Sabatier, Auguste

SABATIER, AUGUSTE. - Protestant theologian, b. 22 Oct. 1839 in Vallon (Alsace), d. 12 Apr. 1901 in Paris. He was professor of Protestant theology, first at Strasbourg, then at Paris.

Principal works: Essai d'une théologie critique de la connaissance religieuse (Lausanne 1893); Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion d'après la psychologie et l'histoire (Paris 1897); La religion et la culture moderne (ibid. 1897); La religion d'autorité et la religion de l'esprit (ibid. 1903); La doctrine de l'expiation (ibid. 1903).

Sabatier's theology has been designated by the term "symbolic fideism" or "critical symbolism" and is directly linked to the positions of Kant and of Schleiermacher (v.), inasmuch as it makes the act of religion spring from the affective and irrational sphere: therefore the only valid analysis of religion, of its object as of its value, is psychological reflection in the analysis of one's own states of consciousness, as Pascal did, to whom Sabatier expressly appeals. The fundamental observation, which everyone is soon obliged to make, is the intimate contradiction of consciousness, which on the one hand aspires to the good, the true, the beautiful... infinite, and yet sees itself hemmed in and hindered on every side from attaining them, because it is prey to sorrow, error, death and miseries of every kind; it is from this sense of unease that religion is born. Religion is therefore defined as the commerce, the conscious and willed relationship, into which the soul in distress (en détresse) enters with the mysterious power on which it feels it depends and on which its destiny depends (Esquisse, p. 24): hence the essential act of religion is "prayer," in which the soul carries out this commerce of its own with God. In this line of ideas "revelation" cannot be a communication of objective doctrine, but is the fact and the progress of the presence of God to the soul and of the soul to God, or rather the "creation and progressive clarity of the consciousness of God in the individual man and in humanity" (ibid., p. 35). The essential characteristics therefore of Revelation are that it is "interior, evident and progressive" and hence fundamentally individual, so that every divine Revelation and every religious experience is valid insofar as it can be repeated and relived in every soul in the "historical situation" in which it finds itself (ibid., p. 60). It is clear therefore that in this way miracle and biblical inspiration have no value as external facts, but solely within the sphere of interior and individual piety; dogma is reduced to the transcription, in objective terms, of interior experience, through which every Revelation must pass "before arriving at historical objectivity." Therefore the constant element in dogmas is precisely the affective emotion, while the intellectual element is essentially variable because of the differences in the means of expression proper to each epoch (ibid., pp. 268-308). With these principles Sabatier affirms the necessity of the unlimited evolution of dogmas, and this, given that in Protestantism no Church can be called infallible, obliges the believer to renew himself continually in his interior aspiration, to take refuge in the "religious instinct," which defends the spirit against the threats of nature. Hence the provisional and purely "symbolic" character of every dogmatic formula and of every theological elaboration: only in this way, according to Sabatier, does the river of divine truth flow through the centuries in human consciousness as ever-springing life (ibid., p. 389). Sabatier was the inspirer of the so-called "Ecole de Paris," which intended to interpret Christian dogma in the light of modern thought, and from his "critical symbolism" modernism (v.) drew the fundamental principles of religious immanence, broadening their sphere of application to the entire domain of the sacred sciences.

Cornelio Fabro