The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#2851
Bernardino Ochino
1487 - 1564 (77 years)
Bernardino Ochino was an Italian, who was raised a Roman Catholic and later turned to Protestantism and became a Protestant reformer. Biography Bernardino Ochino was born in Siena, the son of the barber Domenico Ochino, and at the age of 7 or 8, in around 1504, was entrusted to the order of Franciscan Friars. From 1510 he studied medicine at Perugia.
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Erich Sauer
1898 - 1959 (61 years)
Erich Sauer was a German dispensationalist Christian theologian associated with the Plymouth Brethren. His various books have sold around one million copies. Early life Sauer was born in Berlin in 1898, his mother was already a Christian and he attended Open Brethren congregations.
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Emil Fuchs
1874 - 1971 (97 years)
Emil Fuchs was a German theologian, the son of Georg Friedrich Fuchs and Auguste Louise Wilhelmine Lonni Hauss. A religious socialist, Fuchs was one of the first Lutheran pastors to join the Social Democratic Party of Germany. As a devoted pacifist, he later joined the Religious Society of Friends . He was a Fellowship holder at Woodbrooke College , Selly Oak, Birmingham from 1934 to 1935.
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Friedrich Bleek
1793 - 1859 (66 years)
Friedrich Bleek , was a German Biblical scholar. Life At 16 Bleek's father sent him to the gymnasium at Lübeck, where he became so interested in ancient languages that he abandoned his idea of a legal career and resolved to devote himself to the study of theology. After spending some time at the university of Kiel, he went to Berlin, where, from 1814 to 1817, he studied under De Wette, Neander and Schleiermacher. So highly were his merits appreciated by his professors — Schleiermacher was accustomed to say that he possessed a special charisma for the science of Introduction — that in 1818 afte...
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Johann Christoph Döderlein
1746 - 1792 (46 years)
Johann Christoph Döderlein or Doederlein was a German Protestant theologian. As professor of theology at Jena from 1782, he was celebrated for his varied learning, for his eloquence as a preacher, and for the important influence he exerted in guiding the transition movement from strict orthodoxy to a freer theology. His most important work Institutio theologi christiani nostris temporibus accommodata was published in 1780.
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Hans Meiser
1881 - 1956 (75 years)
Hans Meiser was a German Protestant theologian, pastor and from 1933 to 1955 the first 'Landesbischof' of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. Today Meiser's political stance between 1933 and 1945 is intensely studied and debated within the parameters of Germany's Culture of Remembrance. In his unsuccessful attempt to maintain his 'landeskirche' and its independence he decided to make several compromises with the Nazi state. His attitude towards Judaism is also controversial in light of studies of the Shoah.
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Cornelis Tiele
1830 - 1902 (72 years)
Cornelis Petrus Tiele was a Dutch theologian and scholar of religions. Life Tiele was born at Leiden. He was educated at Amsterdam, first studying at the Athenaeum Illustre, as the communal high school of the capital was then named, and afterwards at the seminary of the Remonstrant Brotherhood.
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Christian David
1692 - 1751 (59 years)
Christian David was a German Lutheran missionary, writer and hymnwriter. He travelled as a missionary of the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, the Moravian Church, to Greenland and to Native Americans. He is known as the author of hymn stanzas that were included in "Sonne der Gerechtigkeit" in 1932.
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Nahum Norbert Glatzer
1903 - 1990 (87 years)
Nahum Norbert Glatzer was an Austrian and American scholar of Jewish history and philosophy from antiquity to mid 20th century. Life Glatzer was born in Lemberg, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . At the start of World War I his family moved westward to Bodenbach in Silesia where Norbert attended Gymnasium. At age 17, his father sent him to study with Solomon Breuer in Frankfurt, Germany with the intention that he would become a Rabbi. After encountering the circle of Jewish intellectuals, including Franz Rosenzweig, around Rabbi Nehemiah Anton Nobel he decided against the rabbinate. ...
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Gustav Baron
1847 - 1914 (67 years)
Gustav Baron was Croatian theologian, university professor and rector of the University of Zagreb. He studied theology in Vienna and Zagreb. He was ordained for a priest in 1873. He received his Ph.D in 1876 at the Faculty of Theology of the Royal University of Franz Joseph I. He was professor and chair of the Archiepiscopal Gymnasium in Zagreb. He became a docent at the Faculty of Theology in 1877, and a full professor in 1881. He served as the dean of the faculty in two mandates.
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Martin Delrio
1551 - 1608 (57 years)
Martin Anton Delrio SJ was a Dutch Jesuit theologian. He studied at numerous institutions, receiving a master's degree in law from Salamanca in 1574. After a period of political service in the Spanish Netherlands, he became a Jesuit in 1580.
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Philip Nye
1595 - 1672 (77 years)
Philip Nye was a leading English Independent theologian and a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He was the key adviser to Oliver Cromwell on matters of religion and regulation of the Church.
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Christian Frederick Boerner
1683 - 1753 (70 years)
Christian Frederick Boerner , professor of theology at Leipzig. Boerner was born in Dresden, and lived most of his life in Leipzig. Boerner had two sons, Christian Frederic, and Frederic , who were both physicians.
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Joseph Mede
1586 - 1638 (52 years)
Joseph Mede was an English scholar with a wide range of interests. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow in 1613. He is now remembered as a biblical scholar. He was also a naturalist and Egyptologist. He was a Hebraist, and became Lecturer of Greek.
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Henry Preserved Smith
1847 - 1927 (80 years)
Henry Preserved Smith was an American biblical scholar. Smith was born in Troy, Ohio. He graduated at Amherst College in 1869 and studied theology in Lane Theological Seminary in 1869–1872, in Berlin in 1872–1874 and in Leipzig in 1876–1877. He was instructor in church history in 1874–1875, and in Hebrew in 1875–1876, and was assistant-professor in 1877-1879 and professor in 1879-1893 of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis in Lane Theological Seminary.
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Tommaso Martinelli
1827 - 1888 (61 years)
Tommaso Maria Martinelli was a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Prefect of the Congregation of Rites. Tommaso Martinelli was born in the parish of Sant'Anna, Lucca as the son of Cosma Martinelli and Maddalena Pardini. He was the brother of Cardinal Sebastiano Martinelli.
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Andrew Willet
1562 - 1621 (59 years)
Andrew Willet was an English clergyman and controversialist. A prolific writer, he is known for his anti-papal works. His views were conforming and non-separatist, and he appeared as a witness against Edward Dering before the Star-chamber. Joseph Hall eulogised Willet in Noah's Dove, and Thomas Fuller modelled 'the Controversial Divine' of his Holy State on him.
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George Stanley Faber
1773 - 1854 (81 years)
George Stanley Faber was an Anglican theologian and prolific author. He was a typologist, who believed that all the world's myths were corrupted versions of the original stories in the Bible, and an advocate of Day-Age Theory. He was a contemporary of John Nelson Darby. Faber's writings had an influence on Historicism and Dispensationalism.
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Friedrich Christoph Müller
1751 - 1808 (57 years)
Christoph Friedrich Müller was a theologian and cartographer in Schwelm. Mueller studied theology, mathematics, astronomy and the sciences. In addition, he learned four languages. He was pastor from 1776 in Bad Sassendorf, from 1782 in Unna, and from 1785 in Schwelm.
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Pope Zosimus
400 - 418 (18 years)
Pope Zosimus was the bishop of Rome from 18 March 417 to his death on 26 December 418. He was born in Mesoraca, Calabria. Zosimus took a decided part in the protracted dispute in Gaul as to the jurisdiction of the See of Arles over that of Vienne, giving energetic decisions in favour of the former, but without settling the controversy. His fractious temper coloured all the controversies in which he took part, in Gaul, Africa and Italy, including Rome, where at his death the clergy were very much divided.
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Henry Cadbury
1883 - 1974 (91 years)
Henry Joel Cadbury was an American biblical scholar, Quaker historian, writer, and non-profit administrator. Life A graduate of Haverford College, Cadbury was a Quaker throughout his life, as well as an agnostic. Forced out of his teaching position at Haverford for writing an anti-war letter to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, in 1918, he saw the experience as a milestone, leading him to larger service beyond his Orthodox Religious Society of Friends. He was offered a position in the Divinity School at Harvard University, from which he had received his Ph.D., but he first rejected its teacher...
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James Henley Thornwell
1812 - 1862 (50 years)
James Henley Thornwell was an American Presbyterian preacher, slaveowner, and religious writer from the U.S. state of South Carolina during the 19th century. During the American Civil War, Thornwell supported the Confederacy and preached a doctrine that claimed slavery to be morally right and justified by the tenets of Christianity. But contrary to many proponents of slavery, he preached that the African American population were people created in the image of God just like whites and that they should call slaves their brothers. He became prominent in the Old School Presbyterian denomination in the south, preaching and writing on theological and social issues.
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Gottlob Christian Storr
1746 - 1805 (59 years)
Gottlob Christian Storr was a German Protestant theologian, born in Stuttgart. He was the son of theologian Johann Christian Storr and the older brother of naturalist Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr .
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Ernest Barnes
1874 - 1953 (79 years)
Ernest William Barnes was a British mathematician and scientist who later became a liberal theologian and bishop. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was Master of the Temple from 1915 to 1919. He was made Bishop of Birmingham in 1924, the only bishop appointed during Ramsay MacDonald's first term in office. His modernist views, in particular objection to Reservation, led to conflict with the Anglo-Catholics in his diocese. A biography by his son, Sir John Barnes, Ahead of His Age: Bishop Barnes of Birmingham, was published in 1979.
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H. Wheeler Robinson
1872 - 1945 (73 years)
Henry Wheeler Robinson, known as H. Wheeler Robinson was a British theologian. Career H. Wheeler Robinson was educated at Regent's Park Baptist College, then still in London, the University of Edinburgh, Mansfield College, Oxford, and the Universities of Marburg and Strasbourg. He began his ministry at Pitlochry and then at St Michael's, Coventry. In 1926, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity honoris causa from the University of Edinburgh.
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Marcin Czechowic
1532 - 1613 (81 years)
Martin Czechowic was a Polish Socinian minister, Protestant reformer, theologian and writer. Life Born in Zbąszyń on the German border, Czechowic received a humanistic education in Poznań and at the University of Leipzig .
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John McLeod Campbell
1800 - 1872 (72 years)
John McLeod Campbell was a Scottish minister and Reformed theologian. In the opinion of one German church historian, contemporaneous with Campbell, his theology was a highpoint of British theology during the nineteenth century. James B. Torrance ranked him highly on the doctrine of the atonement, placing Campbell alongside Athanasius of Alexandria and Anselm of Canterbury. Campbell took his cue from his close reading of the early Church Fathers, the historic Reformed confessions and catechisms, John Calvin, Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians, and Jonathan Edwards' works.
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Campegius Vitringa
1659 - 1722 (63 years)
Campegius Vitringa Sr., or Kempe Vitringa was a Dutch Protestant theologian and Hebraist. His youngest of four children was Campeius Vitringa . Vitringa, a follower of Johannes Cocceius, was a supporter of prophetic theology. He was educated at the universities of Franeker and Leiden, and became professor of Oriental languages at the former in 1681. When locating prophetic outcomes, he would associate events to the near rather than the far-off future, placing a distinct focus on the period of the Maccabees . Like Joseph Mede , Vitringa believed wholeheartedly that the Millennium was yet to come, but did not expect any immediate changes.
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Georg Christian Adler
1734 - 1804 (70 years)
Georg Christian Adler was a German scholar. Adler was born in Brandenburg, and studied theology at the University of Halle. In 1755, he was appointed preacher in Arnis, Schleswig; in 1758 in Sarau; and in 1759 in Altona. He remained in Altona, where he became provost in 1791, and died in 1804.
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Johann Karl Wilhelm Vatke
1806 - 1882 (76 years)
Johann Karl Wilhelm Vatke, known as Wilhelm Vatke was a German Protestant theologian, born in Behnsdorf, near Magdeburg. After acting as Privatdozent in Berlin, he was appointed in 1837 professor extraordinarius.
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Jean Morin
1591 - 1659 (68 years)
Jean Morin was a French theologian and biblical scholar. His linguistic studies of biblical manuscript material, newly available, were taken to polemical lengths. Life He was born in Blois, to Calvinist parents. He learned Latin and Greek at La Rochelle, and continued his studies in Leiden, subsequently moving to Paris. His conversion to the Catholic Church is ascribed to Cardinal du Perron.
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Alexander Kohut
1842 - 1894 (52 years)
Alexander Kohut was a rabbi and orientalist. He belonged to a family of rabbis, the most noted among them being Rabbi Israel Palota, his great-grandfather, Rabbi Amram , and Rabbi Chayyim Kitssee, rabbi in Erza, who was his great-granduncle. The last-named was the author of several rabbinic works.
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Johann Leonhard Hug
1765 - 1846 (81 years)
Johann Leonhard Hug , was a German Roman Catholic theologian, orientalist and biblical scholar. Life In 1783 he entered the University of Freiburg, where he became a pupil in the seminary for the training of priests, and soon distinguished himself in classical and Oriental philology as well as in biblical exegesis and criticism. In 1787 he became superintendent of studies in the seminary, and held this appointment until the breaking up of the establishment in 1790. In the following year he was called to the Freiburg chair of Oriental languages and Old Testament exegesis; to the duties of this ...
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Heinrich Weinel
1874 - 1936 (62 years)
Heinrich Weinel was a German Protestant theologian. Biography He studied at the universities of Berlin and Giessen, and in 1900 became an inspector of evangelical-theological seminaries in Bonn. From 1904 he was an associate professor at the University of Jena, where in 1907 he became a full professor of New Testament studies. Beginning in 1926 he taught classes in systematic theology at Jena. He was co-founder of the Freien Volkskirche, whose magazine he published from 1919.
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Karl Theodor Keim
1825 - 1878 (53 years)
Karl Theodor Keim was a German Protestant theologian. He was born at Stuttgart. His father, Johann Christian Keim, was headmaster of a gymnasium. Here Karl Theodor received his early education, and then proceeded to the Stuttgart Obergymnasium. In 1843 he went to the university of Tübingen, where he studied philosophy under J. F. Reiff, a follower of Hegel, and Oriental languages under Heinrich Ewald and Heinrich Meier. F. C. Baur, the leader of the new Tübingen school, was lecturing on the New Testament and on the history of the church and of dogma, and by him in particular Keim was greatly ...
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Girolamo Aleandro
1480 - 1542 (62 years)
Girolamo Aleandro was an Italian humanist, linguist, and cardinal. Life Aleandro was born on 13 February 1480 in Motta di Livenza, in the province of Treviso, part of the Republic of Venice. The son of a doctor, he studied medicine, philology, and theology in Padua. In Venice he became acquainted with Erasmus and Aldus Manutius, and at an early age was reputed one of the most learned men of the time, with a knowledge of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Chaldaean. In 1508 he went to Paris on the invitation of Louis XII as professor of belles lettres, and from 1513 to 1516 held the position of Rector of the University of Paris at the Sorbonne.
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Samuel Merrill Woodbridge
1819 - 1905 (86 years)
The Reverend Samuel Merrill Woodbridge, D.D., LL.D. was an American clergyman, theologian, author, and college professor. A graduate of New York University and the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Woodbridge preached for sixteen years as a clergyman in the Reformed Church in America.
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János Apáczai Csere
1625 - 1659 (34 years)
János Apáczai Csere was a Transylvanian Hungarian polyglot, pedagogist, philosopher and theologian, famous for his work The Hungarian Encyclopedia, the first textbook to be written in Hungarian. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls him "the leading Protestant scholar and writer" of 17th-century Hungary.
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Johannes Maccovius
1588 - 1644 (56 years)
Johannes Maccovius , also known as Jan Makowski, was a Polish Reformed theologian. Early travels and personal life Makowski was born in Lobzenica, Poland. After visiting various universities and as the tutor of young Polish nobles, holding disputations with Jesuits and Socinians, Maccovius entered the University of Franeker in the Netherlands, in 1613. There he became privat-docent in 1614 and professor of theology in 1615. In later years, the fame of Maccovius attracted many students to Franeker, where he spent the rest of his life.
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Jeremiah Chaplin
1776 - 1841 (65 years)
Jeremiah Chaplin was a Reformed Baptist theologian who served as the first president of Colby College in Maine. Chaplin was born in Rowley, Massachusetts in 1776 to a Baptist family. He attended Brown University, a school with an historical Baptist affiliation, graduating in 1799 with a Bachelor of Arts. Chaplin spent a year at Brown as a tutor and pursued additional theological study to become a minister. To this end, he studied under Thomas Baldwin of the Second Baptist Church in Boston.
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Hans Frei
1922 - 1988 (66 years)
Hans Wilhelm Frei was an American biblical scholar and theologian who is best known for work on biblical hermeneutics. Frei's work played a major role in the development of postliberal theology . His best-known and most influential work is his 1974 book, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative , which examined the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century biblical hermeneutics in England and Germany. Frei spent much of his career teaching at Yale Divinity School.
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Edmond Richer
1559 - 1631 (72 years)
Edmond Richer was a French theologian known for several works advocating the Gallican theory, that the pope's power was limited by authority of bishops, and by temporal governments. He was born in Chaource.
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Abraham Scultetus
1566 - 1625 (59 years)
Abraham Scultetus was a German professor of theology, and the court preacher for the Elector of the Palatinate Frederick V. Biography Early life Abraham was born in Grünberg in Schlesien in Silesia and was brought up as a Lutheran. He began his studies in theology in 1588 in Wittenberg and then in 1590 in Heidelberg. When he became Reformed and gave up his Lutheranism is unknown. By 1595 he was working for the Elector of the Palatinate, who at that time was Frederick IV. He continued to serve the churches of the Palatinate and accompanied Frederick V on his honeymoon with his wife Elisabeth, daughter of King James I of England, in 1613.
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David Cohen
1887 - 1972 (85 years)
David Cohen was a rabbi, talmudist, philosopher, kabbalist, and a disciple of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. A noted Jewish ascetic, he took a Nazirite vow at the outbreak of World War I. Education Cohen was born in Maišiagala, near Vilna , the scion of a distinguished rabbinic family. In his youth he studied at the Raduń Yeshiva under Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, at the Volozhin yeshiva, and at the yeshiva in Slabodka. Even at that time, his restless and inquiring mind led him to extend his studies beyond the traditional subjects taught in the yeshivot. Thus he turned to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and the early writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
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Leon J. Wood
1918 - 1977 (59 years)
Leon James Wood was an American theologian. He is the author of one of the few books on the Holy Spirit as portrayed in the Old Testament as opposed to the New Testament. Wood wrote, "The evidence that spiritual renewal, or regeneration, was true of such Old Testament people lies mainly in two directions. One is that these people lived in a way possible only for those who had experienced regeneration, and the other is the avenue of logical deduction that argues back from New Testament truth."
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Erik Peterson
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Erik Peterson Grandjean was a German Catholic theologian,patrologist and Church historian. Biography Erik Peterson was born in Hamburg. He studied theology from 1910 to 1914 in Strasbourg, Greifswald, Berlin, Basel and Göttingen, where he defended his doctoral dissertation in 1926. He was initially an evangelical Christian influenced by pietism and Søren Kierkegaard. Through the influence of phenomenology in Göttingen, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Hans Lipps, Theodor Haecker, Max Scheler, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Maritain and the Liturgical Movement, he opened up to the Catholic world.
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Lelio Sozzini
1525 - 1562 (37 years)
Lelio Francesco Maria Sozzini, or simply Lelio Sozzini , was an Italian Renaissance humanist and theologian, and, alongside his nephew Fausto Sozzini, founder of the Nontrinitarian Christian belief system known as Socinianism. His doctrine was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Polish Reformed Church between the 16th and 17th centuries, and embraced by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period.
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Jean-Alphonse Turrettini
1671 - 1737 (66 years)
Jean-Alphonse Turrettini was a theologian from the Republic of Geneva. The son of François Turrettini, he was born in Geneva. He studied theology at Geneva under Louis Tronchin , and after travelling in Holland, England and France was received into the "Vénérable Compagnie des Pasteurs" of Geneva in 1693. Here he became pastor of the Italian congregation, and in 1697 professor of church history, and later of theology.
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Margaret Dunlop Gibson
1843 - 1920 (77 years)
#2900
Bernard of Chartres
1070 - 1130 (60 years)
Bernard of Chartres was a twelfth-century French Neo-Platonist philosopher, scholar, and administrator. Life The date and place of his birth are unknown. He was believed to have been the elder brother of Thierry of Chartres and to be of Breton origin, but research has shown that this is unlikely. He is recorded at the cathedral school of Chartres by 1115 and was chancellor until 1124. There is no proof that he was still alive after 1124.
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