Reply to Professor Martinich

Reply to Professor Martinich The editor of this journal has invited me to reply to Professor Martinich's reply to my reply to his reply to my article, on the condition that I should be brief. I shall try to be very brief. Our discussion has probably reached a point at which we can expect diminishing returns. I shall try also to avoid even the slightest hint of irony, though I am not sure I can succeed in that. I am surprised that Prof. Martinich, who sees so little irony in Hobbes, should find so much in "Calvin and Hobbes." I did think his definition of "orthodoxy" was plausible, taking the term "plausible" in the sense of "having an appearance or show of truth, reasonableness or worth" (OED, sense 3). That's also, of course, perfectly consistent with thinking the criterion of the creeds too weak. The Church of England, from the time of Elizabeth, has made acceptance of the Nicene and Aposdes' Creeds one of the 39 Articles which define membership in that Church. But Martinich exaggerates when he says that that was the criterion of orthodoxy used by the Church. The 39 Articles cover many other issues as well, including (as Hobbes points out in the Latin Appendix, i, 95) God's incorporeality . As a somedme member of that Church, I wonder if Martinich has given thorough consideration to all that it requires of its adherents. I welcome Martinich's clarification of his use of the term "Calvinist." It was silly of me to think that he intended it to imply substantial agreement with the theology of John Calvin. I see now that he intended it to imply only acceptance of the doctrine of double predestination. This is a generous criterion. Aquinas himself may qualify. (Cf. Summa theologiaeI, qu. 23.) But if Calvin's doctrine implies the predestination of the reprobate to eternal punishment, Hobbes may not. (Cf. Leviathan xliv, 26, cited in my paper on 259.) I must protest, however, that I myself did not say that we should regard selfcontradiction as a sign of irony (275 of Martinich's paper). I said merely that some readers might think that frequent self-contradiction is a sign of irony (263 of my paper). But ! acknowledged, of course, that Martinich might make, "with justice," the reply he actually does make, that authors often contradict themselves (264 of my paper). Whether Hobbes contradicts himself in a//the passages Martinich claims he does is too large a question to enter into here. I was not persuaded by all his examples; but if they fail, I'm sure others can be found. In spite of what Martinich says (278 of his paper), I do still think Hobbes thought revealed religion was dangerous to the political order. Of course he will say that the divine law is perfectly consistent with natural law. But he is very concerned that some ministers of religion will persuade their followers that the divine law may be inconsistent with the civil/aw, and that, faced with such inconsistency, we must give priority to the divine law. The whole point of Part III of Lariathan, as I argued in the Introduction to [285] 286 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:2 APRIL x996 my edition (xl-xliv), is to remove the threat to sovereignty implicit in Acts 5:29 ("We must obey God rather than man"). Moreover, I do not think Hobbes was so optimistic as to imagine that his theory of religious language would forestall the possibility of believers taking the Bible to commit them to belief in demons or in the geocentric theory of the solar system (cf. L viii, 26). The central issue between us, however, concerns the doctrine of the Trinity. Martinich thinks Hobbcs ventured into those treacherous waters because he wanted "to show the power of his novel theory of personhood by using it to explain the doctrine of the Trinity" (279 of his paper). Surely this assumes that Hobbes actually thought Christian theologians might accept his explanation of the Trinity. With the benefit of hindsight we know that if he thought that, he was very much mistaken. The interesting question is: could...