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,
#3401
Bartolomé de Medina
1527 - 1580 (53 years)
Bartolomé de Medina, O.P. was a Spanish theologian born in Medina de Rioseco, Spain. A member of the Dominican Order and a student of Francisco de Vitoria, he was professor of theology at the University of Salamanca and a member of the School of Salamanca. He is best known as the originator of the doctrine of probabilism in moral theology, which holds that one may follow a course of action that has some probability, even if the opposite is more probable.
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Asahel Nettleton
1783 - 1844 (61 years)
Asahel Nettleton was an American theologian and Evangelist from Connecticut who was highly influential during the Second Great Awakening. The number of people converted to Christianity as a result of his ministry was estimated by one biographer at 30,000. He participated in the New Lebanon Conference in 1827, during which he and Lyman Beecher opposed the teachings of Charles Grandison Finney.
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Gilbert de la Porrée
1070 - 1154 (84 years)
Gilbert de la Porrée , also known as Gilbert of Poitiers, Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis, was a scholastic logician and theologian and Bishop of Poitiers. Life He was born in Poitiers, and completed his first studies there. He was then educated under Bernard of Chartres at Chartres, where he was schooled in the differences between the teachings of Aristotle and Plato, and later under Anselm of Laon and Ralph of Laon at Laon, where he studied the Scriptures. After his education, he returned to Poitiers, where it is believed he taught. Subsequently he then returned to Chartres to teach logic and theology and succeeded Bernard of Chartres as Chancellor from 1126 to 1140.
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Merrill Unger
1909 - 1980 (71 years)
Merrill Frederick Unger was an American Bible commentator, scholar, archaeologist, and theologian. He earned his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees at Johns Hopkins University, and his Th.M and Th.D degrees at Dallas Theological Seminary. He was a prolific writer who authored some 40 books. Unger was also a well known Biblical archaeologist and encyclopedist. Early in his career he was identified as a Baptist, but later was credentialed by the Independent Fundamentalist Churches of America .
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Saint Eligius
588 - 660 (72 years)
Eligius , venerated as Saint Eligius, was a Frankish goldsmith, courtier and bishop who was chief counsellor to Dagobert I and later Bishop of Noyon–Tournai. His deeds were recorded in Vita Sancti Eligii, written by his friend Audoin of Rouen.
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Erik Pontoppidan
1698 - 1764 (66 years)
Erik Ludvigsen Pontoppidan was a Danish author, a Lutheran bishop of the Church of Norway, a historian, and an antiquarian. His Catechism of the Church of Denmark heavily influenced Danish and Norwegian religious thought and practice for roughly the next 200 years after its 1737 publication.
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Rufinus the Syrian
350 - 450 (100 years)
Rufinus the Syrian or Rufinus of Syria was a Christian theologian, priest and author, generally identified as a Pelagian. According to the anti-Pelagian writer Marius Mercator, Rufinus "of the Syrian nation" taught at Rome during the episcopate of Anastasius I and through this teaching was a bad influence on the theology of Pelagius and his followers. There is disagreement between scholars over the correct reading of the word preceding natione Syrus: it is either quidam or quondam . Walter Dunphy even argues that whole phrase is ultimately a copyist's error and that there was no Rufinus fr...
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Hugh Farmer
1714 - 1787 (73 years)
Hugh Farmer was an English Dissenter and theologian. He was educated at the Dissenting Academy in Northampton under Philip Doddridge, and became pastor of a congregation at Walthamstow, Essex. In 1701 he became preacher and one of the Tuesday lecturers at Salters' Hall, London. He was a believer in miracles, but wrote against the existence of supernatural evil. He viewed the devil as allegorical.
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Edmund Bonner
1500 - 1569 (69 years)
Edmund Bonner was Bishop of London from 1539 to 1549 and again from 1553 to 1559. Initially an instrumental figure in the schism of Henry VIII from Rome, he was antagonised by the Protestant reforms introduced by the Duke of Somerset and reconciled himself to Catholicism. He became notorious as "Bloody Bonner" for his role in the persecution of heretics under the Catholic government of Mary I of England, and ended his life as a prisoner under Queen Elizabeth I.
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Frederick William Robertson
1816 - 1853 (37 years)
Frederick William Robertson , known as Robertson of Brighton, was an English divine. Biography Born in London, the first five years of his life were passed at Leith Fort, where his father, a captain in the Royal Artillery, was then resident. The military spirit entered into his blood, and throughout life he was characterised by the qualities of the ideal soldier. In 1821 Captain Robertson retired to Beverley, where the boy was educated. At the age of fourteen he spent a year at Tours, from which he returned to Scotland, and continued his education at the Edinburgh Academy and university.
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Philoxenus of Mabbug
440 - 523 (83 years)
Philoxenus of Mabbug , also known as Xenaias and Philoxenus of Hierapolis, was one of the most notable Syriac prose writers during the Byzantine period and a vehement champion of Miaphysitism. Early life He was born, probably in the third quarter of the 5th century, at Tahal, a village in the district of Beth Garmaï east of the Tigris. He was by birth a subject of Persia, but all his active life of which we have any record was passed in the territory of the Byzantine Empire. His parents were from the Median city of Ecbatana. The statements that he had been a slave and was never baptized appear to be malicious inventions of his theological opponents following his death.
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Richard Watson
1781 - 1833 (52 years)
Richard Watson was a British Methodist theologian, a leading figure of Wesleyan Methodism in the early 19th century. Biography Early life and education Watson was born on 22 February 1781, at Barton-upon-Humber, in Lincolnshire. He was the seventh of eighteen children of Thomas and Ann Watson. His father, a saddler, held Calvinist views, and Richard was brought up in the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. Reacting against those teachings, he attended a Wesleyan chapel as a boy, and was received there in 1794.
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John of Capistrano
1386 - 1456 (70 years)
John of Capistrano, OFM was a Franciscan friar and Catholic priest from the Italian town of Capestrano, Abruzzo. Famous as a preacher, theologian, and inquisitor, he earned himself the nickname "the Soldier Saint" when in 1456 at age 70 he led a Crusade against the invading Ottoman Empire at the siege of Belgrade with the Hungarian military commander John Hunyadi.
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Magnús Eiríksson
1806 - 1881 (75 years)
Magnús Eiríksson was also the Old Norse name of Magnus IV of Sweden.Magnús Eiríksson was an Icelandic theologian and a contemporary critic of Søren Aabye Kierkegaard and Hans Lassen Martensen in Copenhagen.
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Nemesius
350 - 420 (70 years)
Nemesius of Emesa was a Christian philosopher, and the author of a treatise Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου or De natura hominis . According to the title of his book, he was the Bishop of Emesa . His book is an attempt to compile a system of anthropology from the standpoint of Christian philosophy; it was very influential in later Greek, Arabic and Christian thought.
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Johann Baptist Alzog
1808 - 1878 (70 years)
Johann Baptist Alzog was a German theologian and Catholic church historian. He was born at Ohlau, in Silesia. He studied at the universities of Breslau and Bonn and was ordained a priest at Cologne in 1834.
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Albert Baldwin Dod
1805 - 1845 (40 years)
Albert Baldwin Dod was an American Presbyterian theologian and professor of mathematics. Early life Dod was born on March 24, 1805, in Mendham, New Jersey. He was the son of Daniel Dod and Nancy Dod . His mother was the sister of Dr. Ezra Squire, of Caldwell, New Jersey.
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Henry Scott Holland
1847 - 1918 (71 years)
Henry Scott Holland was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. He was also a canon of Christ Church, Oxford. The Scott Holland Memorial Lectures are held in his memory. Family and education Holland was born on 27 January 1847 at Ledbury, Herefordshire, the son of George Henry Holland of Dumbleton Hall, Evesham, and Charlotte Dorothy Gifford, the daughter of Lord Gifford. He was educated at Eton where he was a pupil of the influential Master William Johnson Cory, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first-class degree in greats. During his Oxford time he was greatly influenced by T. H.
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Samuel ibn Tibbon
1150 - 1230 (80 years)
Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon , more commonly known as Samuel ibn Tibbon , was a Jewish philosopher and doctor who lived and worked in Provence, later part of France. He was born about 1150 in Lunel , and died about 1230 in Marseilles. He is best known for his translations of Jewish rabbinic literature from Arabic to Hebrew. Samuel ibn Tibbon wrote his own philosophical works, including "Sefer ha-Mikhtav" , which dealt with ethics and spirituality. Samuel ibn Tibbon's translations and commentaries had a significant impact on Jewish thought and scholarship during the Middle Ages. They helped to ...
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David Woolf Marks
1811 - 1909 (98 years)
David Woolf Marks was a British Hebrew scholar and minister. He was the first religious leader of the West London Synagogue, which seceded from the authority of the Chief Rabbi, where he advocated a quasi-Karaite philosophy.
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Albert Hauck
1845 - 1918 (73 years)
Albert Heinrich Friedrich Stephan Ernst Louis Hauck was a German theologian and church historian. Hauck began studying theology in 1864 in Erlangen, and then from 1866 in Berlin, where he was taught by Leopold von Ranke, the father of the source and methods-based German historiography; Hauck later commented that von Ranke was the greatest man he'd ever known. He passed the state exam in 1868 in Ansbach. In 1870 he became vicar in Munich, moved to Feldkirchen in 1871, and in 1875 was appointed priest for the parish of Frankenheim.
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Hans Denck
1495 - 1527 (32 years)
Hans Denck was a German theologian and Anabaptist leader during the Reformation. Biography Denck was born in 1495 in the Bavarian town of Habach. He entered the University of Ingolstadt on October 10, 1517, and graduated in 1519. Denck began working as a family tutor in Niederstotzingen. By the recommendation of Johannes Oecolampadius, Denck became headmaster at the St. Sebaldus school in Nuremberg in 1523. He became involved in the trial of the artist brothers Sebald and Barthel Beham, who were expelled from the city in 1524 at the instigation of Andreas Osiander. In Nuremberg, he met Thomas Müntzer, and so first came in contact with radical theology, which he accepted with modifications.
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Lady Amin
1886 - 1983 (97 years)
Hajiyeh Seyyedeh Nosrat Begum Amin, also known as Banu Amin, Lady Amin , was Iran's most outstanding female jurisprudent, theologian and great Muslim mystic of the 20th century, a Lady Mujtahideh. She received numerous ijazahs of ijtihad, among them from Ayatollahs Muḥammad Kazim Ḥusayni Shīrāzī and Grand Ayatullah ‘arif , the founder of the Qom seminaries . She also granted numerous ijazahs of ijtihad to female and male scholars, among them Sayyid Mar'ashi Najafi.
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Bessarion
1403 - 1472 (69 years)
Bessarion was a Byzantine Greek Renaissance humanist, theologian, Catholic cardinal and one of the famed Greek scholars who contributed to the so-called great revival of letters in the 15th century.
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Leontius of Byzantium
480 - 543 (63 years)
Leontius of Byzantium was a Byzantine Christian monk and the author of an influential series of theological writings on sixth-century Christological controversies. Though the details of his life are scarce, he is considered by some a groundbreaking innovator in Christian theological reflection for having introduced Aristotelian definitions into theology.
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Wilfred Monod
1867 - 1943 (76 years)
William Frédéric Monod better known as Wilfred Monod was a Protestant Professor of theology associated to Paris and Rouen. He founded the Order of Watchers and was active in ecumenical efforts in France. He once suggested a desire for the rehabilitation of Marcion of Sinope and a removal of omnipotence and omnipresence from the conception of God. These ideas were quite controversial. He was also the father of Théodore Monod.
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Otto Brunfels
1488 - 1534 (46 years)
Otto Brunfels was a German theologian and botanist. Carl von Linné listed him among the "Fathers of Botany". Life After studying theology and philosophy at the University of Mainz, Brunfels entered a Carthusian monastery in Mainz and later resettled to another Carthusian monastery at Königshofen near Strasbourg. In Strasbourg he got in contact with a learned lawyer Nikolaus Gerbel . Gerbel drew Brunfels' attention to the healing powers of plants and thus gave the impetus to the further botanical investigations.
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Lyman Abbott
1835 - 1922 (87 years)
Lyman J. Abbott was an American Congregationalist theologian, editor, and author. Biography Early years Abbott was born at Roxbury, Massachusetts, on December 18, 1835, the son of the prolific author, educator and historian Jacob Abbott, and his mother being Harriet Vaughan. Abbott grew up in Farmington, Maine, and later in New York City. Abbott's ancestors were from England, and came to America roughly twenty years after Plymouth Rock.
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Werner Elert
1885 - 1954 (69 years)
Werner August Friedrich Immanuel Elert was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of both church history and systematic theology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His writings in the fields of Christian dogmatics, ethics, and history have had great influence on modern Christianity in general and modern Lutheranism in particular.
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Benjamin Whichcote
1609 - 1683 (74 years)
Benjamin Whichcote was an English Establishment and Puritan divine, Provost of King's College, Cambridge and leader of the Cambridge Platonists. He held that man is the "child of reason" and so not completely depraved by nature, as Puritans held. He also argued for religious toleration.
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Carl Clemen
1865 - 1940 (75 years)
Carl Christian Clemen , best known as Carl Clemen, was a German theologian and religious historian. He was a member of the history of religions school. Career Clemen was Professor of New Testament and religious history at the University of Bonn. He was a critic of the Christ myth theory and refuted the arguments of Arthur Drews, Peter Jensen and other mythicists. He was also critical of the ideas of Anthroposophy and Theosophy.
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Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler
1792 - 1854 (62 years)
Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler, KH was a Protestant German church historian. Biography He was born at Petershagen, near Minden, where his father, Georg Christof Friedrich, was preacher. In his tenth year he entered the orphanage at Halle, from which he duly passed to the university, his studies being interrupted in October 1813 by a period of military service, during which he was enrolled as a volunteer in a regiment of chasseurs. On the conclusion of peace he returned to Halle, and, having in 1817 taken his degree in philosophy, he became assistant head of the Minden gymnasium, and in 1818 w...
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Arethas of Caesarea
860 - 935 (75 years)
Arethas of Caesarea was Archbishop of Caesarea Mazaca in Cappadocia early in the 10th century, and is considered one of the most scholarly theologians of the Greek Orthodox Church. The codices produced by him, containing his commentaries are credited with preserving many ancient texts, including those of Plato and Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations".
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Heinrich Scholz
1884 - 1956 (72 years)
Heinrich Scholz was a German logician, philosopher, and Protestant theologian. He was a peer of Alan Turing who mentioned Scholz when writing with regard to the reception of "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem": "I have had two letters asking for reprints, one from Braithwaite at King's and one from a professor [sic] in Germany... They seemed very much interested in the paper. [...] I was disappointed by its reception here."
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Franz Xaver von Funk
1840 - 1907 (67 years)
Franz Xaver von Funk was a German Catholic theologian and historian. Biography Funk was born at Abts-Gmünd, Württemberg, and educated at Tübingen, at the seminary of Rottenburg am Neckar, and in Paris, where he studied economics. In 1870 he was appointed professor of theology at Tübingen and in 1876 became an editor of the Tübingen Theologische Quartalschrift. Though he is perhaps best remembered today for his edition of the Apostolic Fathers, he produced a number of other works on early Christian literature. Funk thought the apostolic constitutions were written as late as the beginning of t...
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Wolfgang Capito
1478 - 1541 (63 years)
Wolfgang Fabricius Capito was a German Protestant reformer in the Calvinist tradition. His life and revolutionary work Capito was born circa 1478 to a smith at Hagenau in Alsace. He attended the famous Latin school in Pforzheim, where his friend Philip Melanchthon studied.
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Matthias Flacius
1520 - 1575 (55 years)
Matthias Flacius Illyricus or Francovich was a Lutheran reformer from Istria, present-day Croatia. He was notable as a theologian, sometimes dissenting strongly with his fellow Lutherans, and as a scholar for his editorial work on the Magdeburg Centuries.
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David Watson
1933 - 1984 (51 years)
David Christopher Knight Watson was an English Anglican priest, evangelist and author. Early life and education David Watson was born on 7 March 1933 at Catterick Camp, Scotton, Yorkshire to Godfrey Charles Knight Watson, a captain in the Royal Artillery, and his wife Margaret Sara Winifred. He was educated at Bedford School and Wellington College . He was head boy of Wellington College.
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Martin D'Arcy
1888 - 1976 (88 years)
Martin Cyril D'Arcy was a Roman Catholic priest, philosopher of love, and a correspondent, friend, and adviser of a range of literary and artistic figures including Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy L. Sayers, W. H. Auden, Eric Gill and Sir Edwin Lutyens. He has been described as "perhaps England's foremost Catholic public intellectual from the 1930s until his death".
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Édouard Guillaume Eugène Reuss
1804 - 1891 (87 years)
Edouard Guillaume Eugène Reuss was a Protestant theologian from Alsace. Life He was born at Strasbourg, where he studied philology . He went on to study theology at Göttingen under Johann Gottfried Eichhorn; and Oriental Languages at Halle under Wilhelm Gesenius, and afterwards at Paris under Silvestre de Sacy . In 1828 he became Privatdozent at Strasbourg. From 1829 to 1834 he taught Biblical criticism and Oriental languages at the Strasbourg Theological School; he then became assistant, and afterwards, in 1836, regular professor of theology at that university. He became Professor of Old Testament at the same institution in 1864.
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Gustav Warneck
1834 - 1910 (76 years)
Gustav Adolf Warneck was a German missiologist. In 1874, he established the first German missiological journal, Allgemeine Missionszeitschift. He was also involved in the founding of the German Protestant Missions Committee in 1885, serving as secretary until 1901. He held the first university chair in missiology at Halle University from 1896 to 1908. He is considered to be one of the first missiologists. David Bosch describes him as "the father of missiology as a theological discipline."
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William Lindsay Alexander
1808 - 1884 (76 years)
William Lindsay Alexander FRSE LLD was a Scottish church leader. Life He was born in Leith, the son of William Alexander, a wine merchant, and his wife, Elizabeth Lindsay. The only address given for his father appears in 1813 at 7 Blair Street off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh rather than Leith.
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Cuthbert Tunstall
1474 - 1559 (85 years)
Cuthbert Tunstall was an English humanist, bishop, diplomat, administrator and royal adviser. He served as Bishop of Durham during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. Childhood and early career Cuthbert Tunstall was born at Hackforth near Bedale in North Yorkshire in 1474, son of Thomas Tunstall of Thurland Castle in Lancashire, who was later an esquire of the body of Richard III. His half-brother, Brian Tunstall, the so-called "stainless knight," was killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. Sir Walter Scott mentions "stainless Tunstall's banner white" in Canto Six, l...
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Daniel Day Williams
1910 - 1973 (63 years)
Daniel Day Williams was a process theologian, professor, and author. He served on the joint faculty of the University of Chicago and the Chicago Theological Seminary, and later at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Williams was a member of the United Church of Christ.
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Robert Flint
1838 - 1910 (72 years)
Robert Flint LLD DD was a Scottish theologian and philosopher who wrote also on sociology. Life Flint was born at Greenburn, Sibbaldbie near Applegarth in Dumfriesshire on 14 March 1838, the son of Grace Johnston and Robert Flint, a farm overseer. His first school was at Evan Water then he moved to Moffat. In 1852, he entered the University of Glasgow where he distinguished himself in arts and divinity.
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Johann Friedrich Abegg
1765 - 1840 (75 years)
Johann Friedrich Abegg was a German theologian. He was the brother of many siblings in a family of preachers, and was adopted in 1786 as candidate for the preacher office in the Electorate of the Palatinate. He visited the college in Heidelberg from 1789 to 1794 and also worked as extraordinary professor of philology since 1791. In 1794 he started to practise as priest, first in Boxberg, then in Leimen and Heidelberg in the parishes St. Peter and Heiliggeist.
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Ludwig Adolf Petri
1803 - 1873 (70 years)
Petri, Ludwig Adolf was a German Neo-Lutheran clergyman. Life He was born at Lüthorst , and was educated at the University of Göttingen and, after being a private tutor for some time, became, in 1829, "collaborator" at the Kreuzkirche in Hanover, where he was assistant pastor from 1837 until 1851, and senior pastor from 1851 until his death. During the years 1830–37 his convictions gradually changed from rationalistic to orthodox. His power as a preacher was especially shown by his Licht des Lebens and Salz der Erde . For the improvement of the liturgy of his communion he wrote Bedürfnisse ...
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Joseph Wittig
1879 - 1949 (70 years)
Joseph Wittig was a German Catholic theologian and writer born in Neusorge, a village in the district of Neurode, Silesia. In 1903 he received his doctorate of theology from the University of Breslau, and was ordained a priest by Cardinal Georg von Kopp . Subsequently, he worked as a chaplain in Lauban, and from 1904 studied Christian art and architecture in Rome as a member of the German Archaeological Institute. In the meantime, he took part in a study trip to North Africa. being accompanied by theologian Franz Joseph Dölger . After returning to Germany, he served as a chaplain in Patschkau...
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John Mill
1645 - 1707 (62 years)
John Mill was an English theologian noted for his critical edition of the Greek New Testament which included notes on over thirty-thousand variant readings in the manuscripts of the New Testament. Biography Mill was born circa 1645 at Shap in Westmorland, entered Queen's College, Oxford, as a servitor in 1661, and took his master's degree in 1669 in which year he spoke the "Oratio Panegyrica" at the opening of the Sheldonian Theatre. Soon afterwards he became a Fellow of Queen's. In 1676, he became chaplain to the bishop of Oxford, and, in 1681, he obtained the rectory of Bletchington, Oxfordshire, and was made chaplain to Charles II.
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Alexander Whyte
1836 - 1921 (85 years)
For the British colonial administrator, see Alexander Frederick Whyte Rev Alexander Whyte D.D.,LL.D. was a Scottish divine. He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1898.
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