Abstract

We simply have no better account of Hobbes's religious thinking and religious projects than Martinich's excellent new book about Hobbes's Leviathan. According to Martinich, Hobbes was not an atheist, and his political theory was not that of a secularist. Rather he was a Calvinist, a monarchist, and an advocate of an episcopal church. Like so many others in the seventeenth century, Hobbes sought to meet the challenges which the scientific revolution posed for a Biblical faith. Hence, Leviathan has two goals, " to show that the distinctively religious content of the Bible could be reconciled with the new science and to prove that religion could not legitimately be used to destabilize a government".