God

“Ainsi on peut dire que, de quelque manière que Dieu aurait créé le monde, il aurait toujours été régulier et dans un certain ordre général. Mais Dieu a choisi celui qui est le plus parfait, c’est-à-dire celui qui est en même temps le plus simple en hypothèses et le plus riche en phénomènes, comme pourrait être une ligne de géométrie dont la construction serait aisée et les propriétés et effets seraient fort admirables et d’une grande étendue.”

G.W.F. Leibniz, Discours de Métaphysique (1686)

Hobbes’s extension of the domain of natural inquiry reached into all bends of possible experience, overflowing into previously preserved realms, distant provinces that had remained above, outside, the plain of consistence, – a model of the structure of knowledge-, and infected part of the given traditional Christian tenets. This was one of the particular features of the modern plane of construction, its generality and totality, and what makes a partial consideration of certain isolated elements incomplete. According to Hobbes, no knowledge about the physical world, about the characteristics of creation, was transmitted by Christ;(1) they had to be ascertained by man’s faculties, highlighting an entirely immanent approach to knowledge.

Skepticism regarding any sort of fideism became commonplace and discarded the miraculous wrapping that was embedded in traditional Christian religion. The divine realm is also rational, and reason is the correct instrument to investigate God’s kingdom. The handmaid of religion becomes now the proper approach to ascertain the divine, “…all things in the naturall Kingdom of God are enquired into by reason only, that is to say, out of the Principles of naturall Science…”(2)

This yielded a naturalistic reduction of the idea of God, equating him to the universe populated with bodies, Deus sive Natura, “…there is nothing without God, who is infinite, in whom are all things, and in whom we live, move, and have our being…”(3) Naturalism was ultimately also extended to his understanding of God as artificer of the world.(4)

GWL Leibniz

(1) “Furthermore, all these things, to build Castles, Houses, Temples; to move, carry, take away mighty weights; to send securely over Seas; to contrive engines, serving for all manner of uses; to be well acquainted with the face of the whole world, the Courses of the Starres, the season of the yeare, the accounts of the times, and the nature of all things; to understand perfectly all natural and civill Rights; and all manner of Sciences, which (comprehended under the Title of Philosophy) are necessary partly to live, partly to live well; I say, the understanding of these (because CHRIST hath not delivered it) is to be learnt from reasoning, that is to say by making necessary consequences, having first taken the beginning from experience.” De Cive, XVII, 12.
(2) De Cive, XV, 15. Hobbes was during his youth member of the Great Tew circle, a group of intellectuals acknowledged for their ‘Socinianism’, i.e. the use of reason in matters of faith.
(3) The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, Animadversions upon Bishop’s reply n. XVIII, p. 246.
(4) “Mankind, from conscience of its own weaknesse, and admiration of all natural events, hath this, that most men beleeve God to be the invisible Maker of all visible things…” De Cive, XVI, 1.