“There is no power on earth which can be compared with the power which God hath over man.”Thomas Hobbes · Leviathan · 1651 · Partea III, capitolul XXXI
Every human power is contestable because it rests on consent or force; only divine power is total.
Hobbes builds a hierarchy of power here: kings, parliaments, and laws are all limited, conditional, and reversible, while divine power is total because it extends over death itself and over the soul. The mechanism is simple: any human power rests on consent or force, so it can always be contested. That is why, in Leviathan, obedience to the sovereign remains relative, while obedience to God is absolute.
If every human power can be contested, a practical question arises: who has the right to contest it? Hobbes answers by noting that each person judges for themselves, at least before surrendering their rights to the sovereign. Think of a tenant paying an unjustified rent: they can accept, negotiate, or leave. No landlord's decision is irreversible for them, because it does not touch their life beyond the contract. This space of personal judgment is what makes human authority, however strong, comparable to other powers and therefore negotiable. Divine power leaves no such space, since it rests on no agreement. The next step is to see what happens when people confuse the two registers and treat a ruler as a god.
Why it matters Useful when you want to argue that every human authority, including political power, is negotiable and open to criticism.