WAS HOBBES A COVERT ATHEIST?

Before talking about Hobbes’s theory of the State, or any other philosophy, perhaps the most pressing of all preambular questions should be whether he may have been a covert atheist, as this kind of personal predisposition ought to have colored everything he says, and, should it be true, must become the dominant feature in our analysis. It is well known, of course, from his standard biographies, that he was frequently in trouble for his suspected atheistic tendencies, allegedly revealed by his unmistakably materialistic thinking. He was far too cautious, they say, to have expressed himself more bluntly on religious matters, but such unwelcome tendencies were taken notice of, in his time, and even acted upon in a rather drastic fashion.

We know that he was a monarchist, and, as such, he fled to France as soon as the English Parliament started showing its muscle. His disdain for Catholicism was, however, too much for his French hosts, and Hobbes had to return to England, making an uneasy peace with Cromwell, on the condition to abstain from politics. With the Restoration of King Charles II, he was promptly blacklisted, not on the expected political grounds, but on the charges of suspected atheism. All his subsequent works were published abroad, whereas none of them were allowed in his home country.

The question remains whether those charges were true. Being a bona fide philosopher, Hobbes was, indeed, an intellectually fearless man, who allowed himself too many liberties, characteristic of an open, inquisitive mind. In this sense, I would hardly call him cautious, as Russell does for instance. Cautious men do not just avoid crossing the line: they try to stay away from it at a safe distance. Much of Hobbes’s flirting with the perception of impiety was unnecessary, and had he really been cautious, would never have taken place. Let us look at his irreverent treatment of religious belief in the part of his Leviathan dealing with the Kingdom of God.

To begin with, he dismisses all supernatural interpretations of the following phrase in the opening chapter of the Genesis 1:2: “…and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” He argues that the Spirit, referred to here, is by no means the Holy Spirit of the Trinity, or any other kind of spirit, but only the wind, created by God at the beginning of Creation. To my knowledge, all other Christian interpretations of this phrase refer to the Holy Spirit of God, and thus, already here, Hobbes commits what must appear as blasphemy to every devout Christian. Talking about being cautious, this is sheer recklessness!

The next shock is Hobbes’ refusal to believe in the existence of angels. Even in the famous place in Daniel 8:13, etc., where the prophet sees two angels engaged in conversation, Michael and Gabriel, he alleges that Michael was Jesus Christ, and Gabriel… a mere phantasm! The big question here is whether someone who does not believe in angels can be automatically called an atheist, and the answer is: not necessarily!

Now, I have already had a few chances to mention elsewhere that Hobbes ridiculed literal interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, which, of course, ought not to have any bearing on his religiosity, as we well know that long before him none other than St. Augustine had done the same, and Saint Augustine has not been made a saint of the Christian Church for his heresies!

There are numerous other examples in Hobbes’s works of what may appear at first sight as a solid proof of his atheistic leaning. On the other hand, there are even more numerous instances of his appeal to God, and passages, where both the existence of God and the basic Christian tenets are taken for granted. Judging by the totality of evidence, it is unimaginable to me that a covert atheist could have been, on the one hand, so imprudent without being explicit, and, on the other hand, so openly apologetic toward Christianity, where, being an atheist, he did not need to go that far toward the other extreme. In other words, everything that I have found in his writings concerning religion is inconsistent with the character of an atheist, whether an overt or a covert one. It is, rather, consistent with the independent spirit of an original, intellectually curious thinker, who is confident enough in his basic religious belief to refuse carrying it on his sleeve and bowing to the authority of the Church on every occasion of making a theological statement.

As a matter of psychological curiosity, would it not be more natural for a true believer to occupy so much of his attention by the minute theological details (such as the literal versus the figurative, or the existence of angels, etc.), where an atheist would be looking upon the macroscopic picture of the supernatural, and never bother himself with the small fry, having declared war upon God Himself?

In case my straightforward conclusion has been lost in a blinding salvo of fancy reasoning, here it is again, in plain view: No, I do not think that Hobbes was an atheist; but he was, sure as hell, a great philosopher!