Faith Comes By Hearing

Thomas Hobbes expounds the difference between knowing and believing in matters of religion, in Part III of Leviathan. This is one of those passages in which his theological acumen and his satirical spirit seem to converge inextricably....

 

 Faith Comes by Hearing

It is manifest therefore, that Christian men doe not know, but only beleeve the Scripture to be the Word of God; and that the means of making them beleeve which God is pleased to afford men orinarily, is according to the way of Nature, that is to say, from their Teachers. It is the Doctrine of St. Paul concerning Christian Faith in generall, (Rom. 10. 17.) Faith cometh by Hearing, that is, by Hearing our lawfull Pastors. He saith also (ver. 14, 15. of the same Chapter) How shall they beleeve in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a Preacher? and how shall they Preach, except they be sent? Whereby it is evident, that the ordinary cause of beleeving that the Scriptures are the Word of God, is the same with the cause of the beleeving of all other Articles of our Faith, namely, the Hearing of those that are by the Law allowed and appointed to Teach us, as our Parents in thir Houses, and our Pastors in the Churches: Which also is made more manifest by experience. For what other cause can there bee assigned, why in Christian Common-wealths all men either beleeve, or at least professse the Scripture to bee the Word of God, and in other Common-wealths scarce any; but that in a Christian Common-wealth they are taught it from their infancy; and in other places they are taught otherwise.

Just to be clear about the theology of Leviathan, there is an interesting conundrum or paradox or logical corner that Hobbes chooses to inhabit. It is not always the case that all good Christian subjects "believe", in spite of this indoctrination, since sound doctrine also teaches "that Faith is the gift of God, and hee giveth it to whom he will." BUT whereas a King is not to pry into the subjects's souls as to what they believe or not, Hobbes does insist on the right of the State to exact public verbal acquiescence, and to silence skeptics or atheists or heretics at the discretion of the Sovereign. That is, good public religiosity consists not so much in actually believing the doctrine, but in simulating belief or not contradicting it with inconvenient assertions to the contrary effect.

Which is all things considered a nicely paradoxical rounding off or bootstrapping of the Christian materialist theology of the Leviathan—a regular Q.E.D. of the theological argument expounded here, and an self-explicatory and perhaps slightly cynical assertion of the book's explicit and deliberate Anglican orthodoxy.

Hobbes y los okupas

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