ERASTO, THOMAS. — German-Swiss theologian and physician who Hellenized his original name, Lieber, into Erastus, “the most beloved”; born at Baden-Dourlach (Switzerland) in 1524, died at Basel in 1585. Having completed his studies at Basel and Bologna, he was appointed in 1557 by the Elector Palatine Ottone Enrico professor of medicine at the University of Heidelberg. When the Elector died in 1559, his successor proscribed Catholicism and Lutheranism from his States. The triumphant Calvinists immediately sought to impose their doctrines and the Calvinist regime. One of them, Giorgio Wither, an exiled Englishman, published several theses on excommunication, asserting that it was «de iure divino» and independent of civil authority. E., who professed Zwinglian doctrines, led the opposition and published the Explicatio gravissimae quaetionis, in which, in 75 theses, he refuted Wither’s doctrine. The Calvinists prevailed and E., excommunicated, left Heidelberg and withdrew to Basel, where he died.
E.’s doctrine may be summarized as follows: the Church has neither the right nor the power to impose censures or excommunications. God conferred upon it the power of the keys, which consists solely in preaching the word. The Church must be subject to the Christian State, from which it derives its authority. He therefore denies that civil authority is subject to the Church’s censure, and allows appeal from the ecclesiastical tribunal to the civil one, since the latter is the supreme tribunal in all matters of the State.
This gave rise to struggles and dissensions, from which there followed: a strong current of religious individualism among the English (Quakers); the hardening of all sects opposed to any ecclesiastical authority (Baptists and Congregationalists); an exaggerated conception of the supreme authority of the civil tribunals and Parliament, crystallized in the doctrine proclaimed by Hobbes (1588–1679; Leviathan, III, 42), namely, that it is not obligatory to be a Christian unless this is sanctioned by an act of Parliament or by another competent secular authority.
Erastianism, which corresponds almost to what is commonly called caesaropapism, has currently taken in England a course somewhat different from that of the first Erastians.
At first it arose and spread among nations that were almost entirely and officially Protestant, reserving coercive jurisdiction, even in ecclesiastical cases, exclusively to the civil magistrates, who were presumed all to be Christians and members of a single sect; this was intended to prevent two jurisdictions from existing within the same State. It taught, in fact, that the civil magistrate, as representative of state authority, was the only person authorized to punish offenses; and since excommunication involved a form of punishment, it could not be imposed without his sanction.
But now civil authority, especially in the case of the Parliament of England, is vested in men of various religions or of none, exercising power in a nation that tolerates all religions; and Parliament has the right to judge even in matters of faith, but only with regard to the Church of England. Religious questions, at least the most important ones, are judged by civil tribunals (Privy Council, House of Lords, House of Commons), in which the magistrates may be agnostics. Benham is therefore right when he says that
Erastianism means the doctrine of the supremacy of the State in ecclesiastical matters, and the incompetence of ecclesiastical authority to change its own laws without the consent of the State. Anglican bishops claim that their authority comes directly from God, since the king or queen of England can neither ordain new ministers nor consecrate bishops; but in fact Article 37 of Religion still exists and is in force in England, and ecclesiastical jurisdiction has passed from the king to the State (to Parliament), which exercises it in the election of bishops and still more through its «veto», as when certain changes in the Prayer Book were proposed.