The Political Theology of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan

The evolution of Thomas Hobbes' political thought in the 1630s-1640s was marked by a considerable increase in an interest in the problems of the relations between politics and religion, and the state and the Church. This interest was expressed in his creation of the original conception of political theology, of which the most complete exposition is contained in his treatise Leviathan. In his concept of political theology, Hobbes saw an effective way to solve the theologico-political problem of modernity. At the heart of his political theology lays a new interpretation given by Hobbes to a number of doctrinal propositions of the Christian faith, which was designed to harmonize it with the absolute power of the temporal sovereign. Particular attention is paid to the consideration of those pragmatic strategies where Hobbes proposed to neutralize the explosive potential of the Christian religion for civil peace and the security of the state. It is also shown that the complete subordination of the Church to the State in the political theology of Hobbes served as a starting point for the impotent stage of the process of secularization of the Western world, which led to the separation of politics from religion, and the state from the Church.