1 - The Covenanting God

Summary

The God of early modern Reformed theology has sometimes been described as a leviathan: all-powerful, unaccountable, and utterly free in his dealings with humanity. His chief end is the increase of his own glory. His covenants are made apart from any prior recognition of goodness or merit, depending solely on his sovereign whim. Theologians, political theorists, and historians of early modernity have all contributed to this construal of the tradition. In his classic work The Divine Right of Kings, John Neville Figgis analogized Thomas Hobbes’ political Leviathan with the “Deity of Calvinism,” since both possessed power that was “unchecked by law, justice or conscience.”¹ Several decades later, Carl Schmitt seized on this historical parallel in one of his lesser known – but most revealing – works, marking it as a prime example of how our most important political ideas are, at root, secularized theological concepts.² The source of God’s covenant with humanity cannot be traced to anything like the essential goodness or love of God, since, as Schmitt reads Hobbes, “God is above all a power, not wisdom or justice.”