Certainly, when Hobbes says that God's power is irresistible, he does not mean that God's commands are always obeyed. In the state of nature, where no man but only God has power to compel obedience, the laws of nature (which are God's commands) are so little obeyed that is ordinarily unsafe for a man to obey them, and he is therefore not obliged to do so. Only God has irresistible power in the sense that can always, if he chooses, compel anyone to obey him. But a man's power can be irresistible in another sense, at least if we accept Hobbes's assumption about human nature. Man, Hobbes tell us, necessarily acts for his own advantage, as he sees it; if, therefore, one man commands another and threatens to punish him in a case of disobedience, and the other thinks it to his advantage to obey. Whoever has been successfully compelled has yielded to irresisible power. For man, say Hobbes, is obliged to do what tends to his own destruction, and his obehying that laws will ordinarily tend to it, unless other men also obey them, and this is in the state of nature they do not do. God has chosen to punish and reward men, not in this world, but in the next, and has so made them that fear of distant punishment and hope of distant reward are under human government. God's power is irresistible in the sense that can achieve whatever he wants to achieve. If he chooses to be obeyed, he will be obeyed; for he can, if he chooses, ensure that those to whom he addressed his commands understand them and had sufficient motives for obeying his commands in the state of nature, and therefore, while that state lasts, their obbligation to obey is severely limited; for the purpose of these commands is the safety of the creatures that they are not safe unless the commands are generally obeyed, and therefore are not obliged (except rarely) to obey them until there is a human ruler to provide the motives God has not chosen to provide.
Casalino Pierluigi
Casalino Pierluigi