Background
He was born at Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, Ardèche, in the Cévennes.
He was born at Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, Ardèche, in the Cévennes.
He was educated at the Protestant theological faculty of Montauban as well as at the universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg.
After holding the pastorate at Aubenas in the Ardeche from 1864 to 1868 he was appointed professor of reformed dogmatics in the theological faculty of Strassburg. 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, and became professor and then dean. In 1886 he became a teacher in the newly founded religious science department of the ficole des Hautes Etudes of the Sorbonne. Among his chief works were The Apostle Paul (3rd ed. , 1896); Memoire sur la notion hibraique de VEsprit (1879); Les Origines lilUraires de VApocalypse (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); and his posthumous Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit (1904), to which his colleague Jean Reville prefixed a short memoir. These works show Sabatier as "at once an accomplished dialectician and a mystic in the best sense of the word. "
He was a noted theological historian.
