Auguste Sabatier (theologian)

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Louis Auguste Sabatier

Louis Auguste Sabatier (born October 22, 1839 in Vallon-Pont-d'Arc ( Département Ardèche ), † April 12, 1901 in Strasbourg ) was a French religious scholar , French Reformed theologian , author and professor for Reformed dogmatics and New Testament text research .

Live and act

Sabatier's parents, the merchant Pierre Auguste Sabatier (1811–1863) and Marie nee Lichière (1813–1885), were influenced by the Réveil . After training at the private school of Jacques Étienne Olivier in Ganges ( Hérault ), Sabatier studied from November 1858 at the Protestant theological faculty of Montauban (Académie de Montauban et de Puylaurens) and, from 1863 to 1864, at the universities in Tübingen and Heidelberg . Here he heard u. a. also Richard Rothe .

After he had been pastor in Aubenas in the Ardèche department from 1864 , he was appointed professor of reformed dogmatics at the Protestant theological faculty at the University of Strasbourg in 1868. In 1870 he received his doctorate with his thesis on Paulus L'apôtre Paul, une histoire de sa pensée . His French sympathies during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 led to his expulsion from Strasbourg in 1872.

After five years of effort, he succeeded, together with Eugène Ménégoz , in Paris to found a Protestant theological faculty (today's Faculté de théologie protestante de Paris , which was then affiliated to the Sorbonne). He was a professor there and from 1895 also dean . Together with Ménégoz, Sabatier is considered a pioneer of the “ symbolic ideism ” of the “Paris School”. In 1886 he was also director of studies at the newly founded department for religious studies of the École pratique des hautes études .

On August 7, 1866, in Nyon , he married Marie Élisa, born in Switzerland, Versel (1840–1869). The connection resulted in a son Louis Jules Auguste Sabatier, who died shortly after birth in 1868. After the death of his first wife, he married on September 21, 1875 in Rouen Frankline, born Grout (1842-1882). They had three children, a son Jean Émile Sabatier (1878–1914) and two daughters, Anne Marguerite Sabatier (1880–1979), later Marguerite Chevalley, a translator (and mother of the mathematician Claude Chevalley ), and Lucie Sabatier (1882–1979) ), later Lucie Chevalley .

Sabatier was in a sense a student of Alexandre Vinet . He was also committed to the considerations of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl and brought them to the theological discussion in France. He applied the methods of the historical-critical method to the New Testament and exercised a profound influence not only on French Protestantism through his interpretation of Christian dogma as symbolism ( Symbolisme critique ) of religious feelings. One of his students is Nathan Söderblom , who submitted his dissertation on Mazdaism in Paris in 1901 . Sabatier also worked, partly anonymously , in various newspapers, for example from 1875 on the " Journal de Genève ", from 1882 on the " Le Temps ", as well as the " Revue Chrétrienne ".

A selection of his articles , which he published in the Journal de Genève from 1873 until his death , was later collected under the title Lettres du dimanche (Paris, 1900).

Sabatier was a Chevalier and since 1897 an officer of the Legion of Honor .

In 1897, Sabatier took part in the first international religious studies congress ( Conference faite au congres des sciences religieuses de Stockholm ) , which began on September 2, in Stockholm and gave his lecture (German) "Religion and modern culture". The lecture or essay by Sabatier was initially published in French and German.

Anti-dogmatic theology

Sabatier differentiated between the moral essence of Christianity, which is expressed in conscience, and Christian expression in dogmas, which are subject to historical changes and are not congruent with the inner feelings of man. This shows parallels to Adolf von Harnack's way of thinking , and both came to similar conclusions. Although Sabatier recognized the achievements of Harnacks and acknowledged that he had done pioneering work, he also found critical objections. This is how Sabatier's concept differed from Harnack's. While for von Harnack the dogmas of the church had only historical value, Sabatier went a step further by seeing in the intellectual element of dogma only the symbolic expression of religious experience. As a follower of liberal theology , Sabatier endeavored to connect the rifts between Reformed Orthodoxy ( Calvinism ) and theological liberalism, on the one hand he tied in with Schleiermacher and his student Alexander Schweizer and Neo-Kantianism , in particular in the remarks by Richard Adelbert Lipsius , on. Because a metaphysics of the transcendent is impossible, our religious concepts are necessarily inadequate in terms of their object and thus mere symbols.

Fonts (selection)

  • Mémoire sur la notion herbal de l'Esprit. (1879)
  • Essai sur les sources de la vie de Jésus, Les Trois premiers Évangiles et le quatrième. (1866), [9]
  • L'Apôtre Paul (1870) (3rd ed. 1896) [10] (in English [11] on archive.org)
  • Études sur la révocation de l'édit de Nantes. with Frank Puaux , Grassart, Paris 1886
  • Les Origines littéraires de l'Apocalypse. (1888)
  • De la vie intime des dogmes et de leur puissance d'évolution. (1890)
  • L'Évangile de Pierre et les évangile canoniques. (1893) [12]
  • Religion et culture modern. (1897)
  • Evolution historique de la doctrine du salut. (1903)
  • Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion d'après la psychologie et l'histoire. (1897) ( [13] on gallica.bnf.fr)
  • Les Religions d'autorité et religion de l'esprit. (1904, posthumously) (in English [14] on archive.org)
  • Lettres du dimanche (1900) published weekly in the Journal de Genève .
  • L'Essai d'une théorie critique de la connaissance religieuse. (1893).
    • Theological Epistemology. translated by August Baur, Mohr, Tübingen 1896.
  • La doctrine de l'expiation et son évolution historique. Librairie Fischbacher, Paris 1903

literature

  • François Laplanche : Louis Auguste Sabatier In: André Encrevé (Ed.): Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine. 5 Les Protestants. Beauchesne, Paris 1993, ISBN 2701012619 , pp. 435-438.
  • Philippe Cardon-Bertalot: Auguste Sabatier, théorien du Saint-Esprit. In: Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses 2001, pp. 81–83 pp. 301–319 ( [15] on persee.fr)
  • Bernard Reymond: Auguste Sabatier. Un théologies à l'air libre, 1839-1901. Labor et Fides, Genève 2011.
  • Otto Erich Strasser-Bertrand , Otto Jan de Jong : The Protestant Church in France. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975, ISBN 978-3-52552-355-1 , p. 180 f. ( [16] on books.google.de)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica / Sabatier, Louis Auguste [1]
  2. ↑ Retailer
  3. ↑ Relevés Ardéchois. Naissances de la ville de Vallon LICHIERE, Marie 07-08-1813 [2]
  4. ^ L'institution Olivier de Ganges
  5. ^ The symbolic ideism in the Virtual Museum of Protestantism .
  6. ↑ Dietz Lange : Nathan Söderblom and his time. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-57012-8 , pp. 115–127.
  7. ^ Ernst Troeltsch : Reviews and Critiques (1894-1900). Vol. 2 Critical Complete Edition, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11019-304-6 , p. 713 ( [3] on books.google.de)
  8. ^ Document on promotion to the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (Ch. LH) [4]
  9. ^ Document on promotion to the Officier de la Légion d'Honneur (O. LH) [5]
  10. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Graf : The return of the gods: Religion in modern culture. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-40654-808-6 , p. 307, footnote 26
  11. ^ Max Scheibe : Philosophy of Religion and Principal Theology. Theological Annual Report, Volume 19 (1899), CA Schwetschke and Son, Berlin 1900, p. 562 [6]
  12. ^ Richard Kohler : Piaget and the pedagogy: a historiographical analysis. Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2009, ISBN 978-3-781-51-679-3 , p. 27
  13. ^ Adolf von Harnack , Kurt Nowak (ed.): Adolf von Harnack as a contemporary: Speeches and writings from the years of the Empire and the Weimar Republic. Part 1: The Theologian and Historian. Part 2: The science organizer and scholarly politician. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11080-855-1 , p. 26
  14. ^ Karl Barth : Lectures and smaller works 1930–1933. Theological Verlag, Zurich 1990, ISBN 978-3-290-17708-9 , p. 33 ( [7] on books.google.de)
  15. ^ Michael Buchberger : Lexicon for theology and church . Vol. III, Herder Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1931, pp. 1032-1033
  16. ↑ Evangelical Dean of Münsingen (Württemberg) ( [8] on books.google.de)
personal data
SURNAME Sabatier, Auguste
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sabatier, Louis Auguste (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French religious scholar and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Vallon-Pont-d'Arc
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1901
Place of death Strasbourg