RIVIÈRE, JEAN. - Theologian, born at Montcabrier (near Albi) in 1878, died there on 3 May 1946.
Having graduated from the Institut catholique of Toulouse, after a brief period of teaching at the Seminary of Albi he was for 27 years professor in the Theological Faculty of Strasbourg. He examined with severe criticism what had been written concerning the dogma of the Redemption, providing precisions and clarifications, rejecting tendentious interpretations (especially against Turmci), and attempting partly new, though not definitive, syntheses: Le dogme de la Rédemption devant l'histoire (Paris 1926); Le dogme de la Rédemption chez St Augustin (ibid. 1930); Le dogme de la Rédemption après St Augustin (ibid. 1930); Le dogme de la Rédemption au début du moyen âge (ibid. 1933); Le dogme de la Rédemption. Etude théologique (3rd ed., ibid. 1931); Le dogme de la Rédemption. Etudes critiques et documents (Louvain 1931); Le dogme de la Rédemption dans la théologie contemporaine (posthumous, edited by F. Cavallera and E. Lombard, Albi 1948), in which certain observations and positions are subject to reservation. Important for the history of contemporary thought is the monograph: Le modernisme dans l'Eglise (Paris 1929). Besides the volume Le problème de l'Eglise et de l'Etat au temps de Philippe le Bel (Paris 1926) and other notable essays, he contributed to the DThC and to various journals of religious culture.