Theological Origins of Modernity

252 chapter seven
ianism regnant among the royalists, Hobbes believed that all human action
in every detail is foreknown and forewilled by God. Th is is the famous
doctrine of double predestination. According to this doctrine, human beings
have no free will and are merely manipulated by God. Th e consequence
of this position is that God is the origin not merely of good but
also of evil. Like Luther, Hobbes admits this fact, arguing, however, that
while God is the origin of evil he is not its author. 156 Th e most important
consequence of this doctrine of predestination for Hobbes is that it demonstrates
that what man does in this world is largely irrelevant to his fate in
the next. Th e highest form of worship is obedience to the law of nature, but
this does not have any impact on our spiritual fate. 157 It is true God chooses
some rather than others for salvation, but it is also true that he does so for
no reason other than his will to do so. Th us there is nothing that human
beings can do to appease or win the favor of this God. He is as indiff erent
to their well-being as he was to Job’s. Th e consequence of the acceptance
of this Calvinist doctrine in Hobbes’ view is thus the recognition that God
neither can nor will do anything other than he has already done in creating
the law of nature to aid us in the face of death and thus that religion can
do nothing to quell the terrors of this life. Calvinism in this roundabout
way prepares the ground for Hobbes’ natural and political science.
Hobbes asserts that the biblical notion of the aft erlife has been grossly
distorted by Catholic priests to gain power over ordinary Christians and
turn them away from their rightful obedience to their sovereigns. In place
of these false views Hobbes articulates a scripturally based alternative that
is compatible with his Erastianism and materialism. Th e great source of
the wealth and power of the Catholic Church in Hobbes’ view was belief in
its monopoly of the power to intercede with God and infl uence one’s fate in
the aft erlife. As we have seen, this became especially important in the aftermath
of the nominalist revolution, with the advent of the idea of an unpredictable
and terrifying God. Th e church had always administered the
sacraments, but aft er Ockham extraordinary means of exercising theological
infl uence became increasingly popular. Special masses, indulgences,
etc. were the rule of the day. All of these in Hobbes’ view were based on
the pagan notion of the immortality of the soul, the idea that some essential
but immaterial part of our being survives the death of our body. Th is
false notion in Hobbes view was the basis for the greatest of all frauds, the
idea of purgatory. Th e idea of purgatory was extraordinarily useful to the
church because of its supposed ability to gain reductions in the sentences
of sinners in purgatory, both before and aft er death. Th is was the source