RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Sabaoth Sabatier
Apr., iii. 261. On 4: M. Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, ii. 799, Paris, 1740; Harduin, Concilia, ii. 138, 170, 370. On 5: ASB., Oct. 18.
SABATIER, sa-ba-ty6', CHARLES PAUL MARIE:
French Protestant; b. at St. Michael-de-Chabrillanoux, a village in the department of ArdSche, Aug. 3, 1858. He was educated at the lyceums of Besancon and Lille and in the theological department of the University of Paris, from which he was graduated in 1885. He was then vicar of the Protestant Church of St. Nicholas at Strasburg, but was expelled from Germany because he declined to accept a position which would oblige him to become a German citizen. He then returned to France and was for five years (1889-94) pastor at St. Cierge-la- Serre, Ardeche, when he was obliged by ill-health to retire from the ministry. After that time he devoted himself entirely to historical and theological studies. In 1902 he founded at Assisi, Italy, the Socidte' internationale des Etudes franciscaines. In 1898 he was created an honorary citizen of Assisi in recognition of his studies of the life of St. Francis of Assisi (an honor previously conferred only on Garibaldi) and in the following year was elected a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, Rome. He has edited La Didache des douze apotres (Paris, 1885); Speculum perfectionis, seu Sancti Francisci Assisiensis legenda antiquissima, auctore fratre Leone (1898); Fratris Francisci Bartholdi de Assisio tractatus de Indulgenlia Sanctce Maria de Portiuncula (1900); Actus Sancti Francisci et seniorum ejus (1902); Floretum Sancti Francisci Assisiensis, liber aureus qui Italice dicitur, I. Fioretti di San Francesco, and the periodical Opuscules de critique historique, which he founded in 1904. He discovered in May, 1901, at Capestrane in the Abruzzi the long-lost manuscript of the Franciscan Regula antiqua tertii ordinis, which he edited at Paris in 1901. As independent works he has written Vie de St. Frangois d'Assise (Paris, 1893; Eng. transl. by L. S. Houghton, New York, 1894; this work has been translated into the principal European languages); A propos de la separation des eglises et de I'etat (1905; Eng. transl., Disestablishment in France, by Robert Dell, London, 1906); Lettre ouverte a . . le cardinal Gibbons . sur la separation des eglises et de I'etat en France (1907) ; Modernism (London, 1908; Jowett Lectures); and Les Modernistes, Notes d'histoire religieuse contemporaine (Paris, 1909).
SABATIER, LOUIS AUGUST: French Protestant; b. at Vallon (95 m. n.w. of Marseilles) Oct. 22, 1839; d. at Paris Apr. 12, 1901. He was educated at the college of Montpellier and at Montauban, and also studied for a time at Basel, Tubingen, and Heidelberg. After being an agent of the SociEte centrale protestante d' Evangelisation at Aubenas, he was appointed, in 1870, professor of Reformed dogmatics at the University of Strasburg. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, however, he helped to organize a Protestant ambulance service which accompanied the Army of the Loire; and declining a professorship proffered him at Strasburg by the German government, and otherwise manifesting his hostility to the new r6gime, he was ordered to leave
the city. He went to Paris, where he became secretary of the Ecole libre des sciences religieuses, seeking meanwhile to replace Strasburg by a theological faculty to be affiliated with the Sorbonne. Declining a call to Lausanne, he supported himself chiefly by journalism; but in 1877 he saw his hopes fulfilled when the theological faculty of Strasburg was transferred to Paris and he again assumed the chair of Reformed dogmatics. Later he became associate director of the section for the history of religion at the ficole des hautes etudes, and in 1895 was made dean of the theological faculty.
The initial point of view of Sabatier was that of entire orthodoxy; but the lifelong problem which he set himself, the reconciliation of faith with science, led him further and further away from orthodox tenets. As early at 1880 he adopted the methods of historical criticism, and his conclusions were such as to lead him to abandon the teaching of the Church not only concerning the person and the work of Christ, but also with regard to the remaining positions of orthodox dogma. To Sabatier religion owed its origin to the desire of man to reconcile the antinomy between his empirical and his ideal ego, and thus became the spiritual aspect of the instinct of self-preservation. In the religious evolution of the race revelation has passed through three stages: mythological (paganism), dogmatic (Roman Catholic and Protestant), and critical or psychological, the latter alone at once satisfying the requirements of piety and criticism. Such revelation is essentially spiritual and progressive, though always subject to the limits of human subjectivity. Religious sources and standards thus need constant revision on the basis of personal experience.
The culmination of religious development, according to Sabatier, is Christianity, the cardinal principle of which is to be a child of God, historically assured to man in the person of Jesus, in whom was first realized the divine revelation which has since been repeated as the experience of the pious Christian. This principle can not be overthrown by scientific criticism, since it is raised above the means and methods of historical criticism in virtue of being personal experience. Yet theology can not dispense with criticism, the function of which is to strip temporary and chance elements from the absolute principle, and thus to render possible an ever purer realization of Christian piety. This process of continual revision is the task of dogmatics, its subject matter being primarily the creeds, which, in the evolution of religion, become obsolete, lose their practical meanings, and become mere formulas. The function of Protestant dogmatics accordingly lies in the choice of such creeds as shall correspond to the requirements of the soul and shall harmonize with the religious consciousness.
Sabatier's works, received in Germany with comparative coolness, were enthusiastically welcomed in France; a section of French Roman Catholicism received a new impulse; and his books appealed to the general Protestant public, and even to circles which had broken with all religion. He was essentially a representative of the modern type of theo-
Sabatier Sabbath