Political Theology of Hobbes’s Leviathan and the Thesis of Orthodox Vision of Theocracy

Abstract

The history of the people of God is tightly dependant on receiving the Law, as, by fulfilling it, Israel remained within the realm of knowing God. The institution of the monarchy was obliged to stay faithful to the law of God in order for the State of Israel to remain within God’s favour. In that context, the king had a duty to his people to remain faithful to God, as embracing idolatry would have been a danger to the very religious, social and political stability of Israel. The Christian perspective of the early 1^stcentury, marked by the political context of the rule of the Roman Empire, continues the Judaic paradigm as to the relation between the political and the religious authority, but adds certain nuances to it (Matt. 22:21;Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet.2:13-17). For this very reason, the Leviathan proposed by Thomas Hobbes does not have a correspondence in the Jewish-Christian world. The birth of a political system based on society voluntarily renouncing its most basic rights, established by God in the Torah, only for an utopian peace with civil security blatantly contradicts the politics revealed by the Scriptures: christian doctrine requires abiding by political power and not showing an obedience that precedes spiritual corruption. That is why, for a better cooperation between State and Church, we propose here the Thesis of Orthodox vision of Theocracy.