Hobbes’ God is Hidden and Idle

ABSTRACT

This article argues that Hobbes’ contradictory references to God can be resolved if viewed through the lens of two prominent conceptualizations of God – the Reformist hidden God (deus absconditus) and the Epicurean idle God (deus otiosus). Contrary to scholars who argue that Hobbes’ God does not exist by nature and only comes into being through his representees, I argue that in the Leviathan, God may be incomprehensible or idle, but that He exists prior to His representees. With this characterization, Hobbes manages to assert God’s ultimate supremacy and challenge the authority of the Church while simultaneously reinforcing the necessity to submit to the sovereign. Establishing this point, the article places Hobbes’ theological argument in the context of two prevalent conceptions of God’s nature at the time of Hobbes’ writing and explains their political-theological relevance in the Leviathan. The article thus contributes to the continued debate about Hobbes’ view on God’s role in relation to the Commonwealth.

KEYWORDS:

• Epicureanism
• Reformist theology
• deus absconditus
• deus otiosus
• Hobbes
• Leviathan
• sovereignty

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Political Theology, Professor David Johnston, Professor Nadia Urbinati, Professor Jon Elster, Nathan Feldman, Ece Tekbulut and Ansgar Marwege for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 When citing Hobbes’ Leviathan, I will refer to the original page numbers in the original English edition of the Leviathan 1651 (Hobbes and Tuck, Leviathan). I will also follow Hobbes and use the pronouns He/Him/His when referring to God.

2 On the first view, Curley for example argues that particularly Hobbes’ theory of the trinity is of political nature and his use of religion often ironical (Curley, “Calvin and Hobbes”). Mark Lilla has also argued that the Leviathan constitutes “the most devastating attack on Christian political theology” (Lilla, The Stillborn God, 75). Regarding the second view, Martinich has prominently argued that Hobbes’ main positions on God are in line with the orthodox tradition, including his doctrine of the trinity (Martinich, Two Gods of Leviathan, 192–9). Considering the third position, Abizadeh has recently argued that Hobbes would have “professed to believe in God regardless of whether he actually did believe or not” (Abizadeh, “Hobbes’s Conventionalist Theology,” 917).

3 Negretto, “Hobbes’ Leviathan,” 181.

4 Hobbes, Leviathan, 41, 266.

5 Wood, The Principles of Biblical Interpretation.

6 Osler, Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy, 3–38, Sarasohn, Gassendi’s Ethics.

7 Matthew Rose has previously made the argument that Hobbes combines a Reformist theology with a materialist ontology to make it the duty of Christians to obey the sovereign (Rose, “Hobbes as Political Theologian”). I contribute to this general argument with a more in-depth analysis of the Reformist concept of deus absconditus and the Epicurean deus otiosus. In this sense, I also provide a more theologically focused argument than Nicholas Higgins who argues that Hobbes uses religious rhetoric to undermine man’s obligation to God (Higgins, “Undermining Obligation to God”). I argue that it is not only rhetoric but religious concepts. For a more detailed analysis of Epicurean thought in Hobbes’ Leviathan see also Friedle, “Thomas Hobbes and the Reception of Early-Modern Epicureanism”.

8 Hobbes, Leviathan, 41, 261–92.

9 On a side note, God does not have to share His existence with other Gods, but is the only God even if represented three times (Hobbes, Leviathan, 31, 189–91 and 41, 266).

10 Holden, “Hobbes’s First Cause”. Interestingly, Descartes has a similar perception of God which posits that having an idea of a supremely perfect being requires that the necessary existence is a perfection and hence, a supremely perfect being exists which exceeds our imagination of divine and omnipotent perfection (Descartes, Adam, and Tannery, Oeuvres De Descartes, 163–4).

11 Anchoring this argument in scripture, Hobbes refers to the story of the innocent Job and argues that it was God’s power which gave Him the right to inflict punishment, not whether or not Job sinned. Thus, Hobbes refrains from judging whether God’s actions are equitable by inflicting punishment on someone innocent, as ultimately God is inconceivable beyond this acknowledgement of His power (Hobbes, Leviathan, 31, 188–90). Martinich has recently explored this claim in more detail in his chapter on “Natural Sovereignty and Omnipotence in Hobbes’s Leviathan” where he emphasizes God’s sovereignty being based on His omnipotence (van Apeldoorn and Douglass, Hobbes on Politics and Religion, 30).

12 Hobbes, Leviathan, 39, 247–8. For another detailed discussion of the three dispensations in the Leviathan consider Rose, “Political Theologian,” 25–9.

13 Hobbes, Leviathan, 40, 250–54.

14 Ibid., 41, 263. This invokes the division between the material and spiritual sphere I previously mentioned, delineating the authority of the sovereign and of God respectively.

15 Hobbes, Leviathan, 42, 267.

16 Ibid., 41, 264–7.

17 Ibid., 16, 81–5.

18 This interpretation of representation as a tool to make the absent present, provided the foundation for later works on representation in relation to democracy, such as Pitkin’s work that defines representation as a “substantive acting for others,” which she then developed to connect to electoral frameworks (Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, 144).

19 Hobbes, Leviathan, 42, 267–8.

20 Abizadeh, “Hobbes’s Conventionalist Theory,” 917. Others have also made this distinction. Consider Glover, “God and Thomas Hobbes”; Wright, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes; and Pacchi, “Some Guidelines into Hobbes’s Theology”. I focus on Abizadeh’s discussion as it is the most recent and, in my view, clearest discussion of the philosophical and the historical God.

21 Abizadeh, “Hobbes’s Agnostic Theology Before Leviathan”.

22 Hobbes, Leviathan, 41, 264–7.

23 Ibid., 36, 224 and 42, 268.

24 Mjaaland, The Hidden God, 8–10.

25 Osler, Divine Will, 3–17; Smith, “Spinoza’s Democratic Turn”; Gerrish, “‘To The Unknown God’”; Wilson, “Political Philosophy”. Martinich also argues that Hobbes’ religious views can be traced back to Reformist views held by Calvin and Luther, among others (Martinich, Two Gods, 2–5).

26 Garsten, “Religion and Representation in Hobbes”. This way, I present a middle way between Martinich’s claim that Hobbes was in fact an orthodox Christian and the positions of scholars as Curley and Abizadeh who argue that Hobbes’ conception of God made him vulnerable to charges of atheism (Martinich, Two Gods, 2. Curley, “Calvin and Hobbes,” 258).

27 Ziegler, “Luther and Calvin on God,” 68.

28 Creegan, “A Christian Theology of Evolution and Participation,” 508; Köhler, “Der Deus Absconditus in Philosophie Und Theologie,” 47.

29 Gerrish, “To the Unknown God,” 281.

30 Wood, Biblical Interpretation, 55–92, Olsen, Divine Will, 16–17.

31 Thompson, The Political Thought of Martin Luther, 33.

32 Thompson, Martin Luther, 1984, 24.

33 Hancock, Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics, 73.

34 Mjaaland, “Sovereignty and Submission,” 448.

35 McNeill, “John Calvin on Civil Government,” 86–7.

36 Damrosch, “Hobbes as Reformation Theologian”. Other scholars such as Willis B. Glover, Ludwig Gelot and George Wright have also observed Hobbes’ Reformist theological tendencies. My analysis contributes to their observations with a deeper focus on the concept of deus absconditus in particular. See Glover, “God and Thomas Hobbes”; Gelot, “Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan”; and Wright, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes.

37 Hobbes, Leviathan, 46, 367.

38 Ibid., 31, 187–8.

39 In this context, Hobbes intervened in a debate with Bramhall who argued that God was not responsible for evil in the world. In contrast, Hobbes polemically argued that God is ultimately responsible for both evil and good in the world, only that we cannot know His absolute will (Damrosch, “Reformation Theologian,” 1979, 344).

40 Hobbes, Leviathan, 43, 321.

41 In chapter 42, Hobbes argues for example that “Beleef, and Unbeleef never follow mens Commands. […] Profession with the tongue is but an externall thing, and no more then any other gesture whereby we signifie our obedience … ” Hobbes, Leviathan, 42, 271.

42 Hobbes, Leviathan, 15, 79. Spinoza will later develop this distinction of foro interno and foro externo into the foundation for tolerance. This differentiation contains the seed of freedom of conscience (Smith, “Spinoza’s Democratic Turn,” 360).

43 Mjaaland, “Sovereignty and Submission,” 2018, 442–4; Damrosch, “Reformation Theologian,” 1979, 341.

44 Ziegler, “Luther and Calvin on God,” 82.

45 Negretto, “The Irresistible Power,” 2001, 181; Garsten, “Religion and Representation,” 535.

46 Ziegler, “Luther and Calvin on God,” 87.

47 Osler, Divine Will, 5–8.

48 David Steinmetz, “Calvin as Biblical Interpreter,” 146. A key thinker of Epicureanism who was read by Hobbes and Gassendi, is Lucretius with his Epicurean account of the world being made up of atoms, the lack of telos in an Epicurean notion of God, and the inability of early humans to care for each other (Wilson, “Political Philosophy,” 266–8). Also consider Simon Friedle’s Cambridge doctoral thesis on this topic.

49 Martinich, Two Gods, 45.

50 Garber, “Natural Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Context,” 1–32.

51 Hobbes, Leviathan, 27, 208.

52 Ibid., 34, 208.

53 Ibid., 43, 330.

54 Ibid., 31, 187.

55 Ibid., 17, 87. Similarly to a senior professor being on leave while a visiting professor takes over her teaching responsibilities, the sovereign can take over some of God’s responsibilities, but not fully challenge His authority, since He is ultimately expected to come back from His leave.

56 Hobbes, Leviathan, 42, 270–73.

57 Ibid., 38, 240. Interestingly, Luther had flirted with the doctrine of mortalism in opposition to the Catholic idea of purgatory and the invocation of saints. Calvin, however, strongly objected this doctrine as heresy (Young, “The Soul–Sleeping System,” 69).

58 Haig Patapan has previously argued that Hobbes counters the prospect of immortality with the prospect of peace on earth (Patapan, “Politics of Immortality”). However, it is important to note that the immortality of the soul is questioned until the Second coming of God when it will be His choice whether to resurrect the soul or not.

59 Steinmetz, “Calvin as Biblical Interpreter,” 147; Hobbes, Leviathan, 38, 241.

60 Gootjes, “Calvin on Epicurus and the Epicureans,” 33.

61 Springborg, “Hobbes’s Materialism and Epicurean Mechanism”; Wright, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, 220. Hobbes’ balancing act of conceptualizing God as simultaneously withdrawn as well as omnipotent resonates with Gassendi’s claim that Epicure’s biggest flaw was to attribute the creation of the world to chance and not to God, while also emphasizing the limited knowledge we can have about God’s sustained ruling in the world beyond His absolute power (Osler, Divine Will, 52–214).

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Rebecca Sophie Marwege

Rebecca Sophie Marwege is PhD Candidate in Political Theory at Columbia University in the City of New York. Email: [email protected].