The Covenant with God in Hobbes's Leviathan
Hobbes's Christian critics attacked Leviathan both for affirming and for denying the possibility of a covenant between God and man. Filmer attacked Hobbes for affirming that possibility. Clarendon attacked him for denying it. And both writers did this in the name of the Christian religion. How can this be? Is Hobbes's text really so ambiguous as to permit a doubt about his position? How is it possible that two intelligent readers should have attributed diametrically opposed views to him? And how is it possible that both the supposed affirmation and the supposed denial should prove offensive to Christian readers? Is the Christian tradition so ambiguous on this point as to permit both views to be regarded as heretical? This chapter addresses these questions.
Keywords: Filmer, Clarendon, Leviathan, covenant, God, man
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .