Louis Auguste Sabatier

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Louis Auguste Sabatier (October 22, 1839 - April 12, 1901), French Protestant theologian, was born at Vallon (Ardèche), in the Cévennes, and was educated at the Protestant theological faculty of Montauban and the universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg.

After holding the pastorate at Aubenas in the Ardèche from 1864 to 1868 he was appointed professor of reformed dogmatics in the theological faculty of Strasbourg. His markedly French sympathies during the war of 1870 led to his expulsion from Strassburg in 1872. After five years' effort he succeeded in establishing a Protestant theological faculty in Paris, L'Ecole de Paris (today: Institut de théologie protestante de Paris) with Etienne Mennegoz and became professor and then dean. In 1886 he became a teacher in the newly founded religious science department of the École des Hautes Etudes of the Sorbonne.

Among his chief works were:

  • The Apostle Paul (3rd ed., 1896)
  • Mémoire sur la notion hébraique de l'Esprit (1879)
  • Les Origines littéraires de l'Apocalypse (1888)
  • The Vitality of Christian Dogmas and their Power of Evolution (1890)
  • Religion and Modern Culture (1897)
  • Historical Evolution of the Doctrine of the Atonement (1903)
  • Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion (1897)
  • Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit (1904, posthumous), to which his colleague Jean Revile prefixed a short memoir.

These works show Sabatier as "at once an accomplished dialectician and a mystic in the best sense of the word."

His brother Paul was a noted theological historian.

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On his theology see