“Erastianism” Then and Now [Commentary on Browne: Article XXXIII]

The nature of excommunication is one of those topics about which there seems to be little room for dispute in the Anglican tradition. The Article states that those worthy of excommunication are to be cut off by “the Church” and, upon repentance, received into the Church by “a Judge,” both of which phrases are widely held to refer to the bishop or his delegate:

As for the judge or officer who had power to restore to communion and give absolution, it was ordinarily the bishop. He, for just reasons, might moderate and abridge the term of penance; and, as all discipline was considered to be lodged in his hands, he was esteemed both as the excommunicator, and also as the absolver of the penitent. Yet, in many cases, the power of absolution was committed to presbyters; who, by authority of the bishop, or in his absence, and on great necessity, such as danger of death, might reconcile the sinner to communion, and give him the absolution of the Church. Nay! as in cases of extreme necessity even deacons were allowed to give men the absolution of baptism, so, under the like circumstances, they were authorized to grant penitents the conciliatory absolution.^[1]

This understanding of the Article is corroborated by the Prayer Book, in that “the rubric before the Communion gives to the curate the power of repelling evil livers from the Eucharist, provided that he shall at once acquaint the bishop.”^[2] Outside of the Anglican tradition, the Augsburg Confession also affirms that the power of excommunication resides with the bishop:

According to the Gospel or, as they say, by divine right, there belongs to the bishops as bishops, that is, to those to whom has been committed the ministry of the Word and the Sacraments, no jurisdiction except to forgive sins, to judge doctrine, to reject doctrines contrary to the Gospel, and to exclude from the communion of the Church wicked men, whose wickedness is known, and this without human force, simply by the Word.^[3]

Yet this general agreement apparently did not often translate into actual excommunications even in Browne’s time, for he says that “the Church of England is clear enough in its principles, though restrained in its practice,” an assessment shared by several other commentators.^[4] Moreover, he observes that for the Church of England, the practice of church discipline is uniquely enervated for a particular reason: “The peculiar nature of the connection between the Church and State in England, and the prevalence of what are called Erastian opinions, have been the great causes why ecclesiastical censures have lost their power, and become a dead letter amongst us.”^[5] Browne’s reference to “Erastian opinions” requires careful scrutiny, as the term “Erastian” has taken on multiple meanings over time. Fortunately, these have been carefully distinguished in a source worth quoting at length:

[Thomas] Erastus largely owes his enduring fame in the English-speaking world to the terms “Erastian” and “Erastianism.” Although dictionaries often attempt to define the terms with reference to Erastus, it has been frequently observed that their popular usage has little connection to Erastus himself. While the Oxford English Dictionary recognizes two senses of the adjective “Erastian,” I have discerned three uses of the term which naturally possess some overlap in meaning. The most common sense of “Erastianism” connotes a general “ascendancy of the state over church in ecclesiastical matters,” whose most common reference point is the Anglican Church in the era of Henry VIII. A second usage of the term connects directly to Erastus’s program and emphasizes the notion that ecclesiastical authorities have no independent disciplinary role in a Christian commonwealth. This connotation of “Erastian Erastianism” should be regarded as the most authentic use of the term, and while its usage was fairly common from the seventeenth into the nineteenth centuries, it might be considered somewhat archaic at present. The third usage of “Erastian” asserts the absolute right of the state to determine religious policy, regardless of the theological orthodoxy of the magistrate. This “Hobbesian” or “Statist Erastianism” goes well beyond Erastus’s own thought.^[6]

The sense of “Erastianism” that is “the most authentic use of the term” is the second one given above, wherein it “is a controversy, not between those who hold lower, and those who maintain higher notions of ecclesiastical power in relation to the State or civil authority, but rather between those who entertain different views regarding the terms of admission to the sacraments.”^[7] In this sense, the Anglican formularies are not Erastian, as they uphold episcopal prerogative over excommunication.^[8] That said, whether the magistrate should enforce the church’s excommunications via civil penalties is a separate question, and this is where the meaning of Browne’s allusion to “Erastian opinions” becomes clear: to the extent that the magistrate is thought to have the duty of enforcing the church’s excommunications—a viewpoint that would approximate to Erastianism in the first sense, but not the second—excommunication without civil penalties is unlikely to be taken seriously. Historically, in England “the civil courts formerly enforced penalties on the excommunicated,”^[9] but now,

The Anglican position recognises the Church as having no power over persons and property, and if the Church is independent of the State discipline would seem to be impracticable so far as these questions are concerned. The Church can frame any laws she likes, but the enforcement without the civil power will naturally be difficult. All that a Church can do is to exclude from ecclesiastical privileges and social intercourse.^[10]

If church discipline is overly lax in our time, this is arguably preferable to the alternative state of affairs that once prevailed:

When the religion of the gospel was sanctioned and supported by the civil magistrate, church discipline was too often converted into an engine of oppression, and this was in after ages carried to such a pitch, that excommunication in the hands of the Popes became an intolerable scourge. This perversion brought ecclesiastical censures into discredit, and since the Reformation, they have been among Protestants little more than a name.^[11]

With such abuses in view, the Augsburg Confession (as seen above) teaches that excommunication is to be “without human force,” and a number of commentators on the Articles concur that the Anglican church does well to align itself with the practice of the early church, in which excommunication “did not deprive a person of any of his natural or civil rights.”^[12]

Still, even in an environment where excommunication is rare and without civil force, the Article is useful as “a guide for our conduct towards those, whose wickedness makes them worthy to be avoided.”^[13] Browne writes that professing Christians who deserve excommunication are those “who are either impure in their lives, or heretical in their belief.” The category of “impure” encapsulates not simply Christians who sin, for so do we all, but rather those who are guilty of “contempt of every moral and religious obligation, and the open indulgence of notorious vices.”^[14] By the same token, “heresy” is not merely error of any kind: “Christians cleaving unto the foundation, which is Christ, are not by excommunication to be thrust out of the church, for any other errors or misdemeanors whatsoever. Of which opinions be sundry divines of good regard.”^[15] The scope for disagreement over secondary and tertiary matters is too great for Christians to be excommunicating each other wantonly, whether de jure or de facto. A certain degree of forbearance is thus called for, even as the true foundation of Christian belief and practice is zealously guarded.

NOtes

1. See also Burnet, Articles, 484; Welchman, Articles, 76; Beaven, Articles, 99–101; Cloquet, Articles, 496; Kidd, Articles, 250; and Middleton, Articles, 223. ↑
2. Bray and Keane, 1662 Book of Common Prayer, 242. See also Maclear and Williams, Articles, 380. In the American Prayer Book, this rubric is placed near the end of the Service for Holy Communion. See Protestant Episcopal Church, Book of Common Prayer [1928], 85. ↑
3. McCain et al., Concordia, The Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/of-ecclesiastical-power/. ↑
4. See Waite, Articles, 479; Tomline, Christian Theology, 451; Macbeth, Articles, 180; Gibson, Articles, 715; Kidd, Articles, 250; and Bicknell, Articles, 399. ↑
5. Compare Waite, Articles, 480; Forbes, Articles, 660; Cloquet, Articles, 497; Bicknell, Articles, 399–400; and Thomas, Articles, 438. ↑
6. Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr., Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate: A Renaissance Physician in the Second Reformation (Boston: Brill, 2011), 135–36. ↑
7. Thomas Erastus, The Theses of Erastus Touching Excommunication, trans. Robert Lee (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1844), xxxii. See also Erastus, xxix–xxxi, xxxix–xl; John Neville Figgis, “Erastus and Erastianism,” Journal of Theological Studies 2, no. 5 (October 1900): 66–67, 83; Weldon S. Crowley, “Erastianism in England to 1640,” Journal of Church and State 32, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 558; Gunnoe, Jr., Erastus, 188; and Karie Schultz, Protestantism, Revolution and Scottish Political Thought: The European Context, 1637–1651 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024), 106–107. ↑
8. The general consensus among Anglicans that bishops hold the power to excommunicate and restore has not, however, prevented some from commenting on the noticeable ambiguity of the Article on this point. See, e.g., Thomas, Articles, 435. ↑
9. Boultbee, Articles, 277. ↑
10. Thomas, Articles, 437–38. ↑
11. Waite, Articles, 476. See also Waite, Articles, 477; Tomline, Christian Theology, 450–51; Boultbee, Articles, 277; Baker, Articles, 184–85; Kidd, Articles, 250; Middleton, Articles, 220; and Green, Articles, 275. ↑
12. Tomline, Christian Theology, 450–51. See also Waite, Articles, 477; and Bicknell, Articles, 398–99. ↑
13. Waite, Articles, 476. ↑
14. Waite, Articles, 485. See also Burnet, Articles, 481. ↑
15. Rogers, Articles, 309. ↑