Hobbes Reenvisions Hebraic and Christian History

There has been a growing scholarly interest in the 'Hebraic' Hobbes. However, much of this work has avoided engagement with biblical typology, a form of Christian Scriptural interpretation that sees the figures and events of the Hebrew Bible as foreshadowing Christ and the New Testament. Common from early Christianity onward, typology became a polemical weapon in the political and religious conflicts of seventeenthcentury England. This paper situates Thomas Hobbes within this context and argues that his uses of biblical typology are part of a broader project of defending sovereign power and securing civil piece. This analysis permits a new appreciation for the political strategy behind Hobbes' use of religious sources and allows us to understand the theological and political stakes in the unusual character of Hobbes' Moses, who is treated both as a type of Christ and a type of Leviathan sovereign.

According to Hobbes, the prophetic kingdom of God is "a real, not a metaphorical kingdom. " at is, it is a political kingdom (Leviathan kingdom (Leviathan kingdom ( , ch. 36). In Sinai, God was elected king by the Jewish nation, then "the freest" of all nations and "the greatest enemy to human subjection by reason of the fresh memory of their Egyptian bondage" (De Cive to human subjection by reason of the fresh memory of their Egyptian bondage" (De Cive to human subjection by reason of the fresh memory of their Egyptian bondage" ( 16; Leviathan, ch. 35). e Jews chose the kingdom of God because they opposed political subjection to human beings. For Hobbes, the election of a flesh-and-blood king was the original sin (Leviathan the original sin (Leviathan the original sin ( , chs. 20, 35, 38). e task of Jesus as Messiah will be purely political: to restore the kingdom of God which had been instituted by Moses and formally rejected with the coronation of Saul (Leviathan rejected with the coronation of Saul (Leviathan rejected with the coronation of Saul ( , chs. 16, 35, 38, 41-44). e libertarian or anarchistic tendency of Hobbes' religious thought is striking. If human beings were truly religious, they would need no human sovereign, and the rights of the human sovereign derive only from original sin. In his practical politics, Hobbes argued for the absolute rule of a human monarch. His messianism was but a vision. Yet one cannot understand his politics without understanding his vision.

Vujeva, Domagoj, Ribarević, Luka (eds), 2017: Europe and the Heritage of Modernity, Disput, Zagreb

Hobbes on Politics and Religion, 2018

This chapter defends three connected claims. First, we can account for Hobbes’s turn towards the Hebrew Bible by understanding the place of biblical Israel in the political and religious debates of seventeenth-century England. Second, Hobbes’s particular focus on the Mosaic polity is harder to explain. This focus is puzzling because, for both contextual and textual reasons, the period of Davidic kingship seems to fit much better with Hobbes’s philosophical account of the basis of sovereign authority. Third, Hobbes’s focus on the Mosaic polity is best seen as a rhetorical and polemical move designed to appropriate the images and narratives of parliamentarians, republicans, and radicals, and to subversively redirect them in the service of absolutism. There is suggestive textual evidence that Hobbes knew that this was both a radical and a risky strategy.

"This paper seeks to trace the ways in which Christianity, in particular 17th century Calvinist theology, influenced and shaped the thinking and writings of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. The writings of Hobbes, especially the Leviathan, continue to be highly influential texts for political theory and thought today, especially as it informed the emergence of modern secular states, the development of social contract theory, natural law, and the rise of political rights and responsibilities of citizens in a liberal state. Most of this Hobbesian influence on contemporary politics is derived from readings of Hobbes as a secular political theorist (either areligious or an atheist) who initiated a critical break from earlier theories of religious and monarchical rule, and opened the way for the emergency of modern political systems rooted in republican and parliamentarian principles of citizenship. “For the truth is that the way modern liberal democracies approach religion and politics today is unthinkable without the decisive break made by Thomas Hobbes” (Lilla 88). On this reading, the Leviathan is seen as the political handbook par excellence for modern secular and liberal state. I argue that this assertion, however, is a fundamental misreading of Hobbes and his writings. Not only should Hobbes be seen as a powerful Christian political theologian, but the entire project of Leviathan is one of reconciling religious and civil rule under the control of a Christian commonwealth (hence the subtitle: “The matter, forme, & power of a common-wealth ecclesiasticall and civill”). To read Hobbes as a secular theorist unconcerned or hostile to religion requires not only ignoring the historical context in which Hobbes was writing during and responding to in his works, but even more, to ignore his own words. While many of Hobbes's ideas about theology were certainly heterodox for his time, this very heterodoxy strengthens the case for Hobbes as a deeply committed political theologian."

Hobbes's On the Citizen: A Critical Guide

This chapter identifies and explains three important changes in Hobbes’s religious arguments from Elements of Law (1640) to De Cive (1642) First, Hobbes comes to focus more on religious and scriptural matters, devoting a greater amount of space to them in De Cive than in Elements of Law. Second, Hobbes’s argumentative strategy evolves. He multiplies independent lines of argument for the same central claims. Third, the content of Hobbes’s arguments changes. In De Cive, he takes a Hebraic turn, offering a new and detailed discussion of the Israelite kingdom of God and relying far more heavily on scriptural evidence from the Old Testament. In each case, these changes can be explained by the changing political context in England and Hobbes’s increasing sensitivity to the challenges of religious pluralism.

Journal of Cultural and Religious Studies, 2017

Hobbes asserts that political power no longer needs to be founded on religious charisma (as argued by Machiavellians and libertines), because this power can be justified only by covenant, that is by the consent of people deciding voluntarily, on the basis of an utilitaristic calculation of benefits, to subject themselves to a sovereign. In the sections of Elements of law natural and politic, De cive and Leviathan dedicated to religion, Hobbes demonstrates that the sacred history corroborates his political theory. He uses skilfully chosen literal quotations to demonstrate that the power of Abraham and Moses, who ruled over their people as divine lieutenants, and even that of Yahweh as king of Israel, were based on a special covenant. In Hobbes's reading, the figures of Moses and Christ no longer proceed as a pair, as in the cliché of the religious imposture theory: the figure of the prophet Moses is strongly politicised, whereas Christ makes no new laws to administer earthly justice, but teaches the way of salvation. Religion loses the political centrality of a founding element of human society and is referred to an individual, internal and psychological dimension.

Published on Political Theology Today, 18 October 2017, http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/delegated-divine-rule-on-hobbes-and-the-origins-of-political-theology-jonathan-cole/

 Hobbes asserts that political power no longer needs to be founded on religious charisma (as argued by Machiavellians and libertines), because this power can be justified only by covenant, that is by the consent of people deciding voluntarily, on the basis of an utilitaristic calculation of benefits, to subject themselves to a sovereign. In the sections of Elements of law natural and politic, De cive and Leviathan dedicated to religion, Hobbes demonstrates that the sacred history corroborates his political theory. He uses skilfully chosen literal quotations to demonstrate that the power of Abraham and Moses, who ruled over their people as divine lieutenants, and even that of Yahweh as king of Israel, were based on a special covenant. In Hobbes's reading, the figures of Moses and Christ no longer proceed as a pair, as in the cliché of the religious imposture theory: the figure of the prophet Moses is strongly politicised, whereas Christ makes no new laws to administer earthly justice, but teaches the way of salvation. Religion loses the political centrality of a founding element of human society and is referred to an individual, internal and psychological dimension. Religion and sacred history occupy the central space in the writings of those free thinkers of the 17th century who, from René Pintard onwards, have been identified as «erudite libertines» 1. These authors-such as François La Mothe Le Vayer, Gabriel Naudé, Hector Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, Pierre Gassendi, or the anonymous compiler of the clandestine treatise Theophrastus redivivus-, heirs to the naturalism of Pietro Pomponazzi and the political theories of Niccolò Machiavelli, present religion under two aspects: as a product of the passions and credulity of man, and as a utilisation of this product by astute politicians that have deceived men in order to build new societies and empires on a solid base 2. The phenomenology of religion delineated by the libertine critique starts from an attentive analysis of belief-formation mechanisms, makes interesting references to mass psychology and reformulates the Averroistic and Renaissance idea of religion as imposture and instrumentum Regni. What it constantly reconfirms is the essentially practical, non-theoretical dimension of historic religions, serving as educators of peoples about good conduct and born to satisfy a need for order and stability.

Hobbes Studies, 2013

The relationships between politics and religion have always been the focus of Hobbesian literature, which generally privileges the theme of the Christian State, i.e. the union of temporal and spiritual power in a sovereign-representative person. This essay presents other perspectives of interpretation, which analyze the relationships between politics and religion in Hobbes’ works by using specifically metaphysical and theological categories – liberty/ necessity, causality, kingdom of God, divine prescience, potentia Dei etc. – which allow us to reconsider the nature of political power (and the relevance of modern technology for the contemporary politics). The core of Hobbes’ argumentation concerns the theoretical status of determinism (i.e. the relationships between liberty and necessity) with regard to the reduction of «potentia» to «potestas» not only in political philosophy, but also in metaphysics and theology. In many passages of Hobbes’ works, then, it is possible to understand the role of God’s idea in the natural and political philosophy: God’s idea as first cause or as omnipotence is only a reassuring word useful to describe the necessary, mechanical and eternal movement of the bodies and useful to justify the materialistic determinism in anthropology and politics. Body and movement are the necessary fundaments of the universe which find in itself - without reference to the category of «possibility» in politics and in physics - the motives and the reasons of his own structure and function (from causes to effects).