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,
#4801
Walter Grundmann
1906 - 1976 (70 years)
Walter Grundmann was a German Protestant theologian and antisemitic Nazi and Stasi collaborateur during the Third Reich and GDR. Grundmann served both German dictatorships. He was a member of the Nazi party from 1930 onwards, and from 1933 onwards an active member of the German Christians and prospered as a state-antisemitism supporting theologian and professor for ethnic theology. In 1939, he was made head of the newly founded Instituts zur Erforschung jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben in Jena, which was meant to serve state antisemitism by the "Entjudung" of the Bible and giving antisemitic theological training and arguments for Nazi propaganda.
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Conrad Vorstius
1569 - 1622 (53 years)
Conrad Vorstius was a German-Dutch heterodox Remonstrant theologian, and successor to Jacobus Arminius in the theology chair at Leiden University. His appointment, and the controversy surrounding it, became an international matter in the political and religious affairs of the United Provinces during the Twelve Years' Truce, supplying a pretext for the irregular intervention of King James I of England in those affairs. Vorstius published theological views which were taken to show sympathy with the Socinians, and was declared a heretic at the Synod of Dort in 1619.
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Gabriel Biel
1418 - 1495 (77 years)
Gabriel Biel was a German scholastic philosopher and member of the Canons Regular of the Congregation of Windesheim, who were the clerical counterpart to the Brethren of the Common Life. Biel was born in Speyer and died in Einsiedel near Tübingen. In 1432 he was ordained to the priesthood and entered Heidelberg University to obtain a baccalaureate. He succeeded academically and became an instructor in the faculty of the arts for three years, until he pursued a higher degree at the University of Erfurt. His first stay was brief, lasting only until he transferred to the University of Cologne. He did not complete his degree there either, and would return to Erfurt in 1451 to finish.
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Abu Hasan al-Ash'ari
873 - 935 (62 years)
Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī , often reverently referred to as Imām al-Ashʿarī by Sunnī Muslims, was a Muslim scholar of Shafi jurisprudence, scriptural exegete, reformer , and scholastic theologian , renowned for being the eponymous founder of the Ashʿarite school of Islamic theology.
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Gisle Johnson
1822 - 1894 (72 years)
Gisle Christian Johnson was a leading 19th-century Norwegian theologian and educator. Biography Gisle Christian Johnson was born at Fredrikshald in Østfold, Norway. He grew up at Kristiansand in Vest-Agder. He was a son of engineer and architect Georg Daniel Barth Johnson . He studied theology at the University of Christiania and graduated in 1845. In 1849 he became a lecturer at the University of Christiania, and in 1860 a professor, first in systematic theology and Dogmatic theology and from 1875 in church history.
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Mary MacKillop
1842 - 1909 (67 years)
Mary Helen MacKillop RSJ, religious name Mary of the Cross, was an Australian religious sister of Scottish descent who has been declared a saint by the Catholic Church. She was born in Melbourne but is best known for her activities in South Australia. Together with Julian Tenison-Woods, she founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart , a congregation of religious sisterss that established a number of schools and welfare institutions throughout Australia and New Zealand, with an emphasis on education for the rural poor.
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Daniel Schenkel
1813 - 1885 (72 years)
Daniel Schenkel was a Swiss Protestant theologian. Biography Schenkel was born at Dägerlen in the canton of Zürich. After studying at Basel and Göttingen, he was successively pastor at Schaffhausen , professor of theology at Basel ; and at Heidelberg professor of theology , director of the seminary and university preacher. At first inclined to conservatism, he afterwards became an exponent of the mediating theology , and ultimately a liberal theologian and advanced critic.
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Eugène Ménégoz
1838 - 1921 (83 years)
Eugène Ménégoz was a French Lutheran theologian who was a native of Algolsheim, Haut-Rhin. He studied theology in Strasbourg, and in 1866 became pastor at the parish of Billettes in Paris. In 1877 he was appointed full professor to the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris. With Louis Auguste Sabatier , he was originator of the French "Symbolo-Fideism" movement, a theological concept that was a union of symbolism and fideism. In his lectures and writings Ménégoz stressed that salvation was achieved through the act of faith independent of creed. A few of his more important publications were...
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Joseph Franz von Allioli
1793 - 1873 (80 years)
Joseph Franz von Allioli , was a Roman Catholic theologian and orientalist. Allioli studied theology at Landshut and was ordained at Ratisbon in 1816. From 1818 to 1820, he studied Oriental languages at Vienna, Rome, and Paris.
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Judah Loew ben Bezalel
1512 - 1609 (97 years)
Judah Loew ben Bezalel , also known as Rabbi Loew , the Maharal of Prague , or simply the Maharal , was an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who, for most of his life, served as a leading rabbi in the cities of Mikulov in Moravia and Prague in Bohemia.
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Alexander Balmain Bruce
1831 - 1899 (68 years)
Alexander Balmain Bruce was a Scottish churchman and theologian. He was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. Life He was born at Aberdalgie in the parish of Abernethy, Perthshire, on 13 January 1831, was the son of David Bruce, a farmer. His elder brother was the Presbyterian minister David Bruce. He was educated at Auchterarder parish school.
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Hermann Cremer
1834 - 1903 (69 years)
August Hermann Cremer was a German Protestant theologian. He was considered head of the so-called Greifswalder Schule at the University of Greifswald. He studied theology in Halle under Friedrich August Tholuck and at Tübingen as a pupil of Johann Tobias Beck. From 1859 he served as pastor in Ostönnen , and in 1870 was appointed professor of systematic theology at the University of Greifswald.
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Johann Martin Augustin Scholz
1794 - 1852 (58 years)
Johann Martin Augustin Scholz was a German Roman Catholic orientalist, biblical scholar and academic theologian. He was a professor at the University of Bonn and travelled extensively throughout Europe and the Near East in order to locate manuscripts of the New Testament.
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Andrea Carlo Ferrari
1850 - 1921 (71 years)
Andrea Ferrari – later adopting the middle name "Carlo" – was an Italian Catholic prelate who served as a cardinal and as the Archbishop of Milan from 1894 until his death. Ferrari was a well-regarded pastor and theologian who led two dioceses before being appointed to the prestigious Milanese archdiocese which he led until his death. But he was later accused of Modernism which led to a strained relationship with Pope Pius X who finally reconciled with Ferrari in 1912.
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Edgar S. Brightman
1884 - 1953 (69 years)
Edgar Sheffield Brightman was an American philosopher and Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and liberal theology, and promulgated the philosophy known as Boston personalism.
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Nathan Bangs
1778 - 1862 (84 years)
Nathan Bangs was an American Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition and influential leader in the Methodist Episcopal Church prior to the 1860s. Born in Stratford, Connecticut, he received a limited education, taught school, and in 1799 went to Upper Canada in search of work as either a teacher or a land-surveyor. He was converted to Methodism in 1800 and worked for eight years as an itinerant preacher in the wilderness of the Canadian provinces, serving communities in the areas of Kingston, York, London, Niagara, and Montreal. Of particular note is his responsibility for organizing the first camp meeting in Upper Canada in the fall of 1805.
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John McCloskey
1810 - 1885 (75 years)
John McCloskey was an American senior-ranking prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the first American-born Archbishop of New York from 1864 until his death in 1885, having previously served as Bishop of Albany . In 1875, McCloskey became the first American cardinal. He served as the first president of St. John's College, now Fordham University, beginning in 1841.
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Moses Isserles
1520 - 1572 (52 years)
Rabbi Moses Isserles , also known by the acronym Rema, was an eminent Polish Ashkenazi rabbi, talmudist, and posek . Biography Isserles was born in Kraków, Poland. His father, Israel ben Josef , was a prominent talmudist and independently wealthy, who had probably headed the community; his grandfather, Jehiel Luria, was the first rabbi of Brisk. He studied in Lublin under Rabbi Shalom Shachna, who would later become his father-in-law. Among his fellow pupils were his relative Solomon Luria —later a major disputant of many of Isserles' halachic rulings, and Chayyim b. Bezalel, an older brother of the Maharal.
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Heinrich Ernst Ferdinand Guericke
1803 - 1878 (75 years)
Heinrich Ernst Ferdinand Guericke , was a German theologian. He was born at Wettin in Saxony and studied theology at the University of Halle, where he was appointed associate professor in 1829. He disapproved of the union between the Lutheran and the Reformed churches, which had been accomplished by the Prussian government in 1817, and in 1833 he joined the Old Lutherans. In 1835 he lost his professorship, but he regained it in 1840.
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Eberhard Arnold
1883 - 1935 (52 years)
Eberhard Arnold was a German theologian and Christian writer. He was the founder of the Bruderhof in 1920. Early life Arnold was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, Germany, the third child of Carl Franklin and Elizabeth Arnold. His father was a doctor of theology and philosophy, and his paternal grandfather was a pastor and missionary of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces. Eberhard Arnold's life as a youth was unconventional. In 1899 at age 16, Arnold experienced an inner change, which he acknowledged as God's acceptance and the forgiveness of sins, and felt a calling t...
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John of St. Thomas
1589 - 1644 (55 years)
John of St. Thomas, O.P., born João Poinsot , was a Portuguese Dominican friar, Thomist theologian, and professor of philosophy. He is known for being an early theorist in the field of semiotics. Biography Of noble parentage, he was sent early to the University of Coimbra, displayed talents of the first order, completed his humanities and philosophy, and obtained the degree of Master of Arts. He then entered the University of Louvain. Here, too, he showed remarkable ability, and won the title of Bachelor of Theology at an early age. He joined the Dominicans at Madrid in 1612 or 1613, taking the name of John of St.
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Johann Heinrich Achterfeldt
1788 - 1877 (89 years)
Johann Heinrich Achterfeldt was a German theologian. Achterfeldt was born at Wesel. He was appointed professor of theology at Bonn in 1826 and in 1832 he founded with his colleague, Joseph Braun, the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Katholische Theologie, the chief purpose of which was to defend the teachings of George Hermes.
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Jan Standonck
1453 - 1504 (51 years)
Jan Standonck was a Flemish priest, Scholastic, and reformer. He was part of the great movement for reform in the 15th-century French church. His approach was to reform the recruitment and education of the clergy, along very ascetic lines, heavily influenced by the hermit saint Francis of Paola. To this end he founded many colleges, all of them strictly controlled and dedicated to poor students with real vocations. Chief amongst them was the Collège de Montaigu, latterly part of the University of Paris. He lived at a time when this model of reform was under increasing pressure from more thoro...
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Soga Ryōjin
1875 - 1971 (96 years)
Soga Ryōjin was a Japanese Buddhist philosopher and priest of the Ōtani-ha of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism. He served as the 17th president of Ōtani University from 1961 to 1967. Biography Soga was born in the city of Niigata, Niigata Prefecture. He entered Shinshu University, later known as Ōtani University, and graduated in 1901. After graduation from Shinshū, Soga returned to Niigata and became the adopted son-in-law of the priest of Jō'on-ji, a temple in Mitsuke, Niigata.
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Heinrich Schlier
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Heinrich Schlier was a theologian, initially with the protestant Church and later with the Catholic Church. Biography Schlier was the son of a military doctor and attended the High School-Gymnasium in Landau and Ingolstadt, participated in World War I, and in 1919 studied Evangelical Theology at the university of Marburg, Leipzig and Jena. From 1927, he served as pastor and teacher of the New Testament in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt and Wuppertal. From 1935, Schlier was part of the Confessing Church , an opposition movement which arose in the Evangelical German Church against the attempt of the German Nazi regime to align the teaching and organisation of the Evangelical Church to Nazism.
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Johann Tobias Beck
1804 - 1878 (74 years)
Johann Tobias Beck was a German theologian. Biography Graduating from the University of Tübingen in 1826, he was ordained a minister, but later accepted an appointment as professor of theology at the University of Basel. In 1843 he went to Tübingen, where he filled the same position.
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Jean Réville
1854 - 1908 (54 years)
Jean Réville was a French Protestant theologian born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was the son of theologian Albert Réville . He studied theology at Geneva, Berlin and Heidelberg, obtaining his licentiate in theology in Paris . He subsequently became a pastor in Sainte-Suzanne, Doubs, and in 1886 received his doctorate in theology at the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris. In 1894 he was appointed professor of patristics to the theological faculty at the Sorbonne.
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Al-Tahawi
853 - 935 (82 years)
Abu Ja'far Ahmad al-Tahawi , or simply aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī , was an Egyptian Arab Hanafi jurist and Traditionalist theologian. He studied with his uncle al-Muzani and was a Shafi'i jurist, before then changing to the Hanafi school. He is known for his work al-'Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah, a summary of Sunni Islamic creed which influenced Hanafis in Egypt.
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Shoki Coe
1914 - 1988 (74 years)
Shoki Coe was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, erstwhile principal of Tainan Theological Seminary and director of the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches. Through the Theological Education Fund, he is widely known for his coinage of the notion of "contextualizing theology," later better known as "contextual theology," which argues for theology's need to respond to the sociopolitical concerns of a local context. He was named by Kosuke Koyama as the latter's spiritual father.
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Margaret the Virgin
292 - 307 (15 years)
Margaret, known as Margaret of Antioch in the West, and as Saint Marina the Great Martyr in the East, is celebrated as a saint on 20 July in Western Christianity, on 17 July by the Eastern Orthodox Church, and on Epip 23 and Hathor 23 in the Coptic Orthodox Church.
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Yisrael Meir Kagan
1838 - 1933 (95 years)
Yisrael Meir ha-Kohen Kagan , known popularly as the Chofetz Chaim, after his book on lashon hara, who was also well known for the Mishna Berurah, his book on ritual law, was an influential Lithuanian Jewish rabbi, Halakhist, posek, and ethicist whose works continue to be widely influential in Orthodox Jewish life.
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Johann Georg Walch
1693 - 1775 (82 years)
Johann Georg Walch was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born in Meiningen, where his father, Georg Walch, was general superintendent. He studied at Leipzig and Jena, amongst his teachers being J. F. Buddeus, whose only daughter he married. He published in 1716 a work, Historia critica Latinae linguae, which soon came into wide use. Two years later he became professor extraordinarius of philosophy at Jena. In 1719, he was appointed professor ordinarius of rhetoric, in 1721 of poetry, and in 1724 professor extraordinarius of theology. In 1728 he became professor ordinarius of theology...
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William Sanday
1843 - 1920 (77 years)
William Sanday was a British Anglican theologian and priest. He was the Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis of Holy Scripture from 1883 to 1895 and the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity from 1895 to 1919; both chairs were at the University of Oxford. He had previously been Master of Bishop Hatfield's Hall, University of Durham.
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Sebastian Castellio
1515 - 1563 (48 years)
Sebastian Castellio was a French preacher and theologian; and one of the first Reformed Christian proponents of religious toleration, freedom of conscience and thought. Introduction Castellio was born in 1515 at Saint-Martin-du-Frêne in the village of Bresse of Dauphiné, the country bordering Switzerland, France, and Savoy. Under the Savoyard rule his family called itself Chateillon, Chatillon, or Chataillon. Having been educated at the age of twenty at the University of Lyon, Castellio was fluent in both French and Italian, and became an expert in Latin, Hebrew and Greek as well. Subseque...
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Friedrich Adolf Philippi
1809 - 1882 (73 years)
Friedrich Adolf Philippi was a Lutheran theologian of Jewish origin. He was the son of a wealthy Jewish banker, a friend of the Mendelssohn family. Converted to Christianity in 1829, he studied philosophy and theology at Berlin and Leipzig , and became successively a teacher at a private school in Dresden and at the Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium at Berlin .
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Herman Hoeksema
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Herman Hoeksema was a Dutch Reformed theologian. Hoeksema served as a long time pastor of the First Protestant Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. In 1924 he refused to accept the three points of common grace as formulated which had then been declared official church dogma of the Christian Reformed Church, as an addition to its adopted creeds and confessions. The result of this controversy was that Hoeksema, and ministers George Ophoff, and Henry Danhof, were deposed by their respective classes before leaving the CRC with their congregations. These men then established the Protestant Reformed Churches.
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Paul Petter Waldenström
1838 - 1917 (79 years)
Paul Petter Waldenström was a Swedish lecturer, priest in the Church of Sweden and theologian, member of the Riksdag, and writer, who became the most prominent leader of the free church movement in late 19th-century Sweden.
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Eusebius of Emesa
295 - 360 (65 years)
Eusebius of Emesa was a learned Christian cleric of the Greek church, and a pupil of Eusebius of Caesarea. He was born in Edessa and became the bishop of Emesa . The Latin form of his name is Eusebius Emesenus.
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Kirsopp Lake
1872 - 1946 (74 years)
Kirsopp Lake was an English New Testament scholar, Church historian, Greek Palaeographer, and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School. He had an uncommon breadth of interests. His main lines of research were the history of early Christianity, textual criticism of the New Testament, and Greek palaeography, in which fields he published definitive monographs. He also studied the historical figure of Jesus and wrote about theology and archaeology . He edited and translated a two-volume anthology of ancient Christian literature and the first five books of Eusebius' Chur...
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Joseph Estlin Carpenter
1844 - 1927 (83 years)
Joseph Estlin Carpenter was an English Unitarian minister, the principal of Manchester College, Oxford. He was an expert in Sanskrit and a pioneer in the study of comparative religion. Biography Carpenter was born in Ripley, Surrey. He was the second son of William Benjamin Carpenter. His grandfather was Unitarian minister Lant Carpenter.
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Louis-Nazaire Bégin
1840 - 1925 (85 years)
Louis-Nazaire Bégin was a Canadian Cardinal of the Catholic Church. Begin held a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and was later appointed Archbishop of Quebec by Pope Leo XIII and created cardinal by Pope Pius X .
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Prosper of Aquitaine
390 - 463 (73 years)
Prosper of Aquitaine , a Christian writer and disciple of Augustine of Hippo, was the first continuator of Jerome's Universal Chronicle. Life Prosper was a native of Aquitaine, and may have been educated at Bordeaux. By 417 he arrived in Marseilles as a refugee from Aquitaine in the aftermath of the Gothic invasions of Gaul. In 429 he was corresponding with Augustine. In 431 he appeared in Rome to appeal to Pope Celestine I regarding the teachings of Augustine; there is no further trace of him until 440, the first year of the pontificate of Pope Leo I, who had been in Gaul, where he may have met Prosper.
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Joseph G. Weiss
1918 - 1969 (51 years)
Joseph G. Weiss was a scholar of Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism. He was born in Budapest to a Neolog family, and studied both in university and at the Jewish Theological Seminary and after emigrating to Mandatory Palestine, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the tutelage of Prof. Gershom Scholem from 1941 till 1950, when Weiss moved to England. In England Weiss first taught children aged 5–11 at a Jewish School in Leeds, before spending time in London, Manchester and Oxford, where he occupied various research and teaching positions, eventually becoming the director of the Ins...
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John Miley
1813 - 1895 (82 years)
John Miley was an American Methodist Episcopal minister and theologian, who was one of the major Methodist theological voices of the 19th century. Biography Early life Miley was born the 25 December 1813 on a farm near Hamilton, Butler County, Ohio. Miley graduated from Augusta College where he received A.B. in 1834 and an A.M. in 1837. During his college life he was influenced by three professors Joseph Tomlinson, Joseph Trimble, and Henry Bascom.
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Jakob Böhme
1575 - 1624 (49 years)
Jakob Böhme was a German philosopher, Christian mystic, and Lutheran Protestant theologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme ; in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme.
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Karl Friedrich August Kahnis
1814 - 1888 (74 years)
Karl Friedrich August Kahnis was a German Neo-Lutheran theologian. Early life From a poor background, Kahnis was educated at the gymnasium of his native town Greiz, and after acting as private tutor for several years began the study of theology at Halle. He was at first an ardent Hegelian, but he passed to orthodox Lutheranism. The transition may be dated from the publication of his Dr. Ruge und Hegel: Ein Beitrag zur Würdigung Hegelscher Tendenzen .
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Archibald Alexander Hodge
1823 - 1886 (63 years)
Archibald Alexander Hodge , an American Presbyterian minister, was the principal of Princeton Seminary between 1878 and 1886. Biography He was born on July 18, 1823, to Sarah and Charles Hodge in Princeton, New Jersey. He was named after Charles' mentor, the first principal of Princeton Seminary, Archibald Alexander.
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Moshe Zvi Segal
1876 - 1968 (92 years)
Moshe Zvi Segal was an Israeli rabbi, linguist and Talmudic scholar. Biography Segal was born in Maishad, Lithuania in 1875. In 1896, he moved with his family to Scotland and subsequently to London. He was ordained as a rabbi in 1902 and later obtained a degree from Oxford University. He was the Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1910 to 1918, when he went to the British Mandate of Palestine as a member of the Zionist Commission with Chaim Weizmann.
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Abraham Calovius
1612 - 1686 (74 years)
Abraham Calovius was a Lutheran theologian, and was one of the champions of Lutheran orthodoxy in the 17th century. Biography He was born in Mohrungen , Ducal Prussia, a fief of Crown of Poland. After studying at Königsberg, in 1650 he was appointed professor of theology at Wittenberg, where he afterwards became general superintendent and primarius.
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Johannes Agricola
1494 - 1566 (72 years)
Johann or Johannes Agricola was a German Protestant Reformer during the Protestant Reformation. He was a follower and friend of Martin Luther, who became his antagonist in the matter of the binding obligation of the law on Christians.
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