Natural Sovereignty and Omnipotence in Hobbes’s Leviathan

Abstract

According to Hobbes, God is a natural sovereign because of his omnipotence, not because of his goodness or creation. The relation between power and kingship is also expressed in the idea of Yahweh as a warrior god, for example in Deuteronomy and the Book of Psalms. Kings, “mortal gods,” need power to protect their subjects and could only do so if they had properties similar to those attributed to God. In the seventeenth-century, intellectuals sometimes made God the model for human sovereigns, and sometimes the reverse. Since both God and human sovereigns are owed obedience, a troubling question arises: “Should human beings obey God or their sovereign if there is a conflict?” Hobbes has an easy answer. God commands people to obey their human sovereign. Arash Abizadeh’s interpretation that God is a person by fiction is refuted.