Thomas Erastus (original surname Lüber, Lieber, or Liebler;[2] 7 September 1524 – 31 December 1583) was a Swissphysician and Calvinist theologian. He wrote 100 theses (later reduced to 75) in which he argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold sacraments as a form of punishment. They were published in 1589, after his death, with the title Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis. His name was later applied to Erastianism.[2]
One of the first acts of the new church system was to excommunicate Erastus on a charge of Socinianism, founded on his correspondence with Transylvania. The ban was not removed until 1575, Erastus declaring his firm adhesion to the doctrine of the Trinity. His position, however, was uncomfortable, and in 1580 he returned to the University of Basel, where in 1583 he was made professor of ethics. He died on 31 December 1583.[4]
Work
Erastus published several pieces focused on medicine, astrology, alchemy, and attacked in his publications the system of Paracelsus. In doing so, he defended medieval tradition in general, and Galen in particular, while conceding some merit to specific points in Paracelsus.[5] His name is permanently associated with a posthumous publication, written in 1568. Its immediate occasion was the disputation at Heidelberg in 1568 for the doctorate of theology by George Withers, an English Puritan (subsequently Archdeacon of Colchester), silenced in 1565 at Bury St Edmunds by Archbishop Parker. Withers had proposed a disputation against vestments, which the university would not allow; his thesis affirming the excommunicating power of the presbytery was sustained.[6]
The Treatise of Erastus (1589) was published by Giacomo Castelvetro, who had married Erastus's widow.[7] It consists of seventy-five Theses, followed by a Confirmatio in six books. An appendix of letters to Erastus by Heinrich Bullinger and Rudolf Gwalther, showed that the Theses, written in 1568, had been circulated in manuscript form. An English translation of the Theses, with a brief account of the life of Erastus (based on Melchior Adam's account), was issued in 1659, entitled The Nullity of Church Censures; it was reprinted as A Treatise of Excommunication (1682) and was revised by Robert Lee, D.D., in 1844.[8]
Erastianism
In his Theses, he argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold sacraments as a form of punishment. This view is now known as Erastianism.
In his Theses, Erastus explained that sins of professing Christians are to be punished by civil authority, and not by the withholding of sacraments on the part of the clergy. Those holding this view in the Westminster Assembly included John Selden, John Lightfoot, Thomas Coleman and Bulstrode Whitelocke, whose speech in 1645 is appended to Lee's version of the Theses. However, after much controversy, the opposite view was carried, with Lightfoot alone dissenting. The consequent chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith (Of Church Censures) was not ratified by the English parliament.[8][9]
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "The Theses and Confirmatio thesium appeared together in 1589. The central question about which the "Theses" turned was that of excommunication. The term is not, however, used by Erastus in the Catholic sense as excluding the delinquent from the society or membership of the Church. The excommunication to which [it] alludes was the exclusion of those of bad life from participation in the sacraments."[10]
Notes
^Charles Gunnoe, Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate: A Renaissance Physician in the Second Reformation, Brill, 2010 p. 41.
^With the title Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis utrum excommunicatio, quatenus religionem intelligentes et amplexantes, a sacramentorum usu, propter admissum facinus arcet, mandato nitatur divino, an excogitata sit ab hominibus. The work bears the imprint Pesclavii (i.e. Poschiavo in the Grisons) but was printed by John Wolfe in London, where Castelvetri was staying; the name of the alleged printer is an anagram of "Jacobum Castelvetrum." In the Stationers' Register (June 20, 1589) the printing is said to have been allowed by Archbishop Whitgift.
G. V. Lechler and R. Stähelin, in Albert Hauck's Realencyklop. für prot. Theol. u. Kirche (1898)
Ruth Wesel-Roth, Thomas Erastus: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der reformierten Kirche und zur Lehre von der Staatssouveränität [Veröffentlichungen des Vereins für Kirchengeschichte in der evang. Landeskirche Badens 15]. Lahr/Baden: Moritz Schauenberg, 1954.
