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Thomas Erastus (original surname Lüber, Lieber, or Liebler; 7 September 152431 December 1583) was a Swiss people physician 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.
In theology he followed Huldrych Zwingli, and at the Sacramentarians conferences of Heidelberg (1560) and Maulbronn (1564) he advocated by voice and pen the Zwinglian Marburg Colloquy, replying in 1565 to the counter-arguments of the Lutheran Johann Marbach, of Strasbourg. He ineffectually resisted the efforts of the , led by Caspar Olevian, to introduce the Presbyterian polity and discipline, which were established at Heidelberg in 1570, on the Geneva model.
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.
The Treatise of Erastus (1589) was published by Giacomo Castelvetro, who had married Erastus's widow.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 John Whitgift. 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.
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."Ward, B. "Erastus and Erastianism". The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909.
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