Per Caritatem

In the prologue of the Ordinatio, part one, question one, Scotus addresses the question, “whether man in his present state needs to be supernaturally inspired with some knowledge he could not attain by the natural light of the intellect?” In other words, what Scotus seeks to understand is whether in our present, non-glorified, viator state, we are in need of supernatural revelation or divine illumination or whether the knowledge of which we are capable by means of natural reason is sufficient.  The prologue begins with a set of initial arguments pro and con [n.1-4], to which, after significant elaboration and development of various related themes, Scotus then gives his own responses [n. 90-94].  The major premise of the first argument reads, “[e]very faculty which has something common as its primary object, is as competent by nature in regard to everything contained under this object as it is with regard to what is of itself the natural object.”  Scotus first appeals to our faculty of sight, which has as its primary object color under which all particular colors fall (e.g., blue, purple, green etc.).  Then in the minor premise Scotus turns to the faculty of reason and states that it too has a common primary object equal to its power, viz., being qua being.  Ergo, we, by virtue of our faculty of reason, are able to know naturally any thing or being that exists.[1] In paragraphs 90-92, Scotus addresses the first argument given in paragraph 1.  First, Scotus distinguishes two ways in which the term “natural” may be used.  As he explains, [1] “a natural object can mean one which the faculty can attain naturally, i.e., by the action of causes that are naturally active, or [2] it may mean an object towards which the faculty is naturally inclined, whether such an object can be naturally attained or not” (Ord. prol., p. 1, q. 1, n. 90).  In the first sense, natural/nature is contrasted with supernatural, whereas in the second sense, natural/nature is contrasted with that which is violent. Here we should keep in mind that according to Scotus’ framework, we have a receptive potency, which is related to an active potency and to a form or object received.  The active potency is responsible for infusing the form into the receptive potency. In those cases in which the receptive potency is inclined toward the form and the form perfects it, we have a natural act.  However, in those cases in which the receptive potency is repugnant toward the form/object, we have a violent act. 

In paragraphs 91-92, Scotus accepts the major premise of the initial argument in paragraph 1, but then applies his dual understanding of nature to the minor premise.  As Scotus explains, “the minor is false in regard to the object naturally attainable, but it is true in the other sense (namely, the object to which the power is naturally ordered or inclined”) (Ord. prol., p. 1, q. 1, n. 92).   In other words, the intellect may be naturally inclined to an object/form and able to receive it; however, this does not mean that the intellect is capable of attaining that object/form by its own (natural) power (i.e., apart from supernatural intervention).

Here Scotus opposes Aristotle and many of his medieval predecessors, as he claims that a power can by nature be inclined toward an object and yet be unable to achieve its perfection by nature alone.  As Scotus puts it, “[i]t is not unfitting that a power should be naturally ordered to an object which it cannot attain naturally by natural causes, any more than it is for a power or faculty to be ordained by its very nature [for an act] and nevertheless be unable to produce this act by itself alone” (Ord. prol., p. 1, q. 1, n. 92).   As we shall see, Scotus claims that our receptive potency by nature is even capable of receiving the divine essence; however, he is quick to state that we lack by nature what is required to bring this about.  In other words, the intervention of an extrinsic agent is necessary for a perfection of this sort to occur.

Notes

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[1] Scotus also adds “and consequently also any intelligible nonentity, for ‘affirmation explains denial’” (Ord. prol., p. 1, q. 1, n. 1). 

Lastly, we have Hobbes discussion of miracles.  In this section, as in the previous ones, Hobbes begins by defining his terms and then interacts with various biblical texts.  As Hobbes explains, miracles arouse wonder and admiration in humans for two reasons: (1) they are exceedingly rare and unusual events, and (2) they are thought to be done by the immediate activity of God.  However, if we were able to come to a natural explanation of what was thought to be a miracle, we would of course be forced to abandon our original belief.  This tendency to mistakenly call something a miracle is due to our ignorance of natural causes and is in fact what Hobbes claims to be the case the majority of the time.  To support his claim, Hobbes cites examples of how the ancients, who were ignorant of the causes of solar and lunar eclipses, interpreted such occurrences as supernatural works of the gods. After engaging a few Old and New Testament examples in which miracles are discussed (e.g., Moses’ miracles performed in Egypt, and Christ’s inability to perform miracles in his own country), Hobbes concludes that the purpose of miracles is to bring about or confirm belief in God’s elect (Lev., ch. 37, ¶5-6).  This examination of the nature of miracles and their use, then leads Hobbes to the following definition of a miracle:  “A Miracle is a work of God (besides his operation by the way of nature, ordained in the creation), done for the making manifest to his elect the mission of an extraordinary minister for their salvation” (Lev., ch. 37, ¶7).[1]  This definition implies that a miracle is an effect of God’s immediate activity and not an effect that comes about through the secondary causality of the prophet (e.g., as a result of the prophet’s virtue/power).  Hobbes goes on to say that if it were the case that the miracle was effected through power given the prophet by God (that is, through secondary causality), then we could not call this a miracle, as it would have been produced naturally and not by God’s immediate causality.  As Curley observes in footnote 15, this conclusion nullifies the miracles performed by Moses and the prophets since the power by which they performed their miracles was given by God (Lev., ch. 37, ¶10).[2]  One then wonders which, if any, miracles according to the biblical account remain standing.[3]  Likewise, does not this naturalization of miracles not point in the direction of a something more akin to a deistic conception of God, which of course, harmonizes well with Hobbes’ mechanistic view of the world, as well as his continual insistence that God does not providentially interact with the world?

Given what we have seen thus far, it seems fair to conclude that Hobbes does not engage Scripture in a purely objective way (whatever that is). Rather, as I have attempted to highlight throughout this essay, Hobbes’ philosophical and political convictions drive his hermeneutical endeavors.  For Hobbes, the traditional understanding of prophecy, spiritual beings, and miracles serve to reinforce God’s providential workings and presence with his people and thus undermine the authority of an earthly sovereign.  Moreover, the doctrine of providence, according to Hobbes, results in a kind of intellectual and perhaps even moral laziness wherein people depend too much on God.  However, in the end it is not clear how Hobbes’ own position can escape at least to some degree the same kind of intellectual and moral errors of which he accuses traditional orthodoxy given the political requirement that individuals must give absolute obedience to the sovereign who stands as God’s representative until the Kingdom of God on earth is restored at Christ’s Second Coming. 

Notes

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[1] Italics and other font emphases are in the original. 

[2] As Curley explains, “[i]f all works done by a power given by God are natural, and hence, not miracles (as the English version implies), this seems to deny the status of miracles to the works performed by Moses and the prophets” (Lev., ch. 37, n. 15). 

[3] Perhaps only God’s creation ex nihilo would count as a miracle.  Given that I have not completed my reading of Leviathan, I hold this conclusion loosely. 

Turning now to a second way in which Hobbes naturalizes traditional Christian claims in order to harmonize them with his philosophical and scientific beliefs, we come to his discussion of spirits and angels.  The entire trajectory of Hobbes’ discussion is set by what he says in paragraph two concerning the definition of the word “body,” which by the way, is a definition taken not from Scripture, but from philosophy.  Where, after all, in Scripture do we find a philosophical discussion of the nature of bodies?  As Hobbes explains, a body signifies that which is extended and thus occupies space and is subject to change.   Moreover, bodies are real parts of the universe and in no way depend on our imagination. Hobbes adds, “[f]or the universe, being the aggregate of all bodies, there is no real part thereof that is not also body, nor anything properly a body that is not also part of (that aggregate of all bodies) the universe” (Lev., ch. 34, ¶2).  Next, Hobbes says that body and substance signify the same thing, as both involve a “diversity of seeming (produced by the diversity of operation of bodies on the organs of our sense) we attribute to the alterations of the bodies that operate and call them accidents of those bodies” (Lev., ch. 34, ¶2).   Given these definitions, Hobbes, concludes that the phrase, “incorporeal substance,” is a contradiction.[1] Once he clearly establishes his terms, Hobbes then proceeds to apply his principles to his Scriptural exegesis.  For example, commenting on Gen 1:2 where the Holy Spirit is described as hovering over the waters, Hobbes points out that if we take Spirit literally as an incorporeal being, then we end up with the absurdity of attributing motion and place to the Holy Spirit who is supposed to be a non-extended being.  Rather than dismiss the passage as altogether incoherent, Hobbes opts to interpret “Holy Spirit,” as a metaphor for wind (Lev., ch. 34, ¶5).[2]

Since Hobbes himself affirms God’s incomprehensibility (Lev., ch. 34, ¶4), he does have other options open to him as a Christian thinker than the one he takes. However, presumably he rejects these because they either fail to cohere with his materialism, or they do not support his political agenda of absolute obedience to an earthly sovereign.  Traditionally, the doctrine of God’s incomprehensibility has been a fundamental tenet of historic Christianity and has been taught and defended by theologians such as St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as Protestant thinkers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Karl Barth.  Roughly stated, God’s incomprehensibility speaks of the inability of finite creatures to comprehend exhaustively an infinite God. Nonetheless, Scripture and tradition both affirm that God’s incomprehensibility does not negate his knowability in some genuine and meaningful sense.  In fact, Scripture presents God as condescending to human beings and revealing himself in ways that we are able to understand (e.g., by means of human language and of course through the summa plenissima revelation of God Himself who became one of us in the Incarnation).  Emphasizing God’s loving condescension to human beings in light of their creaturely limitations, Calvin writes, “[f]or who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us?  Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity.  To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.”[3]   In other words, given that God knows exhaustively in one act, whereas humans engage in discursive, sequential reasoning processes given their material and immaterial composition, God accommodates our mode of thinking by speaking to us as if he were thinking according to our mode of intellection.  This then suggests that all Scripture is anthropomorphic and not simply those instances in Scripture in which God is described as hovering over the waters, having arms or speaking with an audible voice.  Since God himself in his mercy has given humans this revelation of himself and has overseen the process of the giving of this special revelation from redaction all the way through to final canonization, human beings can be confident that what God communicates to us about himself (albeit in analogical and anthropomorphic language) is true. 

Notes

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[1] In chapter 41, paragraph 9, Hobbes seems to say that God and Jesus Christ are one and the same substance.  Given Hobbes’ argument that substance and body refer to the same thing and are thus material, the logical consequence is that the Father has a body.[2] Hobbes’ discussion of angels exhibits the same hermeneutical approach.  Cf. Lev., ch. 32, ¶23-24 where Hobbes concludes that angels cannot be incorporeal.  Hobbes goes on to state that he leans toward the idea that “angels were nothing but supernatural apparitions of the fancy, raised by the special and extraordinary operation of God, thereby to make his presence and commandments known to mankind, and chiefly to his own people.”

[3] John Calvin.  Institutes of Christian Religion.  Trans., Ford Lewis Battles and ed. John T. McNeil.  (Philadelphia:  Westminster Press, 1960), 1.13.1, p. 121. 

Given Hobbes’ commitment to materialism and his desire to uphold civil order, he is critical of Christians who rely too much on God’s providence.  According to Hobbes, God does not govern the world supernaturally but only naturally, and this stress on the naturalization of the supernatural is evident in his interpretation of prophecy, miracles and incorporeal beings/entities.  With regard to prophets, Hobbes first clarifies the difference between immediate and mediate supernatural revelation from God.  The prophet of course claims to have been given immediate revelation, whereas one reading or hearing Scripture receives divine revelation mediately via the testimony of the prophets, apostles or others proclaiming God’s word.  Hobbes then raises the question as to how one can know whether a prophet or one who purports to have received immediate divine revelation is speaking truly or falsely.  We recall that Hobbes has already brought to our attention in chapter two in his discussion of dreams, the various ways in which we can be led astray and can come to falsely believe that visions and apparitions actually connect with some extramental reality.  The more rational explanation says Hobbes is to understand these imaginings as caused by the internal activity of our brain and nervous system.  That is, according to Hobbes, given the findings of natural science, instances where individuals claim to have seen visions, ghosts and spirits can now be more reasonably explained by means of natural, not supernatural causes.[1]  For example, Hobbes cites the instance of Marcus Brutus and the claim that Marcus saw a vision of Caesar before battle of Philippi.  However, as Hobbes asserts, this so-called vision was more likely just a dream of that which Marcus feared most (Lev., ch. 2, ¶7).  From this claim, Hobbes then generalizes that this is probably what occurs in many cases where people think that they have seen a vision or ghost.  So not only does Hobbes re-emphasize an idea that he presses throughout Leviathan, namely, that we as human beings really know very little, but he also adds that the human mind (given what we have stated above about dreams and visions) has a tendency toward and often is the source of superstition because of our lack of knowledge of ultimate reality (Lev., ch. 2, ¶8). Returning to the discussion on prophets, Hobbes lays out two criteria found in Scripture that enable us to determine the veracity of a prophet. The first mark of a true prophet is the ability (albeit given by God) to perform miracles, and the second mark is that whatever the prophet proclaims must not go against the established religion (Lev., ch. 32, ¶7).  Neither of these indicators are sufficient on their own, rather both marks must be present to determine the prophet’s authenticity.  Hobbes, of course, cites several passages of Scripture from both the New Testament and the Old to support his claim (e.g., Deut 13:1-5; Matt 24:24).  Two paragraphs later, Hobbes simply asserts that miracles are a thing of the past and no longer occur in our day.  Consequently, we must rely on Scripture alone as the source of divine revelation.[2]  Hobbes states his case as follows: 

Seeing therefore miracles now cease, we have no sign left whereby to acknowledge the pretended revelations or inspirations of any private man, nor obligation to give ear to any doctrine farther than it is conformable to the Holy Scriptures, which since the time of our Saviour supply the place and sufficiently recompense the want of all other prophecy, and from which, by wise and learned interpretation and careful ratiocination, all rules and precepts necessary to the knowledge of our duty both to God and man, without enthusiasm or supernatural inspiration, may easily be deduced (Lev., ch. 32, ¶9). 

At this point, one might want to pose a series of questions to Hobbes.  First, in light of what Hobbes has said in the earlier part of Leviathan regarding our limited epistemological scope, is Hobbes’ suggesting that only the scientist, philosopher or theologian or a combination thereof is adequately equipped to properly interpret Scripture?   Perhaps Hobbes’ claim is simply that one who has a decent education will be adequately equipped to exegete Scripture.  If this is the case, then how do we settle differences in interpretation that will surely arise among these various educated individuals-that is, those not claiming to have immediate revelation, but who come to different conclusions with regard to the same texts of Scripture?  Presumably, Hobbes would respond that this inevitable situation points to the need for a sovereign as the final arbiter of religious disagreements.  This solution, however, seems to be formally equivalent to the very thing that Hobbes criticizes in the Roman Church, viz., a kind of non-thinking deference to papal authority.  In other words, both Hobbes’ position and the Roman Catholic view seem to imply that even among the most educated individuals, certain situations will require (at least to some degree) a kind of fideistic reliance on human authority, whether pope or civil sovereign.  Yet, the Roman Catholic position ultimately rests not simply on human authority, but on the claim that the pope possesses a supernatural charism to speak infallibly when making official (infallible) pronouncements on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. 

Notes

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[1] See, for example, Lev., ch. 2, ¶5-8. [2] It is often claimed that Hobbes is simply appealing to the Reformation principle of sola scriptura.  However, I find this assertion unconvincing for several reasons.  First, as I am attempting to make clear in this essay, Hobbes is not simply engaging in “pure” exegesis (whatever that is), but instead his philosophical and political views strongly inform his interpretations of Scripture.  Secondly, both Protestants and Roman Catholics today have an overly facile and inaccurate understanding of sola scriptura as taught by the magisterial reformers.   For an excellent scholarly study of this topic, see Heiko A. Oberman, Dawn of the Reformation, Grand Rapids:  Eerdman’s, 1992. In chapter twelve of the above-mentioned work, Oberman discusses the early reformers’ understanding of the relation between Scripture and tradition in contrast to the Roman Catholic view.   As Oberman observes, the 16^th century was marked with “bitter polemics concerning the source and norm of the Church’s knowledge of God’s revelation.  Traditionally this is described as the clash of the sola scriptura-principle with the Scripture and tradition-principle” (Ibid., p. 270).  Both Protestants and Catholics were eager to uphold the purity and authority of God’s word, yet each believed that the other’s view was detrimental to maintaining this purity and authority.   The Reformers pointed to ways in which ecclesial traditions had come to distort the Gospel, while proponents of the Counter-Reformation decried the Reformers for breaking with tradition and promoting private interpretations.  “In both cases reliance on human authority is said to interfere with the rule of obedience to Holy Scripture” (Ibid., p. 270).  Oberman then highlights what in my opinion is often glossed over or completely ignored in these kinds of discussions, namely, that the debate before us is not one of Scripture or tradition, but rather a “clash between two concepts of tradition” (Ibid., p. 270).  Oberman distinguishes these two understandings as “Tradition I” (T1) and “Tradition II” (T2).  T1 stands for the “single exegetical tradition of interpreted scripture,” whereas T2 represents the “two-sources theory which allows for an extra-biblical oral tradition” (Ibid.,p. 280).  Oberman argues that the early reformers (Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin, as Richard Muller has noted, could be included as well) advocated T1, whereas T2, particularly from Trent onward, became the official position of the Roman Catholic Church. 

In contrast to his methodological approach in parts one and two, wherein Hobbes attempts to proceed by way of geometrical demonstration, part three takes a radical turn into the world of biblical exegesis and exhibits something similar to modern biblical criticism.  Broadly speaking, one might characterize at least one aspect of the purpose of parts one and two as an attempt to establish Hobbes’ materialistic view of the world.  Hobbes, like many of his contemporaries, had accepted the new mechanistic view of the world in which efficient causality (matter and motion) serves as the explanatory apparatus for all phenomena.[1]  In this series, I shall attempt to flesh out these claims by examining selected passages from part three of Hobbes’ Leviathan.  In particular, I shall focus on the various instances in which Hobbes’ naturalizes traditional Christianity’s claims regarding prophets, incorporeal beings, and miracles.  In other words, what I propose is that contrary to Hobbes’ own claim to exegete Scripture in a purely objective way-that is, not informed with the prejudices of tradition and simply based on Scripture and natural reason alone-Hobbes’ biblical exegesis is made to conform to his own philosophical conceptions based on the science of his day (as well as his own political agenda). 

In his dedicatory epistle, Hobbes sets forth his goal to pursue a middle path between excessive liberty and excessive authority.  He goes on to say that he is aware that many will find his exegesis of certain passages of Scripture offensive.  However, Hobbes claims to have offered these with “due submission,” as an obedient civil servant.[2]  With these introductory remarks, Hobbes indicates some of his greatest concerns with regard to the Christianity of his day, namely, that Christians must not interpret Scripture in such a way that it allows them to be disobedient to the sovereign.  In other words, one of the primary goals of Hobbes’ Leviathan is to produce a dutiful and obedient citizen.  As we shall see, this goal, coupled with his materialistic philosophy, drives Hobbes’ hermeneutic and thoroughly informs his exegesis of Scripture. 

 Notes

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[1] This will become more evident in the discussion that follows. [2] Thomas Hobbes.  Leviathan.  Ed., Edwin Curley.  (Cambridge:  Hackett, 1994), p. 2.  Subsequent references will be in the text, noting the chapter and paragraph number.