¹ Although some scholars who focus on Hobbes's religious thought mention his unusual interpretation of hell without much comment (for example, Martinich, A. P., The Two Gods of Leviathan [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., “Time, History, and Eschatology in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes,” in Politics, Language and Time [New York: Atheneum, 1971], 148–201Google Scholar), the whole issue is conspicuously absent from other works, such as Hood, F. C., The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964)Google Scholar and Warrender, Howard, The Political Theory of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

² A 2008 poll of 35,000 respondents by the Pew Forum found that belief in hell has continued to decline (based on comparisons with a 2001 Gallup poll). According to a theologian interviewed for the report, “Skepticism about hell is growing even in evangelical churches and seminaries” (Charles Honey, “Belief in hell dips, but some say they've already been there,” Pew Forum, http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=16260). Walker, D. P., The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discourses of Eternal Torment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964)Google Scholar, notes that the gradual lessening of the fear of hell, and attacks on the orthodox view of hell, began in the mid-seventeenth century. More recently, Ariès, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Weaver, Helen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 573Google Scholar, 576–77, notes that “sociological studies show that belief in an afterlife is declining at a much faster rate than faith in God among people of Christian cultures,” and in particular that belief in the traditional concept of hell has all but disappeared.

³ “But if the command be such, as cannot be obeyed, without being damned to Eternall Death, then it were madnesse to obey it, and the Counsell of our Saviour takes place, (Mat. 10.28.) Fear not those that kill the body, but cannot kill the soul” (Leviathan, chap. 43, in Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Tuck, Richard [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001], 403Google Scholar). See also Leviathan, chap. 29 (223, 227), chap. 30 (236), chap. 38 (306–7); De Cive, chap. 6 (in Hobbes, , On the Citizen, ed. Tuck, Richard and Silverthorne, Michael [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005], 80Google Scholar), chap. 12 (135), chap. 18 (234–36); The Elements of Law, chap. 26 (in Hobbes, , The Elements of Law Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature and Part II, De Corpore Politico, with Three Lives, ed. Gaskin, J. C. A. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999], 162Google Scholar); Hobbes, , Behemoth; or, The Long Parliament, ed. Holmes, Stephen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 8Google Scholar, 50. See also Johnston, David, The Rhetoric of Leviathan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁴ It is possible that Hobbes had not worked out his theory of hell before writing Leviathan. The frontispiece of De Cive is dominated by a traditional Last Judgment, including what appears to be a standard set of demons and devils torturing the damned and casting them into hellfire. On Hobbes's use of imagery, see Bredekamp, Horst, “Thomas Hobbes's Visual Strategies,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's “Leviathan,” ed. Springborg, Patricia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 29–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ For example, Hood, The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes; Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan.

⁶ See Mitchell, Joshua, Not by Reason Alone (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

⁷ Curley, Edwin, “Calvin and Hobbes, or, Hobbes as an Orthodox Christian,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 34, no. 2 (1996): 256–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Sinclair, Elsa M. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Strauss, Leo, “On the Basis of Hobbes's Political Philosophy,” in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar, chap. 7.

⁸ Curley, “Calvin and Hobbes”; Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan; Milner, Benjamin, “Hobbes: On Religion,” Political Theory 16, no. 3 (1988): 400–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Springborg, Patricia, “Leviathan and the Problem of Ecclesiastical Authority,” Political Theory 3, no. 3 (1975): 289–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes.

⁹ Leviathan, chap. 44 (425).

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Leviathan, chap. 44 (431–33).

¹² Leviathan, chap. 38 (318).

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Leviathan, chap. 38 (312–13).

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Ibid. Hobbes makes the same claim in the appendix to the Latin edition, having his character “B” say, “So the reprobate will rise again, so it seems, to a second death” (Hobbes, , Leviathan, ed. Curley, Edwin [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994], 507Google Scholar).

¹⁷ Leviathan, chap. 38 (312–15).

¹⁸ Leviathan, chap. 38 (315).

¹⁹ Leviathan, chap. 44 (432–33).

²⁰ Leviathan, chap. 38 (312, 314).

²¹ Leviathan, chap. 38 (314) and chap. 45.

²² Leviathan, chap. 38 (314).

²³ Leviathan, chap. 38 (314–15).

²⁴ Leviathan, chap. 38 (312–13).

²⁵ Leviathan, chap. 38 (314).

²⁶ Leviathan, chap. 44 (433).

²⁷ Leviathan, chap. 38 (314).

²⁸ Leviathan, chap. 44 (426).

²⁹ Leviathan, chap. 44 (432).

³⁰ In the appendix to the more conciliatory Latin edition of Leviathan, Hobbes complicates this issue further by having B claim first that “heaven and earth will be renewed, and though the world will burn, still it would not be annihilated, but real beings will remain,” and later, in response to A's claim that many of the descriptions of hell appear to be metaphorical, that “however that may be, so far the church assembled has defined nothing regarding the place of the damned—or at least our church hasn't” (Leviathan, ed. Curley, 500, 504).

³¹ Leviathan, chap. 38 (315).

³² See, for example, Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 259–60.

³³ As early as 1643 Hobbes denied Thomas White's assertion that annihilation would be worse that eternal torment. See Johnston, David, “Hobbes's Mortalism,” History of Political Thought 10, no. 4 (1989): 652Google Scholar.

³⁴ Parkin, Jon, Taming the Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁵ Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 266; Strong, Tracy, “How to Write Scripture: Words, Authority, and Politics in Thomas Hobbes,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993): 138CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 152.

³⁶ Mintz, Samuel, The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 118–19Google Scholar.

³⁷ Hobbes, Of Liberty and Necessity, in Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, ed. Chapell, Vere (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 15–42Google Scholar. Hobbes also defends his view of the soul and its connection with hell at length in his An Answer to Arch-bishop Bramhall's Book Called the Catching of the Leviathan (hereafter An Answer), in Tracts of Mr. Thomas Hobbs of Malmesbury (London, 1682), 97–100Google Scholar.

³⁸ Burns, Norman T., Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Ibid., 10–11.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 23.

⁴¹ Ibid., 22–24.

⁴² Quoted in ibid., 31.

⁴³ Walker, Decline of Hell, 19–22.

⁴⁴ Leviathan, chap. 44 (433).

⁴⁵ Burns, Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton, 15.

⁴⁶ Walker, The Decline of Hell, 73–92.

⁴⁷ Bolton, John, Of the Foure Last Things (London, 1639)Google Scholar, quoted in Patrides, C. A., “Renaissance and Modern Views of Hell,” The Harvard Theological Review 57, no. 3 (1964): 220CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁸ Leviathan, chap. 38 (314), chap. 11 (70).

⁴⁹ Leviathan, chap. 38 (318).

⁵⁰ An exhaustive study of the unity of Hobbes's thought would have to incorporate his historical thought in addition to his theology as well as his natural and political science. For a discussion of the unity of Hobbes's historical and scientific thought, see Kraynak, Robert, History and Modernity in the Thought of Hobbes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Leviathan, chap. 43 (415).

⁵² Scholars as diverse as Strauss (“On the Basis of Hobbes's Political Philosophy”), Skinner, Quentin (Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997])Google Scholar, and Johnston (The Rhetoric of Leviathan), among others, have noted the rhetorical character of Leviathan.

⁵³ Leviathan, chap. 1 (13).

⁵⁴ Leviathan, chap. 5; chap. 1 (13).

⁵⁵ Leviathan, chap. 1 (14).

⁵⁶ Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, show that this was one of the sources of Hobbes's disagreement with empiricists and the experimental scientists of the Royal Society such as Robert Boyle.

⁵⁷ 1 Cor. 13:12 (AV).

⁵⁸ Leviathan, chap. 32 (259), chap. 43 (406).

⁵⁹ Mitchell, Not by Reason Alone, 71.

⁶⁰ Leviathan, chap. 2 (18–19), chap. 32 (257), chap. 36 (297), chap. 43 (405).

⁶¹ Leviathan, chap. 43 (406); De Cive, chap. 18 (238). Pocock, “Time, History, and Eschatology,” 163, then, is wrong when he claims that for Hobbes, faith is a “faculty of the mind,” “distinct from either reason or experience,” which we can use to understand revealed history. Cf. also Hobbes, On Man, chap. 14, in Man and Citizen, ed. Gert, Bernard (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 72Google Scholar.

⁶² Leviathan, chap. 43 (405–6). Hobbes's definition of martyrs changes from De Cive, in which one can die a martyr rather than obey laws that one believes to be impious, to Leviathan, where Hobbes defines martyrdom by its Greek root—witness—and says that dying for one's beliefs is not necessary and is no testimony to the truth of one's beliefs (De Cive, chap. 18 [245]; Leviathan, chap. 42 [344–45, 363]).

⁶³ Leviathan, chap. 15 (103).

⁶⁴ Leviathan, chap. 5 (33).

⁶⁵ Hobbes's assessment is that the Pentateuch was written long after the events it describes, and this should immediately force readers to wonder how accurate these descriptions could be after reading in the second chapter that “after great distance of time, our imagination of the Past is weak” (Leviathan, chap. 2 [16]). Ezra, it turns out, wrote the Pentateuch after Cyrus released the Jews from Babylon. Moreover, the original had been burnt and lost, and Ezra could not have transcribed it perfectly without omitting the evidence Hobbes uses to make this determination, which evidence consists entirely of logical inconsistencies related to historical details. On Hobbes and Ezra see Hamilton, Alistair, The Apocryphal Apocalpse: The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Malcolm, Noel, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The New Testament was likely collated no earlier than AD 364 by Clement I, and although there was a tremendous temptation for the ambitious church doctors to alter the texts, since they sought through pious fraud to divert obedience from the civil authorities to themselves, Hobbes states unpersuasively, and I believe ironically, that he is “perswaded they did not therefore falsifie the Scriptures, though the copies of the Books of the New Testament, were in the hands only of the Ecclesiasticks” (Leviathan, chap. 33 [266]). From the poverty of human memory and man's deceitful nature, in addition to the difficulty of transmitting reliable information from one generation to the next, Hobbes sows seeds of uncertainty in his readers about how far they can trust the Bible, which is henceforth regarded more as a text subject to modern hermeneutics than as sacred scripture.

⁶⁶ See, for example, Leviathan, chap. 31 (249), chap. 34 (268), chap. 42 (342–44, 348).

⁶⁷ Leviathan, chap. 43 (414), Review and Conclusion (488).

⁶⁸ Behemoth, 49–50.

⁶⁹ Luther, Martin, Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, ed. Dillenberger, John (New York: Anchor Books, 1962), 385Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ For good discussions of the materialist basis of Hobbes's account of consciousness in contrast with Descartes's immaterial interpretation, see Frost, Samantha, “Hobbes and the Matter of Self-Consciousness,” Political Theory 33, no. 4 (2005): 495–517CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Pettit, Philip, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Leviathan, chap. 43 (403).

⁷² Leviathan, chap. 43 (413–14). See also De Cive, chap. 18 (245); On Man, chap. 9 (72).

⁷³ See, for example, Farr, James, “Atomes of Scripture: Hobbes and the Politics of Biblical Interpretation,” in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed. Dietz, Mary G. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1990)Google Scholar; Sorell, Tom, Hobbes (London: Routledge, 1986)Google Scholar; Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan; Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan; Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, 115; Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, 77. Against this view see Johnston, The Rhetoric of Leviathan.

⁷⁴ Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, 260, 258.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 259.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 259–60.

⁷⁷ Leviathan, chap. 38 (315).

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Hobbes, An Answer, 97–100.

⁸⁰ For a discussion of the theme of homelessness and fear in Hobbes see Blits, Jan H., “Hobbesian Fear,” Political Theory 17, no. 3 (1989): 417–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and for a discussion of the affinity between Hobbes and existentialism see Dallmayr, Fred, “Hobbes and Existentialism: Some Affinities,” Journal of Politics 31, no. 3 (1969): 615–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ In some sense, Hobbes is picking up on the Protestant notion of a hidden God, or Deus Absconditus, and combining it with his account of the mind to prove just how incapable man is of acquiring such knowledge. The difference is that the Protestant soul could still have some sort of contact with the hidden God, while for Hobbes God was entirely hidden in every respect.

⁸² Hobbes, The Verse Life, in The Elements of Law, ed. Gaskin, 261. Gaskin includes a note at this point in the autobiography stating that Leviathan was in great demand by 1668, in part because of its notoriety.

⁸³ Leviathan, Epistle Dedicatory (3).

⁸⁴ Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, 95.

⁸⁵ Strauss, Natural Right and History, 199n.

⁸⁶ Cooke, Paul D., Hobbes and Christianity: Reassessing the Bible in “Leviathan” (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 236Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, 1.

⁸⁸ Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan, 44.

⁸⁹ It is a necessary corollary of Skinner's arguments about Hobbes's use of rhetoric that he failed completely either in trying to hide his true views or in trying to persuade his readers of his orthodoxy.

⁹⁰ Jeffrey R. Collins, “Silencing Thomas Hobbes: The Presbyterians,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's “Leviathan,” 480; Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, 25–26, 35.

⁹¹ Strauss is the best-known exponent of the theory that Hobbes is esoteric in the sense of being circumspect, but he too seems to imply that the complete picture is more complex. In one of his later writings on Hobbes, Strauss claims almost in the same breath that Hobbes “expressed himself with great caution” and that his work was full of “shocking over-simplifications” and “absurdities” (“On the Basis of Hobbes's Political Philosophy,” 189). A full examination of Strauss's complex treatment of Hobbes's esotericism, though, is beyond the scope of this article.

⁹² Walker, The Decline of Hell, 6.

⁹³ Ibid., 5.

⁹⁴ Hobbes, An Answer, 24.

⁹⁵ Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, 365.

⁹⁶ Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, 269.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 114–15; Collins, “Silencing Thomas Hobbes,” 483; cf. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan, 60.

⁹⁸ Tenison, Thomas, The Creed of Mr. Thomas Hobbes Examined (London: F. Tyton, 1671), 217Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Bramhall, in An Answer, 99.

¹⁰⁰ Edward, , Earl of Clarendon, A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State, in Mr. Hobbes's Book, Entitled Leviathan (Oxford: The Theatre, 1676), 219Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 222.

¹⁰² Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, 95; Collins, Jeffrey R., The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 144Google Scholar; Perez Zagorin, “Clarendon against Leviathan,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's “Leviathan,” 463.

¹⁰³ Hyde admitted to having had some hand in excluding Hobbes from court: Zagorin, “Clarendon against Leviathan,” 464; Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, 146. I follow Collins's argument addressing the question of why Hobbes would have presented such a manuscript to Charles knowing it would displease him. As Collins notes, this presentation “bears all of the hallmarks of an ad hoc effort by Hobbes to cover his tracks once Charles had unexpectedly returned to France” (ibid., 144). He goes on to note that “the manuscript lacks a dedication to Charles,” and contained several passages critical of Independency which are not present in the printed version. Hobbes in fact had wanted to return to England before Charles's return (if Charles returned at all), but was waylaid by serious illness (ibid., 145; see also Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, but pace Ted Miller, H., “The Uniqueness of Leviathan: Authorizing Poets, Philosopher, and Sovereigns,” in “Leviathan” After 350 Years, ed. Sorell, Tom and Foisneau, Luc [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004]Google Scholar).

¹⁰⁴ Collins, “Silencing Thomas Hobbes,” 481. Although Collins argues that Leviathan was primarily written to signal Hobbes's change of allegiance from the royal cause to that of the revolutionaries, I would argue that Hobbes was concerned mostly with his ability to continue his philosophic activity rather than with any factional allegiance. Clarendon was probably right, if we remove the adjectives, when he claimed that “he considers not, nor will be subject to any other Soveraignty, then that of his own capricious brain, and haughty understanding” (Clarendon, A Brief View and Survey of … Leviathan, 230).

¹⁰⁵ Leviathan, chap. 43 (413–14).

¹⁰⁶ Leviathan, chap. 12 (76).

¹⁰⁷ Leviathan, chap. 12 (83), chap. 14 (99).

¹⁰⁸ On Man, chap. 12 (58), chap. 14 (79–80).

¹⁰⁹ Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan, 151.

¹¹⁰ Parkin, Taming the Leviathan, 5, 451.

¹¹¹ Leviathan, chap. 44 (431–32).

¹¹² John Bramhall, Of Liberty and Necessity, in Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, 4.

¹¹³ Hobbes, An Answer, 100. Hobbes comes close to saying something similar in the Latin edition of Leviathan when he says, “From this it follows that the reprobate will not be resurrected at all, except to a second death; for only the children of God are children of the resurrection” (Leviathan, ed. Curley, chap. 44 [427]). He maintains, though, that the reprobate will in fact be resurrected and that they will die again.

¹¹⁴ On Man, chap. 14 (74). There is a similar ambiguity in De Cive, chap. 4 (61–62).

¹¹⁵ See Gillespie, Michael, “Where Did All the Evils Go?” in Naming Evil, Judging Evil, ed. Grant, Ruth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Leviathan, chap. 38 (311); cf. the Epistle Dedicatory (3), Review and Conclusion (489–90).

¹¹⁷ For a discussion of contemporary views of the relationship between Gehenna and hell see Bailey, Lloyd R., “Enigmatic Bible Passages: Gehenna: The Topography of Hell,” The Biblical Archaeologist 49, no. 3 (1986): 187–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁸ Leviathan, chap. 44 (433). On the alterations relating to this issue between the first and second editions of Leviathan see Tuck's introduction to his edition of Leviathan, xlvi, and Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, 349–50, 364–65.

¹¹⁹ Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, 349; Leviathan, chap. 44 (433); and Tuck's introduction, xlvii.

¹²⁰ Leviathan, chap. 44 (433).

¹²¹ Ibid.

¹²² Leviathan, chap. 38 (311).