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Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

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List of the most influential people in Theology,

#51

John Stott

#4091

Overall Influence

1921 - 2011 (90 years)

John Robert Walmsley Stott was an English Anglican priest and theologian who was noted as a leader of the worldwide evangelical movement. He was one of the principal authors of the Lausanne Covenant in 1974. In 2005, Time magazine ranked Stott among the 100 most influential people in the world.

#52

Ernst Käsemann

#9931

Overall Influence

1906 - 1998 (92 years)

Ernst Käsemann was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of New Testament in Mainz , Göttingen and Tübingen . Study and work Käsemann was born in Bochum. He obtained his PhD in New Testament at the University of Marburg in 1931, having written a dissertation on Pauline ecclesiology, with Rudolf Bultmann as his doctoral supervisor. Käsemann was one of Bultmann's more well-known politically left-of-centre pupils.

#53

Oscar Cullmann

#7294

Overall Influence

1902 - 1999 (97 years)

Oscar Cullmann was a French Lutheran theologian. He is best known for his work in the ecumenical movement and was partly responsible for the establishment of dialogue between the Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions. Because of his intense ecumenical work, Cullmann's Basel colleague Karl Barth joked with him that his tombstone would bear the inscription "advisor to three popes."

#54

David Bentley Hart

#2720

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

David Bentley Hart is an American writer, philosopher, religious studies scholar, critic, and theologian. Reviewers have commented on Hart's baroque prose and provocative rhetoric in over one thousand essays, reviews, and papers as well as nineteen books . From a predominantly Anglican family background, Hart became Eastern Orthodox when he was twenty-one. His academic works focus on Christian metaphysics, philosophy of mind, Indian and East Asian religion, Asian languages, classics, and literature as well as a New Testament translation. Books with wider audiences include The Doors of the Sea...

#55

Vern Poythress

#5855

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Vern Sheridan Poythress is an American philosopher, theologian, New Testament scholar and mathematician, who is currently the New Testament chair of the ESV Oversight Committee. He is also the Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary and editor of Westminster Theological Journal.

#56

John Meyendorff

#6171

Overall Influence

1926 - 1992 (66 years)

John Meyendorff was a leading theologian of the Orthodox Church of America as well as a writer and teacher. He served as the dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in the United States until June 30, 1992.

#57

Clark Pinnock

#9549

Overall Influence

1937 - 2010 (73 years)

Clark H. Pinnock was a Christian theologian, apologist and author. He was Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity College. Education and career Pinnock was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on February 3, 1937. He grew up in a liberal Baptist congregation. Pinnock once recounted that as a child he had little interest in the church. Even though he was brought up in Liberal Christianity, he later became part of the broad Evangelical tradition, and explored Reformed, Arminian and Pentecostal streams of thought.

#58

Gabriel Vahanian

Gabriel Vahanian

#12132

Overall Influence

1927 - 2012 (85 years)

Gabriel Vahanian was a French Protestant Christian theologian who was most remembered for his pioneering work in the theology of the "death of God" movement within academic circles in the 1960s, and who taught for 26 years in the U.S. before finishing a prestigious career in Strasbourg, France.

#59

Avery Dulles

#6423

Overall Influence

1918 - 2008 (90 years)

Avery Robert Dulles was an American Jesuit priest, theologian, and cardinal of the Catholic Church. Dulles served on the faculty of Woodstock College from 1960 to 1974, of the Catholic University of America from 1974 to 1988, and as the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University from 1988 to 2008. He was also an internationally known author and lecturer.

#60

René Laurentin

#10050

Overall Influence

1917 - 2017 (100 years)

Father René Laurentin was a French theologian. He is widely recognized as "one of the world’s foremost students" of Mariology and is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles on topics including Marian apparitions such as Lourdes and Medjugorje; visionaries and mystics including Bernadette Soubirous, Thérèse de Lisieux, Catherine Labouré, and Yvonne Aimée de Malestroit; as well as biblical exegesis, theology, and Vatican II.

#61

Thomas Jay Oord

Thomas Jay Oord

#4268

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and multidisciplinary scholar who directs a doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary and the Center for Open and Relational Theology. He formerly taught for sixteen years as a tenured professor at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho and before that a philosophy professor at Eastern Nazarene College. Oord is the author or editor of more than thirty books and hundreds of articles. He is known for his contributions to research on love, open theism, process theism, open and relational theology, postmodernism, the relationship betwe...

#62

Henri Nouwen

#4070

Overall Influence

1932 - 1996 (64 years)

Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen was a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian. His interests were rooted primarily in psychology, pastoral ministry, spirituality, social justice and community. Over the course of his life, Nouwen was heavily influenced by the work of Anton Boisen, Thomas Merton, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, and Jean Vanier.

#63

Franz König

#4224

Overall Influence

1905 - 2004 (99 years)

Franz König was an Austrian Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He served as archbishop of Vienna from 1956 to 1985, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958. The last surviving cardinal elevated by Pope John XXIII, he was the second-oldest and longest-serving cardinal worldwide at the time of his death.

#64

John Milbank

#4912

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Alasdair John Milbank is an English Anglo-Catholic theologian and is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he is President of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy. Milbank previously taught at the University of Virginia and before that at the University of Cambridge and the University of Lancaster. He is also chairman of the trustees of the think tank ResPublica.

#65

Keith Ward

#3896

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Keith Ward is an English philosopher and theologian. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a priest of the Church of England. He was a canon of Christ Church, Oxford, until 2003. Comparative theology and the relationship between science and religion are two of his main topics of interest.

#66

Kazoh Kitamori

#15273

Overall Influence

1916 - 1998 (82 years)

Kazoh Kitamori was a Japanese theologian, pastor, author, professor, and churchman. His most famous work in the West is The Theology of the Pain of God, which was published in 1946 in Japan and in the United States in 1965. He was a longtime professor at Tokyo Union Theological Seminary. He was, along with Kōsuke Koyama, a leading contributor to Protestant Christian theology from twentieth century Japan.

#67

Sinclair Ferguson

#13199

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Sinclair Buchanan Ferguson is a Scottish theologian known in Reformed Christian circles for his teaching, writing, and editorial work. He has been Chancellor's Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary since 2017, commuting from Scotland, where he was an assistant minister at St. Peter's Free Church of Scotland, Dundee. He is currently a preaching associate at Trinity Church, Aberdeen

#68

Friedrich Wetter

#11490

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (96 years)

Friedrich Wetter is a German cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Germany, from 1982 to 2007. He was Bishop of Speyer from 1968 to 1982. He has been a cardinal since 1985.

#69

Roger E. Olson

#9972

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Roger Eugene Olson is an American Baptist theologian and Professor of Christian Theology of Ethics at the Baylor University. Biography Personal life Olson was born on February 2, 1952, in Des Moines, Iowa. He is married and he and his wife have two daughters and one granddaughter. He is member of Calvary Baptist Church in Waco.

#70

J. Dwight Pentecost

#10302

Overall Influence

1915 - 2014 (99 years)

John Dwight Pentecost was an American Christian theologian, best known for his book Things to Come. Pentecost was born in Pennsylvania and died in Dallas, Texas. His wife was Dorothy Harrison Pentecost . John and Dorothy had two daughters: Jane Pentecost Fenby and Gwendolyn Ann Pentecost Arnold.

#71

Thomas F. Torrance

Thomas F. Torrance

#13795

Overall Influence

1913 - 2007 (94 years)

Thomas Forsyth Torrance , commonly referred to as T. F. Torrance, was a Scottish Protestant theologian and minister. He was a member of the famed Torrance family of theologians. Torrance served for 27 years as professor of Christian dogmatics at New College, in the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his pioneering work in the study of science and theology, but he is equally respected for his work in systematic theology.

#72

Richard Bauckham

Richard Bauckham

#4966

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Richard John Bauckham is an English Anglican scholar in theology, historical theology and New Testament studies, specialising in New Testament Christology and the Gospel of John. He is a senior scholar at Ridley Hall, Cambridge.

#73

Sallie McFague

#7293

Overall Influence

1933 - 2019 (86 years)

Sallie McFague was an American feminist Christian theologian, best known for her analysis of how metaphor lies at the heart of how Christians may speak about God. She applied this approach, in particular, to ecological issues, writing extensively on care for the Earth as if it were God's "body". She was Distinguished Theologian in Residence at the Vancouver School of Theology, British Columbia, Canada.

#74

J. P. Moreland

#5428

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

James Porter Moreland , better known as J. P. Moreland, is an American philosopher, theologian, and Christian apologist. He currently serves as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in La Mirada, California.

#75

John Macquarrie

#10441

Overall Influence

1919 - 2007 (88 years)

John Macquarrie was a Scottish-born theologian, philosopher and Anglican priest. He was the author of Principles of Christian Theology and Jesus Christ in Modern Thought . Timothy Bradshaw, writing in the Handbook of Anglican Theologians, described Macquarrie as "unquestionably Anglicanism's most distinguished systematic theologian in the second half of the 20th century."

#76

John Mbiti

#7661

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

John Samuel Mbiti was a Kenyan-born Christian philosopher and writer. He was an ordained Anglican priest, and is considered "the father of modern African theology". Early life John Mbiti was born on 30 November 1931 in Mulango, Kitui County, eastern Kenya. His parents were two farmers, Samuel Mutuvi Ngaangi and Valesi Mbandi Kiimba; He was one of six children and was raised in a strong Christian environment. His Christian upbringing encouraged his educational journey through the African Inland Church. He attended Alliance High School in Nairobi and continued his education at University College of Makerere where he graduated in 1953.

#77

Federico Lombardi

#3411

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Federico Lombardi is an Italian Catholic priest and the former director of the Holy See Press Office. He succeeded Joaquín Navarro-Valls and was succeeded by Greg Burke. Lombardi also serves as the postulator for the sainthood cause of Fr Bernardo Mattio.

#78

Antje Jackelén

#18378

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Antje Jackelén is archbishop emerita and primate emerita of the Church of Sweden, the national church. On 15 October 2013, she was elected the 70th Archbishop of Uppsala and formally received through a service in Uppsala Cathedral on 15 June 2014, making her Sweden's first foreign-born archbishop since the 12th century, and the first female archbishop.

#79

Carl F. H. Henry

Carl F. H. Henry

#6107

Overall Influence

1913 - 2003 (90 years)

Carl Ferdinand Howard Henry was an American evangelical Christian theologian who provided intellectual and institutional leadership to the neo-evangelical movement in the mid-to-late 20th century. He was ordained in 1942 after graduating from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary and went on to teach and lecture at various schools and publish and edit many works surrounding the neo-evangelical movement. His early book, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism , was influential in calling evangelicals to differentiate themselves from separatist fundamentalism and claim a role in influencing the wider American culture.

#80

David Tracy

#11902

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

David W. Tracy is an American theologian and Roman Catholic priest. He is Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

#81

Louis Bouyer

#6625

Overall Influence

1913 - 2004 (91 years)

Louis Bouyer, CO , was a French Catholic priest and former Lutheran minister who was received into the Catholic Church in 1939. During his religious career he was an influential theological thinker, especially in the fields of history, liturgy and spirituality, and as peritus helped shape the vision of the Second Vatican Council. Along with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and others, he was a co-founder of the international review Communio. He was chosen by the pope to be part of a team to initiate the International Theological Commission in 1969.

#82

Albert Mohler

#6752

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Richard Albert Mohler Jr. is an American evangelical theologian, the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and host of the podcast The Briefing, where he daily analyzes the news and recent events from an evangelical perspective.

#83

Bernhard Häring

Bernhard Häring

#16080

Overall Influence

1912 - 1998 (86 years)

Bernard Häring, CSsR was a German moral theologian and a Redemptorist priest in the Catholic Church. Life Häring was born at Böttingen in Germany to a prosperous farmer. In 1934, he entered the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, was ordained a priest in 1939, and completed doctoral studies moral theology in obedience to his superiors at the University of Tübingen.

#84

Gerd Theissen

#6946

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Gerd Theißen is a German Protestant theologian and New Testament scholar. He is Professor of New Testament Theology at the University of Heidelberg. Early life and education Theissen obtained his doctorate in theology in Protestant theology from the University of Bonn in 1968. He then took a position studying Evangelical Theology at the University of Bonn. He obtained his habilitation in 1972 in Bonn, with a form-critical work on early Christian miracle stories.

#85

Robert John Russell

#9337

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Robert John Russell is founder and Director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences . He is also the Ian G. Barbour Professor of Theology and Science in Residence at the Graduate Theological Union . He has written and edited extensively on possible scientific mechanisms of Christian belief.

#86

Michael Horton

#12548

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Michael Scott Horton has been the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California since 1998, Editor-in-Chief of Modern Reformation magazine, and President and host of the nationally syndicated radio broadcast, The White Horse Inn. Both Modern Reformation magazine and The White Horse Inn radio broadcast are now entities under the umbrella of White Horse Media.

#87

William T. Cavanaugh

#12298

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

William T. Cavanaugh is an American Roman Catholic theologian, known for his work in political theology and Christian ethics. Biography Cavanaugh received his Bachelor of Arts degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 1984, and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge in 1987. He later attended Duke University, where he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in religion in 1996. His areas of specialization are in political theology, economic ethics, and ecclesiology.

#88

George Carey

#3420

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

George Leonard Carey, Baron Carey of Clifton is a retired Anglican bishop who was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, having previously been the Bishop of Bath and Wells. During his time as archbishop the Church of England ordained its first women priests and the debate over attitudes to homosexuality became more prominent, especially at the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops.

#89

Michał Heller

#5106

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Michał Kazimierz Heller is a Polish philosopher, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, theologian, and Roman Catholic priest. He is a professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff.

#90

Teresa Forcades

Teresa Forcades

#18557

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Teresa Forcades i Vila is a Catalan physician, Benedictine nun and social activist. Forcades i Vila is known for her outspoken and sometimes controversial views on the church, public health and Catalan independence, and for her vaccine skepticism.

#91

R. Kent Hughes

#16680

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

R. Kent Hughes is the former senior pastor of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, United States. Hughes is the author of numerous books, including the best-selling Disciplines of a Godly Man. He is also editor and contributor for the projected 50-volume Preaching the Word series, including Mark: Jesus, Servant and Savior, which received the ECPA Gold Medallion Book Award for best commentary in 1990. Hughes served as senior pastor of College Church for 27 years and retired at the end of 2006. He moved to Wheaton from California, where he pastored two churches. He holds a BA from Whittier College, an M.Div.

#92

Mother Teresa

#172

Overall Influence

1910 - 1997 (87 years)

Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu MC , better known as Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Born in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire, at the age of 18 she moved to Ireland and later to India, where she lived most of her life. On 4 September 2016, she was canonised by the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The anniversary of her death, 5 September, is her feast day.

#93

Robert Jenson

#14806

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Robert William Jenson was a leading American Lutheran and ecumenical theologian. Prior to his retirement in 2007, he spent seven years as the director of the Center for Theological Inquiry at Princeton Theological Seminary. He was the co-founder of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology and is known for his two-volume Systematic Theology published between 1997 and 1999.

#94

Eberhard Jüngel

#9508

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Eberhard Jüngel was a German Lutheran theologian. He was Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology and the Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Tübingen.

#95

Tomáš Halík

#9018

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Tomáš Halík is a Czech Catholic priest, philosopher, and theologian. He is a professor of sociology at the Charles University in Prague, pastor of the Academic Parish by St. Salvator Church in Prague, and president of the Czech Christian Academy.

#96

Greg Bahnsen

#2894

Overall Influence

1948 - 1995 (47 years)

Greg L. Bahnsen was an American Reformed philosopher, apologist, and debater. He was a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and a full-time Scholar in Residence for the Southern California Center for Christian Studies . He is also considered a contributor to the field of Christian apologetics, as he popularized the presuppositional method of Cornelius Van Til. He is the father of David L. Bahnsen, an American portfolio manager, author, and television commentator.

#97

John Gerstner

#9922

Overall Influence

1914 - 1996 (82 years)

John Henry Gerstner was an American Reformed and Presbyterian theologian and professor of Church History at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Knox Theological Seminary. He was an expert on the life and theology of Jonathan Edwards.

#98

Thomas C. Oden

#13599

Overall Influence

1931 - 2016 (85 years)

Thomas Clark Oden was an American Methodist theologian and religious author. He is often regarded as the father of the paleo-orthodox theological movement and is considered to be one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. He was Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics at Drew University in New Jersey from 1980 until his retirement in 2004.

#99

Kosuke Koyama

#21154

Overall Influence

1929 - 2009 (80 years)

Kosuke Koyama was a Japanese Protestant Christian theologian. Biography Koyama was born in Tokyo in 1929, of Christian parents. He later moved to New Jersey in the United States, where he completed his B.D. at Drew Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. at Princeton Theological Seminary, the latter on the interpretation of the Psalms of Martin Luther in 1959.

#100

Greg Boyle

#8119

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Gregory Joseph Boyle, S.J. is an American Catholic priest of the Jesuit order. He is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles.

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