Care to give me Biblical support for this claim? What evidence from the Bible can you give, in reference to Leviathan, that would show Hobbes to be a heretic? (I'm talking about Biblical support, not sectarian dogma, as you did mention a sectarian source.)
To say Hobbes was hyper-Augustinian also neglects to consider Hobbes was an anti-Papist.
-
His misapplication of social contract theory to justify absolute monarchy should have been debunked once and for all by the success of the American founding.
Hobbes, and the later John Locke, laid those philosopical foundations for the success of the American founding. Hobbes lived in the 15th Century, monarchy and the Bible was all he ever really knew.
Now, as far as the "social contract" theory... Jean-Jacques Rousseau in A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:
An ancient tradition passed out of Egypt into Greece, that some god, who was an enemy to the repose of mankind, was the inventor of the sciences.3 What must the Egyptians, among whom the sciences first arose, have thought of them? And they beheld, near at hand, the sources from which they sprang. In fact, whether we turn to the annals of the world, or eke out with philosophical investigations the uncertain chronicles of history, we shall not find for human knowledge an origin answering to the idea we are pleased to entertain of it at present. Astronomy was born of superstition, eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; all, even moral philosophy, of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices; we should be less doubtful of their advantages, if they had sprung from our virtues. (Rousseau, p 15)3. It is easy to seethe allegory in the fable of Prometheus: and it does not appear that the Greeks, who chained him to the Caucasus, had a better opinion of him than the Egyptians had of their god Thetus. The Satyr, says an ancient fable, the first time he saw a fire, was going to kiss and embrace it; but Prometheus cried out to him to forbear, or his beard would rue it. It burns, says he, everything that touches it.
The philosophies of Rousseau and Hobbes are not generally considered analogous. Rousseau is actually very hostile to Hobbes, calling him ‘pernicious’ in A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:
Paganism, though given over to all the extravagances of human reason, has left nothing to compare with the shameful monuments which have been prepared by the art of printing4, during the reign of the gospel. The impious writings of Leucippus and Diagoras perished with their authors. The world, in their days, was ignorant of the art of immortalizing the errors and extravagances of the human mind. But thanks to the art of printing and the use we make of it, the pernicious reflections of Hobbes and Spinoza will last forever. Go, famous writings, of which the ignorance and rusticity of our forefathers would have been incapable. Go to our descendants, along with those still more pernicious works which reek of the corrupted manners the present age! Let them together convey to posterity a faithful history of the progress and advantages of our arts and sciences. If they are read, they will not leave a doubt about the question we are now discussing, and unless mankind should then be still more foolish than we, they will lift up their hands to Heaven and exclaim in bitterness of heart: ‘Almighty God! Thou who holdest in Thy hand the minds of men, deliver us from the fatal arts and sciences of our forefathers; give us back the ignorance, innocence, and poverty, which alone can make us happy and are precious in Thy sight. (Rousseau, p 26-27)4.If we consider the frightful disorder which printing has already caused in Europe, and judge of the future by the progress of its evils from day to day, it is easy to foresee that sovereigns will hereafter take as much pains to banish this dreadful art from their dominions, as they ever took to encourage it. The Sultan Achmet, yielding to the opportunities of certain pretenders to taste, consented to have a press erected at Constantinople; but it was hardly set to work before they were obliged to destroy it, and throw the plant into a well.
It is related that the Caliph Omar, being asked what should be done with the Library at Alexandria, answered in these words: ‘If the books in the library contain anything contrary to the Alcoran, they are evil and ought to be burnt; if they contain only what the Alcoran teaches, they are superflous.’ This reasoning has been cited by our men of letters as the height of absurdity; but if Gregory the Great had been in place of Omar and the Gospel in the place of the Alcoran, the library would still have been burnt, and it would have been perhaps the finest action of his life.
Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Trans. G.D.H. Cole, Rev. J.H. Brumfitt and John C. Hall. London: Guernsey Press, 1973.
Hobbes, and later John Locke, are philosophers who established philosophical ideals that are the basis for Modern Western Civilization. Rousseau, it is argued, establishes a philosophical basis for Marxism.
I would also note that Rousseau had six children, each of which he took to orphanages immediately after birth. Some Social Contract theory there all right...
The rhetoric of Marxists in politics often use the idea of a social contract and the term itself to promote the quasi-religious ideals they worship. Marxists, in a sense, worship the ideals of a dead Karl Marx like some Christians worship the image of a dead Jesus. The political Left often holds to the view of Rousseau, cited above. They eschew the advancement of science and of the arts. It is no wonder that in their pursuit to dominate academia, that the decline of education in the West has been a victim of the political Left. Is it any wonder that the modern Left opposes U.S. military action in the war against terrorism, hates the Jews and Israel, as well as supports the Palestinians and terrorism?
Tell me what is heretical about this:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.
(12) And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
(13) And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church. (Hobbes p 308)
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
It is years since I read The Leviathan, so I will not try to argue with you about what is usually called social contract theory (even if the term itself came from Rousseau, the late corrupter of the idea). Hobbes justified absolute monarchy, as I recall, as natural and necessary. Locke using the same view of society arising by agreements to escape from what Hobbes called "the war of all against all" justified liberty. As I said, the American Founding debunks Hobbes's reasoning that an absolute monarch is a necessity to escape from the state of nature, and giving extensive contrasts between Hobbes who started the idea and Rousseau who gave it what is now the common name doesn't really answer the point.
Hobbes's view of the state of nature, is, of course, part of what I would characterize as hyper-Augustinianism. It is only the overly radical understanding of the Fall which began with Blessed Augustine and was even more heartily embraced among the "reformers" of Northern Europe than by the Roman Papacy which justifies such a dim view of the human condition. Orthodox Christianity did not follow the West down that path, and speaks of "Ancestal Sin" not "Original Sin", recognizing that Blessed Augustine misread a passage in St. Paul's Letter to the Roman: it is by death, not by Adam, that sin passes to all men (the pronoun should be Englished as "it" not "him"). Even fallen man absent grace is still capable of good actions, though not capable of saving himself as Pelagius vainly thought.
As I said, I have no use for Hobbes: as an American who loves liberty because of his misapplication of ideas Locke used to justify free societies to justify instead absolute monarchy (which thanks to the propensity toward sin of fallen man leads always to tyranny--quickly in the case of non-Christian monarchs, and alas sometimes quickly even in the case of Christians), and as an Orthodox Christian because he is a heretic, the fact that you define heresy differently than the Church, apparently as disagreement with your own reading of the Holy Scriptures notwithstanding.