Definition
A historical theological and political faction holding that the civil government holds supreme authority over the church, particularly in matters of discipline and punishment. Erastians opposed the power of ecclesiastical courts to punish offenses against religion and morality through church censure or excommunication, arguing that such authority belongs exclusively to the civil magistrate. The term derives from Thomas Erastus (1524–1583), a Swiss theologian whose writings advanced this subordination of church to state in disciplinary matters. In English legal history, Erastianism was not merely a theological position but a practical stance on the boundary between civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction — a question of direct constitutional importance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of Erastian; one who holds Erastian views.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who holds the doctrine of Erastus that the church is subordinate to the state, and that civil government has supreme authority in ecclesiastical affairs.
The gap here is one of context rather than definition: in ordinary usage, Erastian simply describes someone with a particular theological view. In legal usage, Erastians refers specifically to the faction that shaped debate over ecclesiastical court jurisdiction in seventeenth-century English law, where the question of who could punish moral and religious offenses had concrete jurisdictional consequences — not merely doctrinal ones.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this term in historical sources are almost certainly working in seventeenth-century English legal or ecclesiastical history. The practical significance of Erastianism lay in the long-running conflict between common law courts and church courts over jurisdiction. Common lawyers of the Selden era — John Selden himself being a prominent Erastian sympathizer — used Erastian arguments as intellectual cover for expanding the reach of the common law prohibition (via writs of prohibition) against ecclesiastical court overreach.
Several research traps apply. First, the term appears in legal dictionaries but it is not a term of art in the sense of having a precise legal definition with elements or tests. It is instead a period label for a political-ecclesiastical position. Second, because all three historical dictionary entries reproduce identical language (attributed to Wharton), researchers should treat the entry as reflecting the late nineteenth-century American understanding of an English historical concept, not as independent authority. Third, the term will not appear in modern judicial opinions or statutes. Its corpus value is contextual: it illuminates the ideological stakes in cases and treatises touching ecclesiastical courts, church discipline, excommunication, and the writ of prohibition.
Connections to watch: Erastian arguments resurfaced in American contexts wherever courts addressed the boundary between civil authority and church discipline — particularly in disputes over church property and membership expulsion. The underlying question (whether civil courts may review ecclesiastical decisions) remains live in some jurisdictions, though the term Erastian itself has dropped from legal usage.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence reproduce identical text, each citing Wharton's Law Lexicon as the source. This uniformity signals that no independent legal analysis of the term was attempted — compilers treated it as a historical reference entry rather than an operative legal concept. The entry usefully situates the sect's influence among common lawyers during Selden's era, which is historically accurate: Selden's Table Talk and his treatise on the history of tithes reflect strong Erastian sympathies, and common lawyers of the period had practical reasons to prefer civil-court jurisdiction over ecclesiastical alternatives.
What the historical dictionaries omit is significant: they do not explain the writ of prohibition as the procedural mechanism through which Erastian principles were actually implemented, they do not distinguish between hard Erastianism (the state controls all church affairs) and the softer version common among English lawyers (the state controls discipline only), and they provide no guidance for distinguishing Erastian arguments from the broader tradition of parliamentary supremacy over the Church of England established after the Reformation.
Jurisdictional Note
Erastianism as a legal-historical concept is substantially an English phenomenon, rooted in post-Reformation conflicts between common law and ecclesiastical courts. American legal development, lacking an established church, rendered the precise jurisdictional contest largely moot, though analogous debates over civil-court review of church discipline decisions have produced a distinct body of American case law under the First Amendment.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Church and State; Ecclesiastical Courts; Writ of Prohibition (Ecclesiastical)