Theological Origins of Modernity

228 chapter seven
their dogmatic opinions must be irreligious. While we cannot know what
Hobbes actually believed, we can know what he says and what sources
he relies on. What is immediately clear is that Hobbes’ thought is deeply
indebted to nominalism. He accepted nominalism’s basic tenets: that God
is omnipotent, that only individuals exist, and that the meanings of words
are purely conventional. However, he tried to show that these principles
were compatible with a physics, anthropology, and theology that were different
from the ones nominalism had developed.
Hobbes was fi rst instructed in the nominalist notion that God was supremely
powerful and arbitrary in his election of human beings for salvation
at his father’s table. It was further explained by his Calvinist teachers,
and cemented by his university education. It was an article of faith on
which he never wavered, and one that he explicitly affi rmed not only in his
debate with Descartes and in Leviathan but also in his critique of White
and in his later debate with Bramhall. 66
Hobbes also accepted and oft en repeated the nominalist critique of
scholastic realism and syllogistic reasoning as well as the related doctrine
of ontological individualism. Moreover, he was convinced of the individuality
of all things not as the result of any direct knowledge of such entities
but as an inference from a belief in divine omnipotence.
Th is nominalist ontology served as the foundation for Hobbes’ physics.
According to Hobbes, the bodies that make up the universe are constantly
changing. 67 On the surface, this claim does not seem particularly novel or
revolutionary. Aristotle made a similar claim, and it was repeated by many
others including the scholastics Hobbes criticized. Th ey claim that things
change in multiple ways and for multiple reasons. For Hobbes, however,
while everything is changing, there is only one kind of change and it is
the result of local motion caused by the impact of one body on another. 68
Bodies themselves are not created or destroyed but moved about and rearranged.
69 Every act thus may be understood as generated and passing away
in a mechanical fashion, that is, as a result of the impact of another body
and without any further input from God. In addition, there is no kind of
motion that is unique to a particular body. Every body is capable of every
possible motion. All bodies as bodies are thus homogeneous and subject to
the same eff ects from the impact of other bodies. Moreover, no body can
produce any act within itself, and everything thus occurs as the result of
bodies striking one another. 70 Motion has no other cause than motion.
Th e question this claim leaves unanswered is the nature and origin of
motion itself. Th is question is not new. It was addressed by ancient atomists
who posited an initial, uncaused “swerve” that brought atoms into con-