Thomas Erastus

Thomas Erastus
Born (1524-09-07)September 7, 1524
Baden (in present-day Aargau)
Died December 31, 1583(1583-12-31) (aged 59)
Basel
Nationality Swiss
Fields Medicine, theology
Alma mater University of Basel and University of Bologna
Doctoral advisor Luca Ghini (?)
Known for Opposition to Paracelsus; Views of Church and State

Thomas Erastus (September 7, 1524 – December 31, 1583) was a Swiss physician and theologian best known for a posthumously published work in which he argued that the sins of Christians should be punished by the state, not by the church withholding the sacraments.

Introduction

Erastus may have been born to poor parents, most likely in Baden (later part of the Canton of Aargau), Switzerland. He may have changed his original surname "Luber" to "Erastus" in humanist style.

In about 1540, he began to study the arts and theology at Basel. After surviving the plague in about 1544, he may have moved to Bologna, to study philosophy and medicine. In about 1553, he became a physician to the count of Henneberg, Saxe-Meiningen. In around 1558, he took the same post with Otto Henry, Elector Palatine. He may have held this post concurrently with a separate position, maybe a professor of medicine, at Heidelberg. His patron's successor, Frederick III, may have had him made him privy councillor and member of the church consistory in 1559.

In theology, Erastus may well have followed Zwingli at the sacramentarian conferences of Heidelberg in 1560 and Maulbronn in 1564. He mostly advocated the Zwinglian doctrine of the Lord's Supper. In about 1565, he replied to the counter-arguments from the Lutheran Johann Marbach, of Strasbourg. He resisted the efforts of the Calvinists, who were led by Caspar Olevianus, to try and introduce the Presbyterian polity and discipline which might have been established at Heidelberg in circa 1570, based on the Genevan model.

One of the first acts of this new church system was to excommunicate Erastus on a charge of Socinianism, founded on his correspondence with Transylvania. The ban may have not been removed until 1576, with Erastus attempting to declare his firm adherence to the doctrine of the Trinity. He was most likely uncomfortable with this position, however, and in 1580 he may have returned to Basel, where he became professor of ethics.

Works and Erastianism

The name of Erastus is known in connection with "Erastianism", used to describe doctrines justifying state control of religion, a position Erastus did not hold.

He published several pieces bearing on medicine, astrology, alchemy, and attacking the system of Paracelsus. In so doing, he defended medieval tradition in general, and Galen in particular, while conceding some merit to specific points in Paracelsus.[1] 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.

The Treatise of Erastus (1589) was published by Giacomo Castelvetro, who had married his widow.[2] It consists of seventy-five Theses, followed by a Confirmatio in six books, and an appendix of letters to Erastus by Heinrich Bullinger and Rudolf Gwalther, showing that his Theses, written in 1568, had been circulated in manuscript. An English translation of the Theses, with brief 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, as revised by Robert Lee, D.D., in 1844.

In his Theses, he 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. A party 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, however, not ratified by the English parliament.

What is known as Erastianism would be better connected with the name of Hugo Grotius. The only direct reply made to the Explicatio was the Tractatus pius et moderatus de vera excommunicatione et christiano presbyterio (1590) by Theodore Beza, who found himself rather savagely attacked in the Confirmatio thesium; e.g. "Apostolum et Mosen adeoque Deum ipsum audes corrigere."

Notes

  1. ↑ Allen G. Debus, The English Paracelsians (1965), pp. 37–39.
  2. ↑ 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.

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