Theological Origins of Modernity

hobbes’ fearful wisdom 251
world to produce what appeared to be miracles at certain moments to affi
rm his messengers. Appearances notwithstanding, they thus do not violate
the laws of nature. Th is view would seem to make Hobbes a probablist,
but this is not the case. In his view God does not overturn his ordained order
not because he cannot but because he would have already always have
done so. Th e will of God therefore can be understood as the concatenation
of secondary or mechanical causes that move and connect all things.
If God is the source of all motion, the question necessarily arises
whether this motion is merely a regular but aimless unfolding of things
or the purposeful development of events. Th e latter would not necessitate
a return to teleology but might point to the realization of God’s purposes
historically. Th ere are two possible answers to this question, each of which
has some warrant in Hobbes’ thought. Th e fi rst possibility is that God wills
merely capriciously and thus has no ends. Th is seems to be the conclusion
one would draw if one were only looking at the God of nature. Providence
would then be eff ectively the same as fortuna. To read Hobbes in this way
is to read him against the background of Lucretius and Machiavelli. Such
a view renders God irrelevant for human beings because he has no ends in
this world that we can either advance or impede. 152 A second view is that
Hobbes like the nominalists and Reformers believed that God’s will was
utterly decisive in the unfolding of creation. If this is the case, then the goal
of all creation would be revealed to us only by Scripture. 153
Hobbes seems on the whole to adopt the latter view. For him the world
as we know it will thus not go on forever but will end in an apocalyptic
transformation. God will come to rule on a renewed earth, everyone will
be resurrected, and the elect will live on this new earth in renewed bodies
in God’s presence and governed by his will alone. Th e rest of humanity
will be consigned to a second death but not to the eternal tortures of
hell, which Hobbes believes is incompatible with divine mercy. Until this
event occurs, that is, between the fi rst and second coming, God in Hobbes’
view has put us in charge of the government of the world. 154 Ruling under
such circumstances, as we saw above, requires a Leviathan. In contrast to
Luther, it is thus irrelevant to Hobbes whether the last days are near or far
since we must rule until God returns. Th e possibility that the world will
end thus makes no diff erence to politics and is no justifi cation for resistance
to the sovereign. Th ere is no need to prepare for God’s imminent
arrival, and all such eff orts are irrelevant to our spiritual fate. Hobbes’ account
of the end of the world thus consciously (and ironically) undermines
millenarian arguments for political change. 155
In keeping with his Calvinism and in contradistinction to the Armin-