1

Alex Nemec
prof. Cole Simmons, PhD.
History of Political Thought: Early Modern
7.12.2020

How Hobbes struck down God from the Heaven

Before you start reading, let it be known that I do not seek to give a definite answer to what I am about
to question. I just merely intend to propose what appears to me as an overlooked point, the importance
of which is for others, readers of this, to judge. I also find it important to mention, that I did not read
the whole book of Leviathan or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and
Civil by Thomas Hobbes, only specific sections given to us as reading for our classes. Therefore, it is
possible that my whole assumption will be short-sighted and easy to dispute by passages of the book,
which I did not read. But again, this is for others to judge. Lastly, I find it helpful to tell you right here
that I do not seek to attack the concept of religion or belief by any of my arguments, my attacks are
only oriented to show logical fallacies which I find helpful to exploit for my own ends. From my
research on this topic, I did not find any academic material coming even close to the question (or
assumption) I will be raising. This can only mean two things: either my whole idea is just dull and
moronic, or this really is an overlooked point, which I will get to bring to light. That we shall see.

Thomas Hobbes (1651) was a political philosopher, who is probably best known for his book
Leviathan or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil In this book,
he explores the ideas from human nature, all the way to civil society, through social contract or in other
words, Covenant. As a person living in the times when the force of religion was at its peak, it is quite
unsurprising that in his writing we can find many references to Bible or other religious texts, or that he
took the time to write about Christian governments. However, what I believe is overlooked by many
while reading his texts, it appears that there is a subtle but quite effective attempt to take God down.
And I will be showing why that is in three steps. First, I will show why his idea of Christian Common-
wealth is inconsistent with his own logic. Second, I will explore the idea and justification of not ten,
but twelve God’s commandments. And third, finally, I will show how Hobbes appears to have
2

managed, and it was at the same time necessary, to land three 3 consecutive crucial blows to God in his
place in Heaven, and to cast him away from his idea of civil society.

The (i)legitimacy of Christian Common-Wealth 

The first thing, which I am forced to deal with immediately in the beginning, is the Christian Common-
Wealth. This is because as my argument is about how in Hobbes’s ideal society there is no space for
God in the presence of Sovereign, and that is why Hobbes had to “strike him down”, I cannot afford to
have at the same time a Common-wealth ruled by God to exist. Therefore, I argue and will show how
the Christian Common-wealth is actually not legitimate, and Hobbes himself confirms it. In his
discussion concerning this type of Common-wealth, its principles, and politiques, he writes:

“But in that I am next to handle, which is the Nature and Rights of a Christian Common-Wealth,
whereof there dependeth much upon Supernaturall Revelations of the Will of God; the ground
of my Discourse must be, not only the Naturall Word of God, but also the Propheticall” (p.286).

But at the same time:

“Neverthelesse, we are not to renounce our Senses, and Experience; nor (that which is
undoubted Word of God) our naturall Reason” (p. 286).

What this means to show is that even though he is going to deal here with Supernatural phenomena and
words of God, he will not just throw away reason and experience, but is still willing to critically
evaluate what he can. This brings us to the discussion of Prophetic powers, which shows to be the only
way how God can speak to men. As Hobbes writes, God can speak to people either immediately or by
the mediation of other men whom he already spoke to – therefore still only in one way. What shows to
be problematic here, however, is how to distinguish true Prophets from false ones. Hobbes himself
points out, that this is impossible to do – when a person says God spoke to them in dreams, it is the
same thing as to say he dreamed about God speaking to him, or when he says he had a vision where
God spoke to him, it is the same to say that he dreamed it in the period between sleeping and waking.
So what could possibly be the criteria for “True Prophets”? Hobbes claims it is that the one that claims
3

to be a Prophet meets two marks: doing miracles and not teaching any other Religion than that which is
already established. There is however one more requirement and that is “immediate revelation” in order
to prove to others that he is the “True Prophet”.

But at the same time Hobbes essentially renders everything he said up until this point useless when he
writes:

“Seeing therefore Miracles now cease, we have no sign left, whereby to acknowledge the
pretended Revelations, or Inspirations of any private man, nor obligation to give ear to any
Doctrine, farther than it is comfortable to the Holy scriptures, which since the time of our
Saviour, supply the place, and sufficiently recompense the want of all other Prophecy…”
(p.290)

In short, Hobbes just gave all of the power and authority to scriptures that come from “our Saviour”.
However, this poses a big problem for his own logic which he proposed. If we take a look at what he
claims just a few pages back, the criteria to gain the authority of “True Prophet” to which God speaks
directly are clear: miracles, teaching existing faith, and immediate revelations. However, how are we to
tell that what the scriptures tell is true? Nobody is alive to either confirm or deny whether what is
claimed by them actually happened, and this “Saviour” (and this goes for all other “True Prophets” as
well) might have easily been a fraud, and we would never know. Hobbes gives no reason as to why he
should be an exception from the criteria which he himself put forward. Therefore, by Hobbes’s own
logic, the scriptures are not sufficient enough to give any authority to the Sovereign in Christian
Common-wealth, and consequently, this form of government loses its legitimacy, and that is why I will
not take it into account from this point on.

12 Commandments

The second thing which I find important to clear up is the reason why I claim that there are twelve
commandments instead of ten. Unfortunately, I did not find any academic source of authority that
would support my argument, however, I believe I can show you why twelve seems to be the right
4

number. I will now list all commandments as a point of reference in their shortened versions, and then
focus on the second, the third, and last two ones on which I will make my case:

1.You are to have no other gods as a substitute for me.

2.You are not to craft any idols
3.You are not to bow down to them 
4. You are not to misuse the name of the Lord, your God
5. You are not to work on the seventh day of the week
6. You are to honor your father and mother
7. You are not to commit murder
8. You are not to commit adultery
9. You are not to steal
10. You are not to give a false testimony again your neighbor
11. You are not to desire your neighbor’s house
12. You are not to desire the neighbor’s wife or any live thing under his roof

So now, in Exodus 20:7, the original commandments (2nd and 10th) go like this:

2. “You are not to craft for yourself an idol or anything resembling what is in the skies above, or
on the earth beneath, or in the water sources under the earth. You are not to bow down to them
in the worship or serve them, because I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the
guilt of parents on children, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but
showing gracious love to the thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

10. “You are not to desire your neighbor’s house, nor your neighbor’s wife, his male or female
servant, his ox, his donkey, nor anything else that pertains to your neighbor.”

The reason why I argue that these two commandments should be both divided into two is that both of
them concern two separate restrictions and commands, which deserve their own separate
commandment. In the second commandment, the first part concerns the process of crafting idols of
anything they can see around them in nature (this implies having natural gods for example), which is
5

completely separate from the second part, which is to not bow down to them or worship them if they
somehow, even without crafting them, stumble upon them, so for example when they encounter a
different culture.

As for the 10th commandment, we can see that in the first part, the commandment concerns material
possessions of other people such as the house, however, in the other part, it concerns living beings,
such as wife, servants, ox, etc. It appears to me that this material/living distinction is notable enough to
deserve separate commandments, especially while in the further parts of Exodus, it can be observed
that there is a strong enough emphasis on life as to not put it into one bag with a house. After all, does
life not deserve to be treated separately from mere objects?

It appears to me that these are sufficient enough reasons and arguments as for why it is valid to work
with twelve commandments instead of ten, and even if I have not completely convinced you, I believe
you can at least accept my argument for the sake of being able to follow my argumentation later on in
this essay.

Three Blows to the Heavens

The First Blow

“The final Cause, End, or Designe of men, (who naturally love Liberty, and Dominion over
others,) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, (in which wee see them live in
Common-wealths,) is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life
thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre, which
is necessarily consequent (as hath been shewn) to the naturall Passions of men, when there is no
visible Power to keep them in awe, and tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of
their Covenants, and observation of those Lawes of Nature set down in the fourteenth and
fifteenth Chapters.”
6

This is how Hobbes, opens his arguably most important part of the book, concerning Common-wealth
based on Covenant, where at least according to me, immortal God has no place, only a mortal God in
the person of the Sovereign (I will show why shortly). This Common-wealth is created, as Hobbes
shows, for protection and security from the State of Nature and the State of War, from the all-against-all
war, which Hobbes claims is the Natural state for human beings. However, before we get into this
topic, I would like you to focus your attention on the word Covenant used in the creation of a state. I
believe that his use of this word is the “first blow” to God from Hobbes, and the reason for that is the
use of this exact same word in Exodus 19:15. In Exodus God says to Moses:

“And now if you carefully obey me and keep my covenant, you are to be my special possession 
out of all nations, because the whole earth belongs to me, but you are to be a kingdom of 
priests, and a holy nation to me”

And now, let's look at how Hobbes defines the Essence of the Common-wealth:

“It is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man
with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, I Authorise and give
my Right of Governing my selfe to this Man, or to this Assembly of men on this condition, that
thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner.”

“[The Essence] is One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one
with another, have made themselves every one the Author, to the end he may use the strength
and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their Peace and Common
Defence”(p.132)

What can be seen here, is that Hobbes’s covenant between people is built in the complete opposite
direction to God’s covenant with Jews, however, both of them have the same goal – the protection of a
certain group of people. In Hobbes’s case, it is a Covenant from the bottom-up – people creating what
is, in essence, a Mortal God, Sovereign or Leviathan (however you wish to call him), from their joint
power. In the case of Jews, it is a Covenant from the top to bottom – God tying Jews to himself in order
for them to obey him for the exchange of protection.
7

I am well aware of the fact that this immediately raises the question of why am I so certain these two
instances are connected. To this I answer that whoever read Hobbes is well aware of the fact that there
are numerous quotes and passages which Hobbes uses straight from the Bible, and from Exodus
specifically, and that on page 289, he writes “For they (Jews) had made God their King by pact at the
foot of Mount Sinai; who ruled them by Moses only; for he only spake with God, and from time to time
declared Gods Commandments to the people”(p. 289), which only confirms that Hobbes is well aware
of the passage I showed above.

The Second Blow

As further proof of this, I will be using Hobbes’s 18th Chapter Of the Rights of Soveraignes by
Institution. In this chapter, Hobbes explores the rights of the Sovereign which he obtained from people.
He chose the number twelve for the number of rights of Sovereign, and I believe this is of no
coincidence or chance, and I also believe that this implies that Hobbes’s reading of God's
Commandments in respect to the number of them is the same as mine. In the same way as in Exodus,
first, there was a declaration of Covenant (in the case of Exodus from top to bottom, and in the case of
Hobbes from bottom to top), and immediately after, the twelve rules are declared. And yet again, same
as in the case of the Covenant it seems as if Hobbes is turning the content of rules upside down from
what the Bible says. While the Biblical commandments put restrictions on people, the twelve rights of
the Sovereign give them freedom. The reason why I am not saying “giving freedom to the Sovereign”
but giving freedom to people, is that as Hobbes shows, the Sovereign only has power because people
gave it to him, and therefore they are in essence one united body, where the action of Sovereign in the
action of everyone who submitted their rights to him. Therefore, this appears to be a clever “second
blow” to God by Hobbes, where he takes his arguably most sacred rules and restrictions and makes
them into instruments of freedom for people to use.

The Final Blow

And lastly, I argue that there is a simple pragmatic “third blow” from Hobbes to God which I believe
finally knocks him down from his place in Heaven above Hobbes’s society. This blow concerns the
definition of what a Sovereign is, or rather, what he by definition is not – a subject.
8

“And as the Power, so also the Honour of the Soveraign, ought to be greater, than of any, or all
the Subjects” (p. 140).

“And though they shine some more, some lesse, when they are out of his sight; yet in his
presence, they shine no more than the Starres in presence of the Sun” (p. 141).

What these passages are to show, is that the Sovereign is supreme, uncomparable with the power of any
of his subjects, greater than even all of them together. This is, after all why they obey him. So now
imagine what the presence of an actual God, or simply of the idea of it, would do to Sovereignty – well
in short, he or she or they would become subject, and all of the sudden there would be no Sovereignty
other than the immortal, invisible God in Heaven, who as Hobbes claims, is not sufficient to keep
people safe. It would be the end of Hobbes’s civil society.

Conclusion

Hobbes’s attacks on God were subtle, but if what I claim is true, they were also fast and effective. As
before every fight, preparation is crucial. And Hobbes offered us a good preparation to work with. First
I showed, how the idea of Christian Common-wealth appears to be inconsistent with Hobbes’s own
logic, and therefore disposable. However, as this is not of the concern of my work I will leave it
without proposing any explanation as to why this might be the case. And second, by arguing the
number of God’s commandments in Exodus, which appears to be the same number as Hobbes would
argue, and indeed did argue, he gave us the sufficient amount of power to get into the fight itself.
There, Hobbes appeared to have spaced out his attacks into three separate moves. Firstly, he used the
concept of God’s covenant with Jews, and turned it around for his own means, creating a mortal God
from people. Secondly, he used the sacred God’s commandments intended to restrict Jews from various
actions and turned them into the means of freedom for his own civil society. And finally, he threw his
final, pragmatic, and the most necessary punch to the Heavens to strike the immortal God down.
Because as his Sovereign was by definition not a subject, in order to prevent the destruction of
Hobbes’s civil society, he could not afford the luxury of even the idea of God residing over him. And
just like that, did Hobbes strike down God from Heaven.
9

References

Hobbes, T., Guerra, F., Crooke, A. (1651). Leviathan or The matter, form, and power of a common-
wealth, ecclesiastical and civil. London: printed for Andrew Crooke ....

The Holy Bible (International Standard Version) (2014). Davidson Press. (Original work published
1996)