Published in English Philosophy in the Age ofLocke (M. A. Stewart. Ed.) OxfordStudies in the History of PhilosophyVolume 3, Oxford: Clarendon Press,2000, pp. 1-27.

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM OF RELIGION:

HOBBES'S READING OF THE BIBLEi

This article argues that Hobbes's reading of the Bible, contained

in the second half of Leviathan, is a fundamental part of his

philosophy. The goal of Books III and IV is not merely, as was

sometimes suggested, to sustain with the prestige of religion the

political legitimation of the sovereign exposed in Book II, nor is

it, as was also claimed, to discredit religion while seeming to

recognise its authorityii. To the contrary, the second half of

Leviathan seeks to liberate the sovereign's authority from the

necessity of religious legitimation, which is perceived by Hobbes

as a danger to the stability of the commonwealth. The way in which

religion threatens civil authority is described in Book I and may

be called the political problem of religion. Book II, like most

modern political philosophy, simply assumes that the problem does

not exist and maintains that the power of the sovereign rests

solely on the consent of the subjects. Yet given Hobbes's goal to

base his normative theory of politics on a descriptive theory of

men as they are, rather than as they should be, it is clear that,

from his own point of view, purely rational politics cannot exist

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as long as men believe that God gives us the first laws of the

commonwealth. The goal of Books III and IV is to solve this

difficulty by showing that Christianity provides historical and

theological justification for the separation of the two realms of

religion and politics.

The first two sections of this article present the political

problem of religion. Section three gives a quick overview of

Hobbes's argument in Books III and IV, in relation to the first

half of the Leviathan. The next four sections present Hobbes's

solution to the political problem of religion. In the concluding

section I argue that Hobbes was doomed to encounter that problem

and that he offers what is probably its only possible solution.

Finally, I suggest that this problem goes beyond a mere question of

Hobbesian exegesis, and that it exists today as the historical

problem of the origin of modern forms of political organizations.

I

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM OF RELIGION

Hobbes's political philosophy is a science of commonwealths as they

should be on the basis of men as they are. The Leviathan proposes

a normative theory of politics supported by a descriptive theory of

mankind. The division of its first half in two books reflects

this. Book I studies men as they constitute the matter of the

commonwealth. Consequently, in Chapter 13 Hobbes illustrates his

conception of the state of nature with examples taken from the

actual behaviour of individuals in society(P. 186-187)iii. Book II

inquires into the rights and authority of the Sovereign. Chapter

20 accordingly rejects all objections against the absolute power of

the Sovereign which are based on the practice of mankind. "For

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though in all places of the world, men should lay the foundation of

their houses on the sand, it could not thence be inferred, that so

it ought to be"(P. 261). Similarly, Chapter 29, which discusses

the causes of the dissolution of commonwealth, asserts that these

do not lie in men inasmuch as they are the matter of the

commonwealth, but as they are the makers and orderers of them(P.

363). The Sovereign and the political philosopher take men as they

come: violent, egoistic, greedy and religious. On this factual

basis they built perfect commonwealths which are destined to live

as long as mankind. The Sovereign should not try to change his

subjects, nor the political philosopher wish them different than

they are.

Chapter 12 informs us that religion is natural in man, and its

first seeds ineradicable. This in itself does not constitute a

problem. Nonetheless it indicates that the philosopher must take

into account the religious dimension of human existence, at least

inasmuch as it is relevant to his study of politics. The relation

between the two domains is revealed through the fact that in the

commonwealths of the gentiles the laws always received a religious

legitimation(P. 177). The point is driven home when Hobbes tells

us that the religion of the gentiles was a part of their politics,

and the politics of the Hebrews a part of their religion(P. 173,

178). In other words, in all places and at all times religion and

politics were intimately mixed.

Given this, the question arises of why men have always

associated religion with politics. Hobbes's answer is clear. The

marriage of politics with religion stems from their common origin

in fear: the fear of other men in the case of politics, the fear of

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invisible spirits in the case of religion. According to Hobbes,

the force of words is too weak to hold men to the performance of

their covenants and only the fear of other men or religion can

strengthen their contracts(P. 200). There is then, it seems, a

natural convergence of religion and politics. Religion can be used

to make men "more apt to Obedience, Lawes, Peace, Charity and

Civill Societey"(P. 173). This is the basis of what may be called,

the Heathens' solution to the political problem of religion.

The first founders and legislators of the commonwealth of the

gentiles, according to Hobbes, always reinforced the respect for

the law by the terror of religion. They pretended that their laws

concerning religion came not from them but from some God, or else

that they were themselves more than mere mortals so that "their

Lawes might the more easily be received"(P. 177). They took care

to "make it believed that the same things were displeasing to the

Gods, which were forbidden by the Lawes"(P. 177). Finally they

instituted ceremonies and sacrifices supposedly to appease the

anger of the Gods, so that the common people laid the faults of

their misfortune on the neglect of their worship and were thus

rendered "lesse apt to mutiny against their Governors"(P. 178).

The heathens' solution is the exploitation of religion by political

power in view of its own goals and purposes.

Professor Gauthier argued that "Hobbes is best understood as a

Gentile"iv and that his sympathy went towards such a conception of

the relation between religion and the state. Clearly some aspects

of Hobbes's texts suggests this. His erastianism entirely subjects

religion to the power of the Sovereign. It gives him the

legitimacy to declare what is and what is not the word of God and

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empowers the state to regulate the behaviour of the clergy. All of

which conveys the impression that in Hobbes's commonwealth,

religion is again reduced to a part of politics.

Nonetheless, one major difference remains between Hobbes's

erastianism and the heathens' solution. Hobbes never advocated the

divine rights of Kings. For all his rhetoric concerning the

"Mortal God", he never taught than the sovereign should convince

his subjects he is of a higher nature than mere mortals. His power

and legitimacy, according to Hobbes, are grounded in a rational

contract only, that is to say, in politics, not in religion. The

particular characteristic of Hobbes's erastianism, compared to

Hooker's or to that of Marcilius of Padoua, is that the subjection

of spiritual to temporal power never receives any religious

justification, only a political one. The laws of the Sovereign are

purely human laws. By means of their representative, men give to

themselves their own laws. They do not receive them from God, and

religion in no way limits their legislative power. It could be

argued that, from Hobbes's point of view, this is exactly what the

gentiles did. His text clearly suggests that the first founders

and legislators of their commonwealths did not believe in the

religion which they imposed on the people. Why should Hobbes

object to this stratagem?

As far as I can see there are two interrelated reasons to

suspect that he did. The fear of invisible spirits, according to

Hobbes, is irrational. Religion, natural religion at least, stems

from ignorance and it breeds ignorance. Its cause is anxiety about

future time, men's curiosity "of the causes of their own good and

evil fortune"(P. 168). This anxiety, joined with the ignorance of

5

these causes, stirs them to populate the universe with invisible

agents and to "stand in awe of their own imagination"(Ibid.). This

fear is thoroughly irrational. It prevents men from discovering

the real causes of the events that befall them. Religion

perpetuates the fear it seeks to appease. The covenant, to the

contrary, is a highly rational exercise. It stems from the

knowledge of the harm which men created equal can inflict upon each

other. The end of subjection is protection, it is to put an end to

fear. The contract is not a cheat or a fraud. The power of the

Sovereign does not, and should not, rest on his ability to decieve

his subjects(P. 204-205). For the Sovereign, to rest his power on

i. I am very grateful to William R. Abbott, Mary Baker, René Girard, PaisleyLivingston, Richard Nutbrown, Lucien Scubla, M. A. Stewart, Robert S. Stewart,and two anonymous referees of Oxford Studies in the History of Philosophy foruseful comments and criticisms on previous drafts of this paper.

ii. In a recent book Hobbes and Christianity. Reassessing the Bible in Leviathan (New York,Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996), Paul D. Cooke tried to defendboth these theses simultaneously. Not unlike many of Hobbes's contemporarycritics, Cooke claims that while Hobbes on one hand tries to sustain thepurely secular power of the Sovereign with the prestige of religion, at thesame time his aim, on the other hand, is to discredit Christianity, to destroyit while pretending to bow to its authority. Contrary to the claims of this"conspiracy theory", as Cooke himself names it (1996; 37), I will maintainthat Hobbes is trying to free political power from the need of religiouslegitimation and that he seeks a religious justification for the separation ofthe domains of religion and politics.

iii. Quotations and references to Hobbes's Leviathan are given withinbrackets, usually in the body of the text and sometimes in footnotes. Theyrefer to Hobbes's, Leviathan, Ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth 1968), pp.729 which reproduces the text of the 1651 original English edition.

iv. David Gauthier, The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford 1969), P.206. A somewhatsimilar view is defended in A. Rapaczynski Nature and Politics. Liberalism in thePhilosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (Cornell University Press, 1987).

6

fear of invisible spirits is contrary to the end of the institu-

tion. It is to exploit the irrational fears of his subjects

contrary to the rationality of the contract. Such is the first

reason.

The second reason why Hobbes rejects the heathens' solution is

because it subjects the authority of the Sovereign to a process of

religious changes which is beyond the reach of his power. To

manipulate men's religious beliefs in order to increase their

respect for the law is a practical solution only if political power

can, at all times, master the course of religious changes.

Essentially, the political problem of religion comes from the fact

that this is not the case.

There are, according to Hobbes, four causes which explain

changes in religion. The first one is when a religion teaches

belief in a contradictory proposition, because it reveals the

ignorance of those who propound such absurd articles. The second

cause is when the clergy or priests act in a way which seems to

indicate that they do not believe that which they require others to

believe. This, says Hobbes, takes "away the reputation of

Sincerity"(P. 180). The third is to be detected of private ends,

as when "the beliefe they require of others, conduceth or seemeth

to conduce to the acquiring of Dominion, Riches, Dignity, or secure

Pleasure, to themselves onely"(Ibid.). The fourth and last is when

the testimony of miracles fails.

These causes, we will now see, are closely related to Hobbes's

conception of faith. As Pocock has convincingly argued, faith,

according to Hobbes, is a system of transmission of authority

through timev. Faith is present whenever a man's discourse does

7

not start with one of his own opinions, but with the opinion of

another "of whose ability to know the truth, and of whose honesty

in not deceiving, he doubted not"(P. 132). It contains therefore

two opinions. One bears on the proposition which is believed. The

other relates to the virtue or ability of the person who proposes

it. These two opinions are connected in a specific way. The

proposition is only believed because of the good opinion we have of

those who expound it. Religious beliefs receive their

justification from an opinion concerning the honesty and cognitive

abilities of those who propound them. The causes of religious

changes follow from this. They refer to those actions which tend

to destroy the opinion we may have of someone's honesty or of his

ability to know the truth. "So that I may attribute all the

changes of Religion in the world, to one and the same cause; and

that is unpleasing Priests"(P. 182).

Hobbes never said that the cause of changes in government was

unpleasing Princes, but lack of absolute power. More, he invited

his reader to measure the inconvenience of such an unlimited power

against the deadly consequences of the war of all against all. The

fact is that the structure of faith is radically opposed to that of

political authorityvi. Out of a fear, based on the knowledge of the

harm which men created equal can inflict upon one another, men

covenant to abandon all their rights to one man, or assembly, who

will protect them from their own violence. This contract is

rational. It binds men morally. Given the structure of the

v. J. G. A. Pocock, "Time, History and Eschatology in the Thought of ThomasHobbes" in Politics, Language and Time (Atheneum, 1971), P. 148-201. Seeespecially, P. 163-167.

8

contract all responsibility and moral charge rests with the

subjects. They covenant with one another in favor of a third party

who does not contract with them and therefore cannot forfeit his

right. Religious faith to the contrary rests on the good opinion

we have of another. This means, ultimately, on the recognition of

his superiority. For this reason the failing of religious faith in

a man never involves any injustice on his part. The moral burden

of faith does not rest on the believer, but on the priests, or the

clergy, which suscitate and should nurture that faith. While the

subjects have duties and responsibilities to their Sovereign, it is

the Priest who has duties and responsibilities toward the

believers.

The two systems of authority should not be assimilated for

they do not cohere. The Sovereign should not be burdened with the

responsibility of the priest. It curtails his power and subor-

dinates his authority to the changing opinions of his subjects. It

encourages them to think that the failing of their faith relieves

them of their political obligation. Thus it exposes the Sovereign

to an historical process of religious transformations which he

cannot control. "Faith is in its own nature invisible, and

consequently exempted from all humane jurisdiction"(P. 550).

Religion is natural in men and has always been inseparable from

politics. Because the fear of invisible spirits is greater than

other fears, it always had a "party sufficient to Trouble, and

sometimes to Destroy, a Commonwealth"(P. 371). Which is why,

vi. See P. Springborg, "Leviathan and the Problem of EcclesiasticalAuthority" in Political Theory, 3:289-303, (1975) for an opposite conclusionconcerning the relationship between faith and obedience to the Sovereign.

9

according to Hobbes, "If this superstisious fear of Spirits were

taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophe-

cies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty

ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more

fitted than they are for civill Obedience"(P. 93).

The natural alliance of religion and politics constitutes a

permanent danger. Civil power cannot control the religious beliefs

of subjects. It cannot abolish religion, nor can it establish its

legitimacy independantly of these beliefs, at least as long as men

believe in them, for its independant foundation rests solely on the

consent of subjects. Such is the political problem of religion.

It is a necessary consequence of the rejection of the heathens'

solution in a world where men believe that the first laws of the

commonwealth were promulgated by God.

II

ERASTIANISM AND THE NATURAL KINGDOM OF GOD

Hobbes presents his solution to the political problem of religion

in chapter 31, the very last of the second book of Leviathan. This

solution is normative within the limits of pure reason. It defines

the relations that should obtain between religion and the state

according to reason alone, that is to say, in the absence of any

divine revelation. It describes what Hobbes calls the natural

kingdon of God. This kingdom is rationally possible, becauses

there is, according to Hobbes, a rational belief in God which is

different from the irrational fear of invisible spirits.

This explanation of such a rational belief in God is given in

Chapters 11 and 12. It parallels in many ways the account of the

10

natural causes of religion which we saw earlier. Anxiety for the

future disposes man to inquire into the causes of things. This

research leads him from one cause to its cause, and to the cause of

that cause, "till of necessity he must come to this thought at

last, that there is some cause, whereof there is no former cause,

but is eternal, which is it men call God"(P. 167)vii. The

similitude lies in the fact that anxiety about the future is the

common cause of the belief in one eternal Diety and of the

supertitious fear of invisible spirits. Also present in this is

the fact that the appeal to God or invisible spirits reveals our

ignorance. God is a word which one utters whenever he stops his

inquiry into the causes of things.

The difference between these two types of belief is that they

manifest, on the part of the agent, a very different attitude

towards his ignorance. To be superstitious is to invent false

causes for what one does not know(P. 171-176). Worst, it is to

fear and to revere those meaningless imaginings. As a result

superstition is doubly irrational. It hinders the search for truth

and does not reduce, but increases, the anxiety that motivates it.

To acknowledge the existence of one eternal God is not to feign

invisible spirits and to stand in awe of one's imagination, for it

is not to "have an Idea or Image of him"(P. 167) in one's mind. It

is to understand that this first cause though necessary is

unknowable. Thus it is no obstacle to knowledge, but the result of

"any profound inquiry into natural causes"(P. 167).

vii. On the subject of Hobbes's attitude toward the question of thedemonstrability of God's existence in a philosophical context see, A. Pacchi,"Hobbes and the Problem of God" in Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, Ed. G.A.J.Rogers and A. Ryan, (Oxford, 1988), 171-187.

11

It follows from this distinction that God's kingdom is by

nature a rational commonwealth. It takes no account of revelation

and yields nothing to the absurd opinions of the gentiles. This

kingdom should also be distinguished from the power with which God

commands all of nature. To reign is not simply to overcome by the

sheer exercise of irresistible might. It is, says Hobbes, to

govern with words, "by promise of Reward to those who obey it, and

by threatning them with punishment that obey it not"(P. 396).

Animals and inanimate bodies are therefore excluded from God's

natural kingdom, as well as those who "acknowledge no Word for

his"(P. 396). This means that God himself cannot bypass the

essential structure of political institution. Even though his

right of sovereignty proceeds from his irresistible might, his

kingdom rests on the consent of his subjects.

Given this, and given that revelation is not taken into

account here, Hobbes can proceed in a very straightforward way to

the solution of his problem. Since God speaks to men only through

nature and natural reason, the only laws of God of which they can

take notice are the precepts of right reason expounded in Chapters

14 and 15. These are the very articles which incite men to abandon

all their rights to one man, or assembly, in order to gain

protection. Since this covenant binds morally and since "the Law

of Nature and the Civill Law contain each other and are of equal

extent"(P. 314), it follows that there can be no contradiction

between human and divine laws. There is no other word of God than

the commands of the sovereign.

The same reasoning is applied to worship. In his natural

kingdom God gives us no indication as to how we should worship him.

12

In consequence, men have no choice but to take the example of the

way they honor each other in order to discover the way they should

worship God. For honor, according to Hobbes, is those signs of

respect which reason teaches should be done by the weak to the more

potent(P. 399-401). In their private worship men are free to act

as they wish, as long as they show no disrespect to the Divine

majesty. Public worship is different. Seeing that the commowealth

is but one person, the fundamental quality of public worship is its

uniformity. "And therefore, were many sorts of Worship be allowed,

proceeding from the different Religions of Private men, it cannot

be said there is any Publique Worship, nor that the Commonwealth is

of any Religion at all"(p. 405).

Hobbes's solution according to reason alone gives the

sovereign sole power to determine the characteristics of public

worship. It makes him the head of the church. He rules the clergy

as he governs any of his subjects. But it offers him no legitimacy

beyond than the rules of right reason that lead to the contract.

It is a form of erastianism because it subordinates the church to

civil power and sets the sovereign as the highest authority in all

matters temporal or spiritual. Its particularity as a form of

erastianism is that the subordination of the church receives a

political justification only, never a religious one.

Simultaneously it is somewhat strange to speak of erastianism

in this context. The rational sovereign of God's natural kingdom

has very little to say about anything that may be called religion.

He has access to no revelation and takes no part in the illusions

of the gentiles. The church and the clergy are institutions which

apparently have no place here. The only word of God is the laws of

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nature which lead to the constitution of the commonwealth. In

fact, the only reason the sovereign may have to control the various

religious practices of his subjects is if this diversity leads to

conflict.

The natural kingdom of God does not exist. Hobbes has already

told us, in Chapter 14, that there is no covenant "with God without

speciall Revelation"(P. 197). God's natural kingdom is a

commonwealth of no religion at all. It defines a pure politics,

freed from all religious justifications. While God remains silent

and gives us no laws, during God's absence, kings reign. Men give

themselves their own laws.

The natural kingdom of God is a normative solution. It

defines the commonwealth as it ideally should be. In this

commonwealth only the sovereign decides what is right and wrong,

and his legitimacy rests on the sole consent of his subjects, not

on their fear of invisible spirits. Yet by excluding from the

start revelation and the various religious beliefs of men it

circumvents, more than it resolves, the difficulty. It presupposes

the problem solved and postulates that men are as they should be

rather than as they are: superstitious. When it again meets the

religious beliefs of men it becomes erastianism, a solution

designed to accommodate the rigours of a purely rational politics

to the weaknesses of men. This solution, on one hand, avoids

giving the commonwealth a religious foundation, thus making the

power of the sovereign as independant as possible from the

religious beliefs of his subjects. On the other hand, because the

sovereign's legitimacy rests on the consent of his subjects, it is

essential for him to regulate their beliefs as much as he can.

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Yet, in view of the fact that faith is not subject to any human

jurisdiction, this solution must need be unstable. Given that

men's beliefs are not what they should be, they will never accept

the subordination of the church to a purely human authority. The

political problem of religion remains. Until it is solved a purely

human politics is, it seems, impossible.

III

IF REASON FAILS...

The rational solution to the political problem of religion is

presented in the very last chapter of Book II. It is natural to

think that it sets the stage for Hobbes's reading of the Bible.

Hobbes, I think, was well aware that his solution according to

reason alone, perfect though it was, would remain impractical as

long as men believed otherwise. Erastianism is only a solution for

want of anything better: a commonwealth of no religion at all. The

goal of Parts III and IV is to supply to this lack.

Faith, as we have already seen, is a system of transmission of

authority through time. The analysis of the causes of changes of

religion revealed that this system of transmission is indissociable

from a historical process of religious transformation. This makes

for the political problem of religion. As long as the two domains

are joined, the static authority of the sovereign is exposed to to

the dynamic evolution of religious beliefs. But the dynamism of

religion also makes for a possible solution. The historical

evolution of religion, if it led to the belief that God does not

give us any laws, and if it eased men's fears of invisible spirits,

could provide an acceptable answer to the political problem of

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religion. A religion that taught that it is men's lot to give to

themselves their own laws would religiously justify the absence of

religious legitimation of the commonwealth. Within the context of

this separation of the two domains the sovereign could then abandon

his subjects to their fantasies concerning religious beliefs and

practices. Hobbes's interpretation of the Bible, I will argue,

presents revelation as an historical process which brings about a

complete separation of religion and politics.

A certain difficulty in reading these texts follows from this.

Given the structure of this solution, Christianity must necessarily

appear both as a particular example of the political problem of

religion and as the solution to that problem. The difficulty is

compounded by the fact that, according to Hobbes, revelation is not

known, but believed only. As a result the importance and validity of

erastianism is reasserted everywhere in these texts, while a page

later Hobbes argues that Christianity invalidates it. These

apparent contradictions stem from our inability to distinguish what

is known by reason from what is simply believed. For though,

according to Hobbes, we should not believe anything which is

against reason, belief is not knowledge. I may hope that my

beliefs are true, but I cannot know itviii. Hobbes' erastianism is a

solution which he knows by reason, but his interpretation of

Scripture is something which he hopes is true.

Furthermore, Revelation cannot remain confined to the Biblical

text if this solution is to be efficacious. If it did, the

religious solution would suffer from the same flaw as the solution

according to reason alone. A correct interpretation of Scripture

can perhaps justify the complete separation of religion and

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politics, but that is of little help if the sovereign cannot impose

upon his subjects this true interpretation of religion. Revelation

then must in some way reach out to men as they are. As we will seen

this takes place through a process of religious changes that

extends all the way to Hobbes's times and enacts his interpretation

of revelation. The divison of the second half of Leviathan into

two Books reflects this. Book III presents revelation as a sacred

history which constitutes the time frame within which human

institutions take place. It suggests that this sacred history

extends all the way to Hobbes's time. It also shows that

Christianity calms men's fear of invisible spirits and that it

entails a complete separation of religion and politics. Book III

describes Christianity as it ideally should be. Book IV describes

Christianity as it is and as it has been. It inquires into the

reason which prevented revelation from being received, and argues

that the recent history of religous changes in Europe, and in

England in particular, leads to a situation which realizes the true

content of revelation as it is expounded in Book III.

In view of what is the political problem of religion according

to Hobbes, this process of religous changes constitutes a series of

unjust rebellions against rightful sovereigns. That, at least, is

the attitude which political philosophy must adopt towards the

recent events in England. Simultaneously Hobbes's reading of the

viii. Hobbes's real ambiguity towards Christianity results, I believe, fromthe tension within him between these two modes of apprehension. Hobbes theman is torn between what he knows of Christianity, the English civil war, andwhat he hopes will come of it, rational politics. If Christianity appears asa possible solution to the political problem of religion, clearly it alsoexacerbates the problem inasmuch as revelation precludes any regression to theheathen's solution.

17

Bible, I suggest, sees these events as the action of God in

history. If this is the case, and given that revelation is not to

contradict reason, though it may contain mysteries that go beyond

it, reason itself must allow for the possibility of this history

which is both of divine justice and of human injustice.

The second to last paragraph of Book II does just that. It

deals with the natural punishments of God. These, says Hobbes, are

the natural consequences of the breach of the laws of nature(P.

407). Hobbes mentions a few, and among them, rebellion, which is a

natural consequence of negligent government(P. 407). This allows

for a twofold history. Rebellion, which is always human injustice,

can also be divine justice. But these two sides of the same action

must remain separated if Hobbes's political philosophy is to stand.

If any person can pretend to be the executioner of divine

retribution it is evident that the edifice of the commonwealth,

patiently elaborated in Book II, must fall. That is why Hobbes

says, concerning the natural punishments of God, that they are

imbedded in "so long a chayn of Consequences, that no humane

Providence, is high enough, to give a man a prospect to the end"(P.

406). This suggests that the natural punishments of God cannot be

known. Reason allows for them. It computes their possibility, but

no man can know that he is the instrument of divine justice. It

follows that God's justice can never be invoked to legitimate human

actions. A man may believe that he reads the punishments of God in

a series of events, but he cannot know if what he believes is true.

If this interpretation is correct, we should expect to find

three converging lines of argumentation in Hobbes's reading of the

Bible. First, arguments to the effect that revelation, understood

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as God's initiatives in history, extends beyond the Biblical text,

all the way to the present. Second, arguments showing that

Christianity lends no support to the fear of invisible spirits, a

fear which, because it "is greater than other fears, cannot want a

party sufficient to Trouble, and sometimes, to Destroy a Common-

Wealth"(P. 371). Finally, revelation should appear as a sacred

history that brings about a complete separation of religion and

politics. In the next section I will deal with two first lines of

argumentation. In the following two sections I will present

Hobbes's conception of the historical unfolding of revelation from

Adam's fall to the end of times.

This interpretation is, at least in the second line of

argumentation identified above, akin to David Johnston's analysis

in The Rhetoric of Leviathanix. Johnston sees Hobbes engaged in a

politics of cultural transformation directed against those features

of the imaginative world of his contemporaries which were

antagonistic to the establishment of a political authority based on

rationality. There are nontheless major differences between his

interpretation and the one proposed here. Johnston fails to

perceive the political problem of religion as such. He attributes

the origin of this politics of enlightenment on Hobbes's part to

the fact that his political argument is drawn from a model of human

behaviour which approximates reality less than perfectly.

Leviathan, according to him, corresponds to the moment in Hobbes

intellectual maturation when he takes notice of this discrepency,

and should be read as a political act, as Hobbes's attempt to

change the world, rather than as his theory. To the contrary,

Hobbes, I argue, is looking to Christianity as a means through

19

which men are changed and made adequate for purely rational

Commonwealths. Natural religions, according to him, constitute a

particular political problem inasmuch as the fear of invisible

spirits is the only passion which cannot be translated into the

language of rational interestx, a difficulty which is brought to

the forefront by the experience of the English revolution. Since

the Sovereign and the political philosopher must take men as they

are, rather than as they should be, Hobbes cannot without absurdity

propound -in the sense of prescribe to the sovereign- a politic of

cultural transformation, simply because the will of the sovereign

has no power over the beliefs of his subjects. A politics of

enlightenment, conceived as the political will to rationalize or to

eradicate religion is subject to the same difficulties as the

heathen's solution to the political problem of religion. Hobbes

was well aware of these difficulties.

IV

REVELATION AND THE FEAR OF INVISIBLE SPIRITS

At the beginning of his study of revelation Hobbes reasserts the

importance of natural reason in this research. There may be

mysteries of revelation which are beyond our reason, but none that

go against it, says he(p. 409-410). He then distinguishes two ways

in which God may speak to man: directly or indirectly. If God

ix. D. Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton 1986), pp. 232.

x. On the reduction of passions to rational interests in Hobbes see, A.O.Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, (Princeton, 1977); P. Dumouchel,"Hobbes: la course à la souveraineté", in Stanford French French Review,X:153-176 (1986) and P. Dumouchel, "Voir et Craindre un lion", in RueDescartes, 12-13:92-105, (1995).

20

speaks to a man directly, that is by an immediate revelation, the

problem arises of why any other person should believe him. Hobbes

answers that we are not obliged to believe this man. If this

"prophet" happens to be my sovereign, "he may oblige me to

obedience, so, as not by act or word to declare I beleeve him not;

but not to think any otherwise then my reason perswades me"(P.

411). The point is important and leads to two apparently

contradictory consequences. First, it entails that no pretence of

direct divine revelation ever obliges in itself. Given this we

have an obligation only to our earthly sovereign. Only he can make

a doctrine law or decide what is and what is not the word of God.

Second, it reaffirms something which we saw beforexi, that faith is

not an obligation. Even my sovereign cannot force me to believe.

Hobbes's distinction between the "authenticity" and the

"cannonicity" of Scripture follows from this. Because cannons are

rules of life, and because the only rules of life which men are in

conscience forced to observe are laws, the question of the

cannonicity of the books of Scripture properly posed is: "By what

Authority they are made Law"(P. 425). Hobbes answers that they can

be made law only by the sovereign who has sole authority to

legislate. He will then limit his inquiry to those books of the

Bible which are recognized as Holy Scripture by the Church of

England(P. 416).

The question of the authenticity of the books, is to the

contrary not political and falls within what today is usually

called "critical editorial practice"xii. Hobbes tries to answer

such questions as: Who is the author of the book he is reading?

xi. See above section 1.

21

When was it written? Was it compiled from older sources? If yes,

which ones? Is the text corrupted? How can we discover that it

is? etc. Clearly all of these relate to the question of the

authority carried by Scripture. They relate to the credence

Hobbes can give to this text.

Hobbes's critical analysis leads him to challenge the common

belief that Moses is the author of the Pentateuchxiii. He mentions

numerous passages which refer in the present tense to events that

happened after Moses death, and others that refer to earlier

sources which are now lost. Hobbes concludes that the books of

Moses were written long after the time of the events they report.

When the same method applied to the other books of the Old

Testament similar results are found. The New Testament, to the

contrary, was written by the Apostles soon after Christ's Passion.

Nonetheless, the Church did not receive it as their writting before

the council of Laodicea, in 364 a.d. At that time, according to

Hobbes, so great was the ambition of the doctors of the church that

they no longer recognized the supreme authority of the civil power

in spiritual and temporal matters. Yet he believes that they did

not falsify the Gospels, though they were in their hands only,

"because if they had an intention so to doe, they would surely have

made them more favorable to their power over Christian Princes, and

Civill Sovereignty, than they are"(P. 423) Hobbes therefore sees

no reason to doubt of their authenticity.

This method of textual analysis relates to Hobbes's conception

of faith. His sovereign may force him to accept certain books as

xii. See A.M. Hjort, "The Interest of Critical Editorial Practices" inPoetics 15:259-277 (1986).

22

the only ones which contain revelation, but he cannot force him to

think otherwise than his reason persuades him. Hobbes questions

the ability of the text to affirm without contradiction that Moses

was the author of the Pentateuch. He also questions the honesty of

the ecclesiastics. He concludes accordingly. This method is a

rational criticism of belief attentive to the two criteria of

faith: ability to know the truth and honesty in not deceiving.

Simultaneously, given that those are the qualities which

"unpleasing priests" lack, it is isomorphic to the process of

religious transformation described earlier.

As Pocock has rightly pointed out, I believe, Hobbes's

approach involves a historization of revelationxiv. The text which

we consider sacred was not delivered once and for all in a time

past, and since then transmitted from generation to generation by

more or less faithful scholars. To the contrary the text as we

know it was composed through a process of rewriting of earlier

sources by a succession of anonymous compilers. In a sense, it is

the process of transmission which writes the text. Revelation not

only records historical facts, it is historically written.

Revelation is not a text which existed prior to the process of its

transmission. Rather, the sacred text is the result of this

process.

This means that Hobbes is in a position which is similar to

that of the "original" anonymous compilers. He is the interpreter

of an older source which he has recieved from a tradition. His

xiii. According to A. P. Martinich, Hobbes "is especially noteworthy forbeing the first European to argue in print that Moses could not have been theauthor of the entire Pentateuch. See A. P. Martinich The Two Gods of Leviathan (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 312.

23

interpretation adds to this tradition just as the ancient

interpreters modified older sources which are now lost. The only

possible guaranty of such a tradition is not its conformity to some

original message, which does not exist here, but the belief that it

is in the hand of God. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by

those accidents, which guide us into the presence of them that

speak to us; which accidents are all contrived by God Almighty; and

yet are not supernaturall"(P. 366). Hobbes therefore is justified

in accepting as the word of God only those books which are

recognized as such by the Church of England, the religion in which

he happens, accidentaly, to have been born. All of this suggests

that revelation, the sacred history reported in the text, extends

all the way to Hobbes and to his times. This impression is

confirmed when we remember that Hobbes's method of interpretation

is isomorphous to the history of religious changes narrated in the

Bible. An interpretation which is reinforced when we remember that

Chapter 36 informs us that the word of God is also taken for the

effect of his word(P. 454). To interpret the Bible is to be part

of a history of religious transformations which reaches out to the

present.

The second line of argumentation is to be found mainly in Book

III, Chapters 34 and 38, and again in Book IV, Chapters 45 and 46.

Especially in Book III, Hobbes sets out to define some of the terms

found in the Bible. The terms spirits, angels, and inspiration, he

tells us, are not used to refer to individual beings, but to denote

the action of God metaphorically. To be imbued with the spirit of

God is to be disposed to obey him. Angels are usualy conceived of

xiv. (Pocock 1971) pp. 163-169, 189-193.

24

as messengers of God, yet it does not follow, according to him,

that they are individual beings, spirits. Rather, the term refers

to the way God may supernaturally raise in a man a vision or a

dream in order to communicate his will. Thus, angels are not

"reall Substances, but accidents of the brain"(P. 435), there are

no ghosts(P. 434).

A similar strategy is applied to the words "satan" and

"devil". These, according to Hobbes, are not used to refer to

individual persons, as proper names do. They mean in the original

Greek, the enemy or the accuser(P. 488). They are "Appellatives"

used to designate all those who oppose the kingdom of God(P. 488,

627-628). Therefore, Hobbes concludes, they should not be left

untranslated, as they usually are, because it seduces people "to

beleeve the doctrine of Devills; which was the Religion of the

Gentiles"(P. 488). The Christian text, properly read, lends no

support whatsoever to the belief in invisible spiritsxv.

Further, God punishes us no more than our earthly sovereign

can. The soul, according to Hobbes, is a material substance, and

is not of its own nature immortal(P. 482). When a man dies, his

soul dies with him. He will be resurrected body and soul at the

end of times, but there is no purgatory in betweenxvi. There is no

hell either. That is to say, there is no lake of fire where the

damned shall suffer eternal torments. What was lost by Adam's fall

was an eternal life here on earth. Redemption is the promise that

we will recover that eternal life. Those who will be damned at the

ressurection will die again, and after that "shall die no more"(P.

490). Death is the only punishment that God inflicts upon

unbelievers. It follows that we should not fear God more than we

25

fear the civil authority. As we shall see later on, we should fear

him even less, for God, though he does not punish us more than our

sovereign can, offers us a promise which no Leviathan can.

V

THE DISSOLUTION OF GOD'S KINGDOM

Hobbes's interpretation of Adam's fall is, I believe, the key to

his reading of the Bible. He deals with it no less than four times

in Leviathanxvii. The first two descriptions stress the political

consequences of the Fall, the last two, its eschatological

implications. According to Hobbes, the term "Kingdome of God" as

it is used in Scripture refers to a "Kingdome properly so named"(P.

442). From the beginning of creation God had particular subjects

whom he commanded by voice. Such was the way he reigned over Adam.

When Adam disobeyed, he "took upon him to be as God, judging his

own sense, his punishment was a privation of the estate of Eternall

life"(P. 443). The first mention of the Fall, Chapter 20, reports

xv. A similar interpretation of these passages is found in (Johnston 1986),pp. 142-184.

xvi. About this 17th century heresy called "mortalism" and its relationshipto Hobbes see: N.H. Henry, "Milton & Hobbes: Mortalism and the IntermediateState", in Studies in Philology, Vol 48, (1951), 241-270; M.H. Nicolson, "TheSpirit World of Milton and More", in Studies in Philology, Vol 22 (1925), 432-452; G. Williamson, "Milton and the Mortalist Heresy", in Studies inPhilology, Vol 32 (1935), 553-579. In The Two Gods of Leviathan (New York,Cambridge University Press, 1992), A. P. Martinich argues that Hobbes was anorthodox Christian. But in the section (pages 262-266) of his book dealingwith mortalism he fails to mention that it was a heresy, a minority view whichwas severely punished. According to Christopher Hill The World Turned UpsideDown (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1972, p. 179) the Blasphemy Ordinance ofMay 1648 imposed the death penalty on Mortalists. Hardly the stuff out ofwhich orthodox Christians are made.

26

that the devil tempted Eve and told her that if they ate of the

tree of knowledge, they would become as Gods, knowing both good and

evil. "Whereupon having both eaten" says Hobbes "they did indeed

take upon them God's office, which is judicature of Good and Evill;

but acquired no new ability to distinguish between them aright"(P.

260).

The two consequences of the Fall, death and that men take upon

themselves the judicature of good and evil, clearly are related.

The rejection of God's kingdom leaves us with the responsibility of

determining what is right and what is wrong. But since we have

acquired no new ability to distinguish between them, this leads to

a state of war of all against all. Given that we are now mortal,

we must erect, for our protection, a "Mortal God" to whom we confer

the sole right of deciding what is right and what is wrong(P. 234,

311-318). To be condemned to death is to be condemned to the

Leviathan. God doomed mankind to what Adam desired, the judicature

of good and evil. Adam's fall has condemned us to political

philosophy.

The Fall then explains the existence of human political

institutions. God punishes us with death as enemies, expulses us

from his kingdom and abandons us to ourselves. The Fall is the

beginning of God's silence when he ceases to govern us with his

voice. It is equivalent to his natural kingdom where he gives us

xvii. There are four different but complementary interpretations of thispassage in Leviathan, Book II, Chapter 20, (P. 259-260); Book III, Chapter 35,(P. 443); Book III, Chapter 38, (P. 479-481); Book IV, Chapter 44, (P. 636-637). Yet, according to the computer analysis of the text of Leviathan by L.Roux & H. Gilibert, Le Vocabulaire, la phrase et le paragraphe du "Leviathan"de Thomas Hobbes, (Saint-Etienne 1980), p. 132, the word 'Adam' occurs only 35times in the whole book.

27

no laws. We may want to submit to his power, but this desire to

submit is of no avail as long as he refuses to answer our call.

Adam's fall is also the beginning of revelation. It is the

sacred history of God's renewed dialogue with man and of man's

responses to the divine initiatives. Then, says Hobbes, God spoke

to Abraham and made a covenant with him. But God spoke only to

Abraham, not to all of the people of Israel, why then were they

forced to take his word as the word of God? Abraham, according to

Hobbes, exerted a paternal dominion over his family. Therefore

"their wills (which make the essence of all Covenants) were before

the contract involved in the will of Abraham"(P. 500). The people

of Israel did not covenant directly with God only indirectly. It

is through their prior tacit contract with Abraham that they were

obliged to take as God's laws what he commanded in God's namexviii.

After the escape from Egypt, Moses renewed the covenant with

God. Yet Moses had "no authority to govern the Israelites, as a

successor to the right of Abraham"(P. 502). Where did his

legitimacy come from? "It could not be the commandement of God

that could oblige them [the Israelites]; because God spoke not to

them immediately, but by the mediation of Moses.... His authority

therefore, as the authority of all other Princes, must be grounded

on the Consent of the People, and their Promise to obey

him"(Ibid.). It is difficult to carry the secularisation of

political power any further. The right of Moses to govern the

Israelites, according to Hobbes, did not and could not come from

God, it had to be founded on the consent of the people. It is not

religion which legitimizes politics, but only politics which can

make religion law, and that, even in the kingdom of God!

28

Given that God speaks only indirectly to his subjects, we

should not be surprised to learn that the divine kingdom itself is

exposed to the religious vissicitudes that threaten human

sovereignty. When the people of Israel asked Samuel to make them a

King that would govern them like all the nations, they deposed the

government of God(P. 508). God said to Samuel to listen to the

people, "for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected

me, that I should not reign over them"(Ibid.). Yet, Hobbes tells

us, God consented to it.

As we saw earlier, Hobbes's conception of the kingdom of God

entails that God himself, inasmuch as he wants to govern men as

subjects, rather than to overrule them with his might, cannot

circumvent the essential structure of the political institution:

the consent of the people. His interpretation of scripture

suggests that the problem should be seen the other way around.

Since the Fall it is human institutions which caricature the divine

kingdom. The commonwealth rests on consent, but on a consent which

has been wrought out of fear. God consents to the rebellion of his

subjects, in Adam and in the Israelites, because he "never

accepteth forced actions, (which is all the Law produceth) but the

inward conversion of the heart"(P. 592).

The consequence of this rebellion is a history of civil strife

and disorder which leads to the division of the commonwealth of the

Hebrews, to its destruction and to their captivity. The people of

Israel, according to Hobbes, had no design to abandon the worship

of God. They simply despaired of the justice of the sons of

Samuel(P. 501)xix. Therefore they did not allow their Kings to

depart from the religion of Moses and "took occasion as oft as

29

their Governours displeased them, by blaming sometimes the Policy,

sometimes the Religion, to change the Government, or revolt from

their Obedience at their pleasure"(P. 509). "So that they always

kept in store a pretext, either of Justice, or Religion, to

discharge them selves of their obedience whensoever they had hope

to prevaile"(P. 510)xx.

The Fall and the election of Saul are, according to Hobbes,

events of a similar type. They repeat the same tale of man's

rejection of God's kingdom. In both cases the fault is identical.

It is to take God's office upon ourselves, to assume the judicature

of good and evil. In both cases God consented to it. Yet, God

gave us no new ability to distinguish between them properly, so

that we are condemned to death and to the Leviathan. And because,

since the Fall, God has spoken to the Hebrews and given them laws

through Moses, their rejection of his kingdom has also condemned

them to the political problem of religion, and consequently to the

destruction of their comonwealth.

VI

xviii. Professor F. C. Hoods in his book The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes(Oxford 1964), p. 263, argues the commonwealth is possible only if the laws ofnature have already been received as God's laws through revelation(P. 253).According to the passage we have just analysed, revelation can be received aslaw only through the already existing obligation to the sovereign. Inconsequence, it seems that under Hoods's interpretation neither thecommonwealth nor revelation are possible.

xix?. Once again, "unpleasing priests" are the cause of religious changes.

xx. Compare to the passage in Book II, (P. 370-372).

30

THE MISSION OF CHRIST AND THE POWER OF THE ECCLESIASTICS

The mission, or office, of Christ, according to Hobbes, is to be

understood in relationship to the Fall and the rejection of God's

kingdom. It is a threefold office and to each part of this mission

corresponds a particular time period in the history of mankind.

One, Christ has a mission as Saviour and Redeemer(P. 512). This

first part of his office is to recover the eternal life that was

lost by Adam's sin(P. 479). According to Hobbes, this eternal life

is, it should be noted, exactly the one which we lost. It is an

eternal life here on earth. The elect shall not ascend to

heaven(P. 480-495). They shall live here on earth and shall be

secured against "all Evill, comprending Want, Sicknesse, and Death

itself"(P. 490). To this first part of his office corresponds the

time of his first coming, from his birth to his death on the Cross.

The second part of his mission corresponds to the fact that

salvation is conditional on some acceptance on our part. Hence

Christ has an office as a Counsellor or Teacher(P. 512). As such

his mission is to renew the covenant that "had been cut off by the

Rebellion of the Israelites in the election of Saul"(P. 515). What

is asked of us, in order to recover eternal life, is to assent to

the rule of God. To gain eternal life is to enter the kingdom of

God just as its rejection condemned us to death. To this part of

Christ's mission corresponds all the time from his ressurection to

the time of his second coming. The third part of Christ's mission

is to reign as King over the elect after judgement day. He will

reign under God, as God's lieutenant, as Moses did(P. 518-519). To

this last part of his mission corresponds a time period which is

situated after the resurrection of the dead.

31

The second part of Christ's mission then continues today.

Since Christ is no longer with us, it is carried on by the Church

and by the ecclesiastics, the followers of the Apostles. It is

from the point of view of the duties and responsibility of that

mission that Hobbes sets out to establish what power Christ left to

his ministers(P. 521). Now what was the nature of the submission

which Christ demanded from us? He required that we should submit

to the kingdom of God and renew the covenant that was broken at the

election of Saul, but not that we submit to him here in the

present. Rather we are asked to acknowledge the promise of a

kingdom to come in the future.

Therefore the power of the ecclesiastics, according to Hobbes,

is only a power "to proclaim the Kingdom of Christ, and to perswade

men to submit themselves thereunto"(P. 525). The duty of the

ecclesiastics is to make men believe and have faith in Christ.

"But Faith hath no relation to, nor dependance at all upon

Compulsion, or Commandement... Therefore the Ministers of Christ in

this world, have no Power by that title, to Punish any man for not

Beleeving or for Contradicting what they say"(P. 526)xxi. According

to Hobbes the precepts of Christian religion are not laws because

"our Saviour hath denyed his Kingdome to be in this world"(P. 527).

The time between the election of Saul and Christ's second comming

is a time when men are condemned to give to themselves their own

laws.

The precepts of Christian religion are counsel. In Chapter

23, Book II(P. 303), Hobbes has already established the distinction

between laws and counsel. He nevertheless feels obliged to repeat

it here. A law, according to Hobbes, is distinguished from a

32

counsel in "that the reason of the Law, is taken from the designe

and benefit of him that prescribeth it; but the reason of a

Counsell, from the designe, and benefit of him, to whom the

Counsell is given"(P. 588-589). The distinction is essential.

When I give an order to someone, what I am aiming at is a good for

myself. When I give counsel, what I aim or pretend to be aiming at

is a good for the person I counsel. Christianity is counsel and

not law because to accept the promise of salvation is not in God's

interest, but in my ownxxii.

Because of this difference between the aim of counsel and that

of law, a man is never obliged to do what he is counselled(P. 303;

550). It follows that the books of the New Testaments are "only

good, and safe advice, which every man might take, and refuse at

his own perill, without injustice"(P. 531). God consented to the

rebellion of the Israelites and he has given us no new laws, only

advice. He has given us no new laws, because he accepts only "the

inward conversion of the heart; which is not the work of Laws, but

of Counsell, and Doctrine"(P. 592). Christianity is not law, and

as we will see, should not be made law.

[A] Christian King, as a Pastor, and Teacher of his

Subjects, makes not thereby his Doctrines Laws. Hexxi. Numerous passages support this conception of ecclesiastical power. See,for example, (P. 527, 541, 542, 543, 550, 551, 591, and 592).

xxii. In The Two Gods of Leviathan (New York, Cambridge University Press,1992), Professor Martinich is somewhat perplexed by Hobbes's used of thisdistinction in relationship to God. He concludes that if would follow from itthat God's commandement benefit Him, which he adds, "is obviously absurd foran orthodox"(p. 132). But then, maybe this is a further sign that Hobbes isnot an orthodox Christian and that he seriously meant what he often repeated,that God commands are not laws, but only safe counsel, which any man may athis own peril disregard.

33

cannot oblige men to beleeve; though as a Civill

Soveraign he may make Laws suitable to his Doctrine,

which may oblige men to certain actions, and sometimes

to such as they would not otherwise do, and which he

ought not to command; (P.591).

Hobbes said at the beginning of his reading of the Bible that

though it is not determined in Scripture "what laws every Christian

King shall constitute in his own Dominions; yet it is determined

what laws he shall not constitute"(P. 415). Though he can

transform his interpretation of Scripture into law, the sovereign

should not do it. He should not for theological reasons, because

God never accepts forced actions which is all that the law

produces. He should not for political reasons, because he cannot

force men to believe. Christianity entails a complete separation

of religion and politics, because Christ's kingdom is not of this

world, and because the precepts of Christian religion are counsels,

not law.

This conclusion is reinforced by the last chapter of the third

book entitled "Of what is NECESSARY for a Man's Reception in the

Kingdome of God"(P. 609). This whole chapter is an eloquent

statement of Hobbes's latitudinarism. All that is necessary in

order to be saved, according to Hobbes, is faith and obedience to

the laws(p. 610). Since Christ has given us no new laws, the laws

we should obey are political only. This obedience to the

sovereign, if it were perfect, Hobbes tells us, would be sufficient

to save us. It is only because we are all disobedient through

Adam, and by our own transgressions, that we need faith and

remission of sins(P. 610). The sovereign therefore, and he alone,

34

answers to the question: what should I do? Christianity, as

religion within the limits of pure reason according to Kant,

answers to the question: what can I hope? I can hope for eternal

life and the remission of sin.

According to Hobbes, the only article of faith necessary in

order to be received in the kingdom of heaven is to believe that

"Jesus is Christ".(P. 615). On this Christ has built his Church

and from it are derived all other articles of faith. To believe

that Jesus is Christ, according to Hobbes, is to believe that he is

the Messiah sent for the remission of our sins and who will return

at the end of time to reign over the elect. It is to believe in

the promise that constitutes the essence of Christianity. Hobbes

supports this interpretation with a passage taken from St Paul's

first Epistle to the Corithians, Chapter 3, verse 11 to 15. There,

Paul says that no man can lay a different foundation than the one

which is laid: Jesus is Christ. He adds that whoever shall build

upon this foundation shall see his edifice tried on the day of

judgement, and that though his construction may be lost, he himself

shall be saved. Men should not kill each other over every little

point of interpretation. God himself does not ask so much from us.

He forgives our false interpretations, if only we are ready to

submit to his kingdom. Sovereigns should not make their inter-

pretation of Scripture law, the ecclesiastics should not ask them

to do so. As Hobbes will say Chapter 46, it is against the law of

nature to force men to accuse themselves of opinions(P. 700).

Hobbes reads the Bible as a sacred history which assigns us

our place in the world. We live in the time of Christianity, a

period which comes after the Fall and the rejection of God's

35

kingdom and before Christ's return. During that time, God gives us

no laws. He abandons to us the judicature of good and evil. But

he gives us a promise of eternal life and of a kingdom to come.

This promise should ease our anxiety about future time, because it

is a promise to be relieved of all evil and of death itself. In

order to inherit that promise, we should obey the civil authority

and submit to God's future rule. Hobbes's reading of the Bible is

his philosophy of historyxxiii. Christianity defines the time within

which purely rational political institutions become possiblexxiv.

VII

GOD'S PUNISHMENTS REVEALED

The last book of Leviathan, entitled "Of the Kingdome of Darknesse"

inquires into the reason which prevented this true interpretation

of Scripture from being recieved. Hobbes lists four causes of the

spiritual darkness in which we live. He dedicates one chapter to

the study of each of the first two causes and studies the last two

in the third chapter of Book IV. The first cause is the

misinterpretation of Scripture. The main error here is to believe

that the Church here on earth is the Kingdom of God and that the

Pope is its sovereign(P. 630). The other major errors relate to

the soul, hell and purgatory. As we have seen before it is to

believe that the soul is naturally immortal, that it will suffer

eternal torments in hell after the judgement and that in the

36

meantime it expiates its sins in purgatory.

The second cause of spiritual darkness is from "DAEMONOLOGY,

and other Reliques of the Religion of the Gentiles"(P. 657). The

main mistake in this case is the belief in the existence of

invisible and immaterial spirits. Hobbes argues that these beliefs

were carried over from the religion of the gentiles who retained

some of their original ceremonies at the time of their first

conversion(P. 659-681). With a very keen historical and

anthropological sensibility Hobbes suggests origins in the Greek

and Roman religions of the antiquity for the canonization of

saints, the procession of images, the use of holy water, exorcisms,

and many other ceremonies of the Roman Church. He ends that

chapter by saying that he does not doubt that it is possible to

find many more of these "old empty Bottles of Gentilisme, which the

Doctors of the Romane Church, either by Negligence, or Ambition,

have filled up again with the new Wine of Christianity, that will

not faile in time to break them" (P. 681). The third cause of

spiritual darkness is by mixing Scripture with the "vain and

erroneous Philosophy of the Greeks"(P. 629). The fourth is by

adding to this mixture uncertain traditions and history. In both

these cases the error is essentially an attempted supression of

reason.

xxiii. A point which as also been argued by A.J. Pocock "Time, History andEschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes", in Politics, Language and Time(Atheneum, 1971), P. 148-201.

xxiv. P. Manent, Naissances de la Politique Moderne (Paris, 1977), pp. 119-131, has similarily argued that, according to Hobbes, Christian revelationentails a complete separation of religion and politics during the time whichelapses between Christ's death and his second coming.

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The last chapter of Book IV is entitled "Of the BENEFIT that

procedeth from such Darknesse and to whom it accrueth"(P. 704). As

we may suspect, this benefit goes, according to Hobbes, first to

the Church of Rome, but also to "all those besides that endeavour

to settle in the mind of men this erroneous Doctrine, that the

Church now on earth, is that Kingdome of God mentioned in the Old

and New Testament"(P. 708). Hobbes then proceeds to sketch the

history of the growth of spiritual darkness from the beginning of

the Church to his times. He stresses that in this history

Christian Princes can be considered as accessories to their own

damage. "For without their Authority there could at first no

seditious Doctrine have been publiquely preached"(P. 709). Yet,

once the process had begun, once men were influenced by the fear of

invisible spirits, "there was no humane remedy to be applyed", and

we should wait for the remedies of God who never fails "in his good

time to destroy all the Machinations of men against the

Truth"(Ibid.).

This history begins with the humbles virtues of the Apostles

which the people believed out of reverence, says Hobbes, and not

obligation. Then as the number of Christians increased the

Presbyters assembled to decide what should and should not be

taught, and decided to excommunicate those who would not obey them.

This, says Hobbes "was the first knot upon their Liberty"(P. 710).

The second knot was when the Presbyters of the major cities and

38

provinces took the names of Bishops and got an authority over the

parochial presbyters. Finally the Bishop of Rome claimed an

authority over all the Bishops and over the emperors themselves.

This, says Hobbes, was the "third and last knot, and the whole

Synthesis and Construction of the Pontificall Power... "And

therefore the Analysis, or Resolution is by the same way; but

beginning with the knot that was last tyed"(P. 710). First the

power of the Pope was destroyed in England by King Henry VIII and

by Queen Elizabeth. The second knot was untied when the

Presbyterians obtained in England the putting down of the power of

the Episcopacy. "And almost in the same time, the Power was also

taken from the Presbyterians. And so we are reduced to the

Independancy of Primitive Christians to follow Paul, Cephas, or

Apollos, every man as he liketh best"(P. 711).

The meaning of these texts is, I believe, clear. Hobbes

presents recent English history from Henry VIII's break with Rome

to the latest events in the Civil War as leading to a situation of

religious toleration which is entirely consistent with his

interpretation of Christianity. In the same breath he describes

this situation as allowing for the existence of purely rational

political institutions. He even suggests that this historical

process of religious transformations is in the hand of God who

"never faileth in his good time to destroy the Machinations of men

against the Truth"(P. 710) and further suggests that it is the

effect of the word of God in history, of the new wine of Chris-

tianity breaking the old bottles of gentilisme. Hence we are

reduced to the independancy of the primitive Christians, to a time

when sovereigns can prevent the spread of spiritual darkness(P.

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709).

Christianity solves the political problem of religion.

Revelation reaches out to men as they are. It changes them in a

way in which neither the Sovereign nor the political philosopher

can. On one hand, it religiously justifies the sovereign's sole

authority to decide what is right and wrong. On the other hand, it

calms men's anxiety about future time by answering the question:

what can I hope? That is why, historically, it can perform a

complete separation of the two domains of religion and politics.

Yet, if no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect

of the end of divine punishments, it is clear that Hobbes cannot

know this. He can only believe that his interpretation of the

Bible is true and that he perceives the action of God correctly in

the "disorders of the present times". This is why he wrote, in the

ultimate paragraph of the last chapter of Leviathan:

But who knows that this Spirit of Rome, now gone out,

and walking by Missions through the dry places of China,

Japan, and the Indies, that yeeld him little fruit, may

not return, or rather an Assembly of Spirits worse than

he, enter, and inhabite this clean swept house, and make

the End thereof worse than the Beginning?

This interpretation, which gives major importance to the

precise moment at which Leviathan was written during the English

Civil war differs, in various ways from what may be called the

'interventionist' interpretations of Hobbes. A few years ago

Professor Quentin Skinner argued that Hobbes's Leviathan

consituted, among other things, a political intervention within the

40

engagement controversy taking place in England in the years 1649-

1651xxv. According to him, Hobbes was rightly seen by the de facto

theorists supporting Cromwell as propounding a theory of obligation

which corroborated their own conclusions. According to the present

interpretation Hobbes's contribution to that debate might also have

been motivated by the fact that at least some of the Independants

supported a form of toleration which he considered indispensable to

the establishment of purely rational politics. Recently Mark

Whitaker suggested that Hobbes's intervention in English

revolutionary politics was addressed to what he saw "as a political

moment of extraordinary significance and possibility" and that its

"political focus can be best described as that of the

incompleteness of Reformation"xxvi. Clearly there is much agreement

between Professor Whitaker's interpretation and mine. His claim

that for Hobbes the fact that the English Revolution was unresolved

was inseparable from the fact that the Reformation was still an

incompleted historical process, is from my point of view correct

and essential to a proper understanding of Leviathan. But to this

we must add, that for Hobbes the incompleteness of Reformation

should also be construed as the incompleteness of Revelation. In

1651 Hobbes believed that this process was nearing its conclusion

as he hoped that the Protectorate would lead to the establishment

of permanent toleration. In consequence, contrary to what Whitaker

argues, there must be major differences between Hobbes's reading of

the Civil war in Leviathan and in Behemoth. Clearly, by 1668, the

Restoration politics and particularly the 1661 Clarendon Code must

have had shattered Hobbes's hopes for tolerationxxvii.

The main difficulty I see with 'interventionist'

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interpretations of Leviathanxxviii is that they rest on an

understanding of political intervention which, I believe, has no

place within the context of Hobbes's science of politics. As a

result they entail a contradiction between the content of the book,

especially the content of its first half, and the political act

which it is, in some way, deemed to perform. My claim is that an

historicist, as opposed to a purely historical interpretation which

replaces Hobbes's vision of the English Civil war within the

context of his theology, or philosophy, of history avoids this

pragmatic paradox.

VII

CONCLUSION

Parts III and IV are not accidental additions to what we came to

consider as the core of Hobbes's doctrine, nor do they constitute a

xxv. See Quentin Skinner, "The ideological context of Hobbes's politicalthought", in Historical Journal 9 (1966), 286-317; "Conquest and Consent:Thomas Hobbes and the engagement controversy", in The Interregnum, the Questfor Settlement, Ed. G.E. Aylmer, (London, 1972), 70-98; "The context ofHobbes's theory of political obligation" in Hobbes and Rousseau, Ed. M.Cranston and R.S. Peters (London 1972), 109-142.

xxvi. M. Whitaker, "Hobbes's view of the Reformation", History of PoliticalThought, 9 (1988), p. 45.

xxvii. Richard Tuck Philosophy and government 1572-1651 (Cambridge, 1993) supportsthis point. Tuck's own analysis of these texts on toleration is in many wayscomplementary to this one. His explanation of Hobbes's stance as linked tothe position adopted by exiled Queen's court in Paris is well documented andconvincing, but Hobbes's personal motivation, whatever it might have been,does not itself constitute an interpretation of these texts and of their placein the general economy of Leviathan.

xxviii. I also consider Johnston (1986) as propounding a variant of the'interventionist' interpretation.

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second, historical and prophetical, book loosely connected to the

first half of Leviathan, as both Pocock and Eisenach seem to

believexxix. Leviathan is only one "Discourse of Civill and

Ecclesiastical Government, occasioned by the disorders of the

present time"(P. 728). Parts III and IV are logical sequels to I

and II. They address a problem which is set out in Part I and the

solution is the basis for the value of Part II. Between

Christianity and Hobbes's political philosophy exists a different

type of relation than what has usually been suspected. Neither one

of opposition, as postulated by Leo Straussxxx, nor one of

foundation, as advanced by Hood and Warrenderxxxi, but rather one of

meta-foundation, where Christianity appears as the condition of

possibility for atheism in politics, for a commonwealth of no

religion at allxxxii.

Hobbes was well aware that religion was a form of social, or

political, organization. He was also aware that by recommending

the establishment of a purely rational politics he was proposing

something entirely different from what had existed historically.

The essence of this rational politics, according to him, is that

men, through their representative, give to themselves their own

xxix. Pocock (1971); E.J. Eisenach, The Two Worlds of Liberalism. Religionand Politics in Hobbes, Locke, and Mill (Chicago 1981), pp. 1-70.

xxx. Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Chicago 1952).

xxxi. (Hood 1964).; H. Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: HisTheory of Obligation (Oxford 1961).

xxxii. In many ways the closest interpretation of the relationship betweenHobbes's philosophy and his conception of Christianity which I could find inthe literature is S. R. Letwin, "Hobbes and Christianity", in Deadalus, 105:1-21 (1976).

43

laws. Its foundation is therefore solely the consent of the

subjects who agree to the law by which they are governed. The

experience of the English civil war, and the role played by

religious factions in that event, confirmed his belief that a

purely rational commonwealth was absolutely necessary if men were

to live in peace. Yet it also convinced him that this most needed

solution was unavailable as long as men believed otherwise. Hobbes

was doomed to encounter the political problem of religion.

Book III and IV propose what is probably the only possible

solution to this problem for those who think that politics must

take men as they are, rather than as they should be. It is a

historical and religious solution. As Hobbes clearly saw, only a

change in religious beliefs can make possible purely secular forms

of political organization. In this Hobbes appears as a

philosophical predecessor of the socio-historical theses of Max

Weber and R.G. Tawneyxxxiii. A predecessor who perceived, before it

existed, the conditions which made possible a new world of

politics.

This interpretation also suggests that human political

institutions caricature the kingdom of God. According to Hobbes,

the legitimacy of the commonwealth rests on the consent of the

subjects and on the involvement of their wills in the will of the

sovereign(P. 500). Because of this subjects can never accuse their

sovereign of injustice(P. 232; 217-222), given that, for Hobbes,

xxxiii. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,(London 1976); R.G. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, (London1938). Hobbes also appears as someone who has written a chapter in whatMarcel Gauchet has defined as the political history of religion. See M.Gauchet, Le Désanchantement du Monde, (Paris, 1985).

44

everyone wills a good for himself. Thus, it is clear that the

nature of the contract is to ensure a convergence between what

Hobbes calls counsel and what he names command. If that

convergence were always realized no coercion would ever be

necessary and political institutions would be perfectly rational.

Decisions of the Sovereign would express the will of each

individual subject perfectly. God never accepts any forced

actions, which, according to Hobbes is all the law ever produces.

To enter the kingdom of God is to gain eternal life. Therefore, it

is to enter a commonwealth where men, perhaps, covenant out of fear

of death, but where fear and coercion have no place once the

kingdom is instituted. The kingdom of God is the only perfectly

rational commonwealth, the only one that rests on the pure consent

of its subjects, because God can wait and choose his subjects.

This tends to indicate that Hobbes's conception of a rational

commonwealth could have a theological origin, probably in

Calvinismxxxiv. If this were the case, Hobbes would be doubly

justified in considering Christianity as the condition of

possibility of a purely rational politicsxxxv.

xxxiv. About the relationship between Hobbes and Calvinism, see (Pocock,1971) and the articles mentioned in Note 13. See also W.K. Jordan, TheDevelopment of Religious Toleration in England, Vol 4, Peter Smith, 241-320,and R. Tuck, Philosophy and government 1572-1641, (Cambridge, 1993).

xxxv. Professor R. Girard has recently proposed an interpretation ofChristianity's historical role that is somewhat similar to Hobbes's. FromGirard's point of view, Hobbes's only failing is that he never managed torelate the fear of invisible spirits to the harm which men created equal caninflict upon each other, and hence to the origin of politics. According toGirard, it is precisely this connection which is revealed by Christianity, andthat is why it makes possible a purely rational politics. See R. Girard,Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, (London, 1987).

45

Leviathan gains in consistency and coherence when its second

half is taken into account. Hobbes writings on religion are no

less important to a proper understanding of his politics than is

his natural philosophy. Critics who find the key to Hobbes's

political philosophy in his reflection on natural sciences, and

rest their case on the internal consistency of his thought, should

perhaps remember that this very consistency speaks forcefully in

favor of the importance of his interpretation of Scripture. "For

it is not the bare Words, but the Scope of the writer that giveth

the true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted; and

they that insist upon single Texts, without considering the main

Designe, can derive no thing from them cleerly"(P. 626).

Paul Dumouchel, Université du Québec à Montréal

NOTES:

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