William Molesworth, London 1845, v. 258: 'Dependebit ... imaginatio ... ab organorum corporeorum motu: et sic mens nihil aliud erit praeterquam motus in partibus quibusdam corporis organici.'
8. René Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, Paris 1641, 240: '[Intelligitur] quidem sub ratione materiae ... non autem idcirco sub ratione corporum.'
9. Idem, Correspondance, ed. C. Adam and G. Milhaud, Paris 1947, letter 287, 257: 'de anima et Deo corporeis'
10. Thomas Hobbes, De rive: the English version, ed. Howard Warrender, Oxford 1983, praefatio, p. 82: '(circa) imaginationem, memoriam, intellectum, ratiocinationem, appetitum, voluntatem'
11. Thomas Hobbes, Critique of Thomas White's 'De mundo', Bibliothèque nationale, MS Fonds Latin 6566 A, fo. 403r
12. cf. Critique du 'De mundo' de Thomas White, ed. Jean Jacquot and H. Whitmore Jones, Paris 1973, xxxvi. 7, p. 399: 'Non ergo necessarium est ad actiones voluntarias, sive ordinatas Consilio quodam ad finem determinatum, ut omnia agentia sint animata, multo minus intelligentia.'
13. MS Fonds Latin 6566 A, fo. 433r
14. cf. Hobbes, Critique 420: 'Non ergo videtur anima esse hominis pars componens.'
15. MS Fonds Latin 6566 A, fo. 292r
16. cf. Hobbes, Critique xxvii. 1, p. 312: 'Aggregat[um] omnium corporum'
17. MS Fonds Latin 6566 A, fo. 452V
18. cf. Hobbes, Critique xxxix. 8, p. 433: 'de beatitudine & infoelicitate futuri saeculi'
19. MS Fonds Latin 6566 A, fo. 452r
20. cf. Hobbes, Critique xxxix. 7, p. 433: 'omnia mea religionis antistitibus subiecta esse volo'
21. Thomas Hobbes, The correspondence, ed. Noel Malcolm, 1994, i, letter 42, p. 131: 'Quod in doctrina morali fecisse me spero, id quoque in Philosophia prima, et in Physica facere studeo ne locus sit relictus contrascriptoris.'
22. Thomas Baillie, Letters and journals, ed. D. Laing, Edinburgh 1842, ii. 388
23. Ferdinand Tönnies, 'The editors preface', in Hobbes, Elements, p. vii
24. In a letter of May 1650 Hobbes apparently wrote to Robert Payne that he was working on a book, 'which is Politique in English, of which he hath finished thirty-seven chapters (intending about fifty in the whole)': 'Illustrations of the state of the Church during the Great Rebellion', The Theologian and Ecclesiastic ix (1850), 172-3. This book was to be Leviathan
25. See Richard Tuck, Philosophy and government 1572-1651, Cambridge 1993, 324
26. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, Cambridge 1991, xlvii, p. 482
27. Charles Cantalupo rightly remarks that 'more than any other chapter in Leviathan, chapter xlvi collects Hobbes's highly various material into a kind of brief of Hobbes's thought': A literary Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes's masterpiece of language, Lewisburg 1991, 223
28. Hobbes, Leviathan xlvi, p. 463
29. Clearly, Hobbes rated his eschatology as a provocatively new representation of the biblical notion of the afterlife, and, as we have seen, he believed that a large number of people would find it difficult to appreciate his eccentric doctrine. Yet it is important to note that many of his ideas were not quite as unusual as he himself was so fond of pointing out. Hobbes was certainly able to draw on doctrines concerning the life to come which were very similar to the ones he had articulated in Leviathan. In particular his notion of the mortality of the soul had since the early sixteenth century found a number of prominent supporters. In 1532, in a commentary on Ecclesiastes, Martin Luther had openly denied that the souls of the dead could in any proper sense be regarded as being alive before the day of resurrection, for 'the dead lye there accompting neyther dayes nor yeares, but when they are awaked, they shall seeme to have slept scarce one minute': An exposition of Salomons booke, called Ecclesiastes or the Preacher, London 1573 (RSTC 16979), 151. In 1643 Richard Overton claimed that the soul was not 'in the least any selfe distinct Being': Mans mortalitie, ed. H. Fisch, Liverpool 1968, preface. As soon as man had died, he believed, the whole man, body and spirit, was doomed to decay so that during' this Death', before the general resurrection, there was no being to man, 'which is to say, He absolutely IS NOT' (p. 16). Even Hobbes's interpretation of Christ's Second Coming and the establishment of his personal kingdom as a literal event on earth was not entirely unprecedented. John Archer argued that during his messianic reign Christ would 'governe as earthly Monarchs have done, that is, universally over the world' and 'in a worldly visible earthly glory', having 'all Nations and kingdoms doing homage to him, as the great Monarchs of the World had': The personall reigne of Christ upon earth, London 1642 (Wing A.3617), 3
30. For an excellent discussion of the ideological context of Hobbes's eschatology see Norman T. Burns, Christian mortalism from Tyndale to Milton, Cambridge, Mass. 1972
31. and David Johnston, 'Hobbes's mortalism', in History of Political Thought x (1989), 647-63
32. Johnston, Hobbes's mortalism, 649
33. Hobbes, Leviathan xxx, p. 233
34. The point that Hobbes read the Bible in the same way as any other book of history has been valuably emphasised by Megan Clive, 'Hobbes parmi les mouvements religieux de son temps', Revue des sciences philosophiques et theologiques lxii (1978), 49
35. and Iain Hampsher-Monk, A history of modern political thought: major political thinkers from Hobbes to Marx, Oxford 1992, 3, 16
36. Hobbes, Leviathan vii, p. 49
37. Hobbes here refers to an incident in bk xli of Livy's Ab urbe condita, ed. and trans. W. H. D. Rouse, rev. M. Ferguson Smith, Cambridge, Mass. 1938, ch. xli. 8, p. 222
38. The example Hobbes gives is obviously a very sarcastic one. However, one ought to bear in mind that even William Chillingworth pointed to the indisputable historicity of the Bible when he said that 'we have, I believe, as great reason to believe there was such a man as Henry the Eighth, King of England, as that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate'. However, he added that 'this is necessary to be believed, and that is not so': The religion of Protestants a safe way to salvation, in The Works, Oxford 1838, 274
39. Conal Condren neatly remarks that Hobbes's Leviathan, 'a coherent system erected on firm foundations', was - precisely because of its perplexing rhetoric - 'like the whale of the medieval bestiaries, a solid enough island until the sailor sets foot on it, after which he is rapidly obliged to swim in any one of a number of directions': 'On the rhetorical foundation of Leviathan', History of Political Thought xi (1990), 705
40. Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, A brief view and survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to Church and State, in Mr Hobbes's Book entitled Leviathan, Oxford 1676 (Wing C.4420), 18
41. See George Lawson, An examination of the political part of Mr Hobbs his Leviathan, London 1657 (Wing L.706)
42. Thomas Tenison, The creed of Mr. Hobbes examined, London 1670 (Wing T.691), 2
43. Tuck, Civil religion, 120
44. See Pocock, Time, history, and eschatology
45. See also J. P. Burnyeat, 'The "political theology" of Thomas Hobbes', Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church xxxv (1966)
46. and Mark Whitaker, 'Hobbes's view of the Reformation', History of Political Thought ix (1988), esp. pp. 48-9
47. Hobbes, Leviathan xxxviii, pp. 306-7
48. Hobbes, Leviathan xlii, p. 426
49. Hobbes here responds to Theodore Beza's interpretation of Mark ix. 1 as displayed in the Annotationes maiores in novum dn. Nostri Iesu Christi testamentum, Geneva 1594, 199
50. Pocock, Time, history, eschatology, 187
51. The same point is made by Willis B. Glover, 'God and Thomas Hobbes', in Hobbes studies, ed. K. C. Brown, Oxford 1965, 152
52. and Benjamin Milner, 'Hobbes: on religion', Political Theory xvi (1988), 416
53. See Hobbes, De cive xviii. 13, pp. 291-2: 'sequitur manifeste in ciuitate Christiana, obedientiam deberi summis imperantibus in rebus omnibus tam spiritualibus quam temporalibus'
54. My argument here implies, of course, that the ecclesiology of De cive and Leviathan was - at least with regard to the question of obedience to the civil sovereign - much the same. Interestingly, neither De cive nor Leviathan recognised any problems at all in the obedience of Christians even to heathen or irreligious princes. For those who disagreed with the politics of an infidel prince Hobbes put forward martyrdom as an extreme but commendable solution: De cive xviii. 13, p. 292: 'Quid autem? an principibus resistendum est vbi obediendum non est? minime sane; hoc enim contra pactum est ciuile. Quid ergo agendum? Eundum ad Christum per Martyrium.'; see also Leviathan xliii, p. 414: 'And when the Civill Soveraign is an Infidel, every one of his own Subjects that resisteth him, sinneth against the Laws of God (for such are the Laws of Nature), and rejecteth the counsell of the Apostels, that admonisheth all Christians to obey their Princes [...] But if they do, they ought to expect their reward in Heaven, and not complain of their Lawfull Soveraign; much lesse make warre upon him. For he that is not glad of any just occasion of Martyrdom, has not the faith he professeth, but pretends it onely, to set some colour upon his own contumacy.'
55. The same point is made by Richard Sherlock, 'The theology of Leviathan: Hobbes on religion', Interpretation x (1982), 47
56. See Thomas White, De mundo dialogi tres, Paris 1642, ch. iii. 17, pp. 429-32
57. William Lucy, Observations, censures and confutations of notorious errours in Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan, and other his books, London 1663 (Wing L.3454), epistle dedicatory. Because of the shape of his doctrine of the Trinity Lucy believed that Hobbes was a Socinian (pp. 292, 301-2). As Hobbes had been a member of the famous Falkland circle, it is not altogether impossible that his doctrine of the Trinity was inspired by the talks he led with Falkland and his Socinian friends. Hugh Trevor-Roper has shown that most of the members of the Falkland circle were widely accused of being Socinian: Catholics Anglicans and Puritans: seventeenth-century essays, London 1989, 186. Indeed, Falkland's library was one of the earliest and most complete Socinian libraries in England: H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in seventeenth-century England, Oxford 1951, 57-9
58. Tenison, Creed of Hobbes, 38
59. Henry Hammond to Matthew Wren, 21 Oct. 1651, 'Illustrations of the state of the Church', 295
60. Richard Tuck, 'The "Christian atheism" of Thomas Hobbes', in M. Hunter and D. Wootton (eds), Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, Oxford 1992, 113-14
61. D. Warner, 'Hobbes's interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity', Journal of Religious History v (1969), 307
62. Hobbes, Leviathan xxxiv, p. 271
63. Hobbes stated that he 'was told by Dr. Cosins, now Bishop of Durham, that' his interpretation of the relevant texts of Scripture cited to prove his case were 'not applicable enough to the doctrine of the Trinity': An answer to a book published by Dr. Bramhall, in The English works, ed. William Molesworth, London 1840, v. 317
64. Idem, Leviathan sive De materia, forma, et potestate civitatis ecclesiasticae et civilis, in Opera philosophica, iii. 563
65. Johann P. Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: political ideas in historical context, New York 1992, 167
66. John Whitehall, The Leviathan found out, London 1679 (Wing W.1866), 19, 22, 103-4
67. Sommerville, Hobbes, 145
68. I have borrowed the term 'constructive subversion' (konstruktive Unterwanderung) from Dietrich Braun: Der sterbliche Gott oder Leviathan gegen Behemoth, I: Erwägungen zu Ort, Bedeutung und Funktion der Königsherrschaft Christi in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, Zürich 1963, 19
69. Noel Malcolm, 'Biographical register of Hobbes's correspondents', in Hobbes, Correspondence, ii. 783. See also Bagshaw's appreciative remarks about Hobbes's materialism in his letter to Hobbes from Westminster of 1 [11] March 1658, ibid. i. 498
70. Still today most interpreters of Hobbes's doctine of the Trinity have the greatest difficulties in obtaining a good grasp on its meaning and intent. For Warner it seems to be 'curiously orthodox' and 'curiously unorthodox' at the same time: Hobbes's doctrine of the Trinity, 299
71. Steward Sutherland rightly remarks in this context that the difficulty in understanding and giving a consistent interpretation of what Hobbes has written about the doctrine of the Trinity and other theological tenets is, at least partly, 'due to something which misled nineteenth-century commentators on Hume - their inability to identify irony': 'God and religion in Leviathan', Journal of Theological Studies XXV (1974), 373