The Analysis of the Relationship between God, Religion and Politics in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan and De Cive
Authors: YİĞİT Pervin 
Published: December 2019

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was a
significant political theorist who could be regarded as the founder of social
contract theories. Hobbes’s philosophy is worthy of attention in the history of
political thought due to his definition of natural state, the reasons of the
formation of civil society, authorization and political obligation.
Specifically, he focused on the rationalization of political obligation to the
sovereign in order to strengthen monarchy in the given era. Meanwhile, he could
not exclude the concept of God due to the conditions of the century. Therefore,
he preferred integrating the concept of God into his political philosophy by
means of moral laws and moral obedience after he had introduced the idea of
social contract theory. Furthermore, in contrast to previous thinkers, he gave
God a secondary role in the maintenance of political and social order.
Excluding the idea of God and the obedience of unwritten laws gave rise to
discussion about Hobbes’s rejection of the existence of God although he did not
accept these accusations. In this paper it is argued that, Hobbes was an
atheist and he used religion only as a political instrument for the sake of the
social order. In other words, this paper clarifies the idea that Hobbes used
religion and the fear of God as a tool in order to force individuals to obey
written laws under a sovereign. In order to indicate the rightness of this
argument, his main ideas stated in De
Cive and Leviathan are analysed
and the place of religion and God in his theory is examined in this paper. Summary:
Thomas Hobbes had lived in
the seventeenth century England in which the social and political order was
under threat and the obligation to the sovereign was in need of justification.
The developments in natural science and the alterations in philosophical
thought that made rationalization significant, led to question the power of the
sovereign and free will of the individuals in the given period. Therefore, the
questions concerning God, religion and political obligation had been emerged. The
prevalent philosophy of Hobbes was to reject Aristotelian teleology, and he
aimed to replace it with a mechanistic view. His insistence on modern natural
science made him to defend that political philosophy also should be grounded in
mechanistic approach. Briefly, he eliminated the preliminary role of God from
his political philosophy. However, he did not reject the existence of God while
arguing this. In his
books that are analysed in this paper; De
Cive and Leviathan, Hobbes stated
that individuals were important as parts of the society but naturally they were
not political beings. Therefore, they needed to enter into a political
association in order to survive. In other words, the weakness of humankind
necessitated the establishment of political society. Although a human being was
not naturally political, a political association was not against to human
nature. Hobbes insisted that a civil society as an artificial product needed to
be established for the sake of the individuals.
In the absence of civil law and a common authority namely a coercive
power, human beings were under threat. Under these conditions, a human being
was in need of focusing on his/her self-preservation alone and she/he would try
to achieve it at all costs. Therefore, in order to prevent such a state of war,
individuals chose to leave their unlimited freedom and enter into a society
under a sovereign.Actually
what provided human security was not the existence of a political society;
rather it was a coercive power. For Hobbes, coercive power was a requirement to
make individuals live in a peaceful environment. Put another way, individuals
needed to be frightened from a power to form a society firstly and to keep the
society alive secondly. Without the concept of fear, Hobbes would have never
been successful in finding a ground for coercive political power in his
political theory since the element of fear is required when private
interests of the individuals conflict with the common good. At this point, he
used the concept of God in his theory. In this paper it is argued that the
concept of obligation to make selfish human beings ideal subjects was left
incomplete without the role of religion in Hobbes’s theory. The subjects chose
to enter into political establishment due to fear and the need for security.
Such a need, for Hobbes, should have been supported with the fear of God.
However, he did not use the fear of God and the existence of moral obligation
in the state of nature. Rather, he inferred the existence of God, when he
needed to find a solid basis for political obligation to maintain the political
order. Hobbes
clarified natural laws, moral laws and divine laws in his books. For him,
natural laws were moral laws, and they could be considered as the divine laws
as well. Therefore, all were same and all were given by God since God gave
reason to every human being and people could derive those laws through their
reason. Till that point, there was room for moral obligation both in state of
nature and in civil society. However, Hobbes surprisingly added that human
beings in the state of nature did not have moral conscience and they were not
obliged by moral laws. For Hobbes, natural laws/ moral laws or God’s laws
whatever we call them, could become laws if and only if they were commanded by
a civic sovereign. Although he had accepted that there would be moral laws in
the state of nature, he added that there could not be moral obligation before
human entered into a society. When
there was a coercive power that pushed human beings to keep the covenant,
natural laws as the commands of God turned to be obligations. This means that
moral principles were meaningless without a political power. Moreover, it could
be stated that the dictates of reason and God’s laws were distinct for Hobbes
and this idea make us think that Hobbes was not a believer at all. However, he
needed the power of religion for providing a basis for obligation. That is the
reason why he aimed to use God as an instrument in his theory. He also seemed
to limit the absolute power of the sovereign and form a basis for obligation
theory. In other words, rather than making a religious justification of God’s
existence, he led the sovereign to use religion as an instrument for political
and social order. What Hobbes tried to do was to indicate that Leviathan is
made up of the individuals, and people had to obey the sovereign due to their
authorization and consent. He based his political theory on the will of the
subjects rather than God. People entered into a civil society and refrained of
their freedom in order to get protection from the sovereign. Therefore, they
needed to obey the sovereign since they gave consent to be a part of it. In
other words, obedience of the subjects is justified through the power of the
sovereign which was limited by God at the same time.

It is
argued in this paper that, Hobbes tried to restrict the sovereign by
introducing Divine Will, while in fact he guaranteed the absolute power of the
sovereign without making it accountable, neither to an earthly nor to a divine
power. In order to defend this, his arguments in De Cive and Leviathan were
analysed in detail.