Criticizing Hobbes's Narrative Reasons for Denying Religious Government

Explaining the truly divine and religious government and criticizing other governments are considered as the preconditions of the scientific endeavor for the realization of the divine government in the world. The world of political thought in the past centuries has witnessed an emphasis on secular governments with popular legitimacy and the denial of religious government. Therefore, it is important to criticize the reasons stated in the political thoughts of influential theorists for denying religious government. One such theorist is Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century political philosopher. In his book, Leviathan, he proposed the theory of government in Christianity and, using religious sources, denied the possibility of religious government before the reappearance of Christ; this part of Hobbes' political thoughts has received little consideration. This paper aims to criticize one of the theoretical sources of the denial of religious government in modern times; the sources by which the secular trends and the opposition to the religious government in the Islamic countries were influenced. Thus, in the present paper, Hobbes's narrative reasons for denying religious government and his religious arguments were criticized, and it was proven that Hobbes had numerous flaws in deriving the Christian government theory from religious sources. Hobbes not only lacks scientific competence, proper method, and sound foundations in deriving from Christian sources, but also has erred in interpreting and resorting to Christian texts. Hobbes' theory of religious government suffers from internal inconsistency as well as incompatibility with the tenets of the divine religion.