“A Power which He Refused”
In Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, as in other early modern treatises, a philosophical defense of the secular is coupled with a theological defense. In the case of Hobbes, his philosophical argument is made in parts I and II of Leviathan, and his theological argument is made in parts III and IV. The latter parts of Leviathan are of no interest to most late modern readers, but to early modern readers the opposite was the case. Many iconic texts in European history may owe most of their influence to forms of reasoning, and to blocs of text, that interest late modern readers the least. This chapter offers a reading of the Leviathan which centers upon Jesus’ words to Pilate: “My Kingdom is not of this world.” It is demonstrated here, for the first time, that there is more in Leviathan about the kingdom of Christ being “not of this world” than there is about Hobbes’s notorious “war of every one against every one”.