Theological Origins of Modernity

244 chapter seven
who thought they were superior to others and wanted to use the power of
the state to institutionalize their superiority.
Th e Civil War in other words was the consequence of a failure to recognize
that the sovereign must decide and enforce religious doctrine, laying
out the public standards of good and evil that shape law and policy. Th e
sovereign thus must determine what can be preached because, as we will
examine below, there is no other way to decide the issue. 116 In the absence
of a sovereign determination of what counts as good and evil, the competition
that arises naturally in the state of nature is recapitulated in confl icting
religious views that articulate sweeping doctrines of good and evil.
Such articulations vastly increase the stakes in any confl ict. Consequently,
the confl ict does not remain merely a confl ict over the ownership of particular
things but becomes a confl ict over ideas about ownership, justice,
morality, and the diff erences between a pious and impious life. Since there
is no way to know which of these is correct, the only way that such confl ict
can be brought to an end is by imposition. Th e sovereign in Hobbes’ view
thus must bring these calamitous disputes to an end by establishing and
enforcing a uniform standard of good and evil.
Only the sovereign can bring these moral and religious disputes to an
end because each person’s view of good and evil is a refl ection of his or
her idiosyncratic passions. Self-restraint is thus impossible. Hobbes claims
that this is the lesson of the Old Testament. Th e story begins in Eden, a
peaceful garden in which humans do not need to fear death. 117 Th e sole requirement
is that they obey God’s one commandment not to eat of the tree
of good and evil, that is, that they not make individual judgments about
good and evil. Th is prelapsarian state is brought to an end by human desire
that leads to disobedience and the advent of private judgment. 118 Humans
cannot resist making such judgments. Th e world in which they fi nd themselves
aft er the Fall is for Hobbes the original state of nature, the state in
which God is absent and in which men live according to their confl icting
notions of good and evil, each emulating God and elevating himself and
his moral judgment above all other men. 119 Th is is the calamitous age of
pride. 120 Th e lesson to be learned from this event for Hobbes is that unarmed
gods fail to provide the order necessary to sustain a peaceful, communal
life.
Human beings (or at least the Jewish people) in Hobbes view were
given a second chance to live directly under God without coercive authority
through the covenant with Abraham and Moses. Th ey consented to
live in obedience to divine law as interpreted for them by their judges and
prophets. Th is regime, however, already exhibited its fl aws in the time of