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A Critique of Hobbes’s Critique of Biblical and Natural Religion in Leviathan

October 27, 1993

While Thomas Hobbes is generally recognized as a preeminent po litical philosopher, he is, to say the least, much less regarded as a theologian or religious thinker.1 Yet it suffices to inspect the frontispieces and tables of contents of Hobbes's greatest works, De Cive and Leviathan, to see that Hobbes proclaimed theology to be a central part of political philosophy. What is more, Hobbes esteemed himself as having provided the first successful, rational resolution of the most fundamental issues in religion as well as in politics and morals.

King David and Uriah the Hittite in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes by Thomas S. Schrock

October 27, 1992

The most neglected aspect of Hobbes's attempt to solve the theological political problem is his reliance on divine punishment of the iniquitous sovereign. By turning that matter exclusively over to God or? what comes to the same thing? by immunizing such a sovereign against accountability to his subjects, Hobbes radicalizes a Christian motif and fragments what for Aristotle had been an integral political whole. This essay is about that fragmentation, with special attention to the text in which Hobbes makes his intention partially clear? his discussion of King David's murder of Uriah the Hittite.

Hobbes Confronts Scripture

October 27, 1992

Thomas Hobbes was foremost among the seventeenth century political philosophers who led the Western world across the fault line separating classical from modern political philosophy. In doing so, he, like his other col leagues, had to confront not only classical political philosophy but the Bible. From the first of his writings to the last he consistently confronted Scripture. Reading Hobbes reveals both the ambiguity and the ambivalence of his confrontation with the Bible. Hobbes wished to assault orthodox or conventional Christian belief but at the same time is drawn to the Hebrew Scriptures, not only because it is necessary for him to confront it for the sake of his argument or because of the Bible's own elemental and compelling power. His struggle foreshadows and is even paradigmatic of that of modern man. This article traces his confrontation with Scripture in Leviathan.

A Critique of Hobbes’s Critique of Biblical and Natural Religion in Leviathan

October 11, 1992 | Thomas L. Pangle