ABAUZIT, FIRMIN. - Protestant theologian, born at Uzès in 1679, died in 1767 at Geneva, where he lived and worked for much of his life. Cultured and studious, he wrote on many subjects; but in the theological field he received the highest praise from the opponents of religion and is regarded as the precursor of present-day liberal criticism and modernism.
Indeed, according to A., religion containing incomprehensible mysteries is merely ignorance and scholastic pride; mystery, once revealed in its existence, ceases to be such and becomes accessible and comprehensible to human reason. The Trinity, or the Incarnation, once Sacred Scripture is properly understood, become wholly natural truths. Jesus Christ is a
man like others; having received a special mission from God, it may be said that he “incarnated” divine wisdom. Voltaire (in the Dictionnaire philosophique) plunders his theories; Rousseau in the Nouvelle Éloïse (p. V. let. 1) extols him to the skies and reports his ideas in the figure of the Vicaire Savoyard.
The Index of Forbidden Books condemned (29 Aug. 1774) the Réflexions impartiales sur les Évangiles, suivies d'un essai sur l'Apocalypse (published posthumously by J. B. de Mirabaud [v.]), precisely on account of its rationalist theories, which would have Christianity regarded as “a reasonable religion,” without mysteries and truly worthy of fraternizing with “philosophy” (Y. de la Brière, s. V. in DHG, I, col. 18).