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

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List of the most influential people in Theology,

#1851

Filippo Santoro

Filippo Santoro

#171549

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Filippo Santoro is an Italian Roman Catholic prelate. He was made archbishop of Taranto in 2011. In 2023, he resigned as archbishop

#1852

John Barwick

#154381

Overall Influence

John Barwick was an English theologian. Life Barwick took his name from Berwick, where he appears to have been born or brought up. From Berwick he seems to have removed to the Franciscan schools at Oxford, at which university he became a Doctor of Theology, and is enumerated as the twenty-second reader of divinity belonging to that order in the early years of the fourteenth century. He appears to have studied at Paris likewise; for we are told by Dempster and Bale that he also went by the name of Breulanlius; and this Breulanlius is mentioned towards the end of the fifteenth century by the al...

#1853

Jean Margain

#173726

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Jean Margain was a French Hebraist. He is known by his Semitic and Samaritan studies. Life Education Margain got his Doctor of Arts in 1988 with his thesis Les particules dans le Targum samaritain de Genèse-Exode: jalons pour une histoire de l'araméen samaritain at Université Paris III.

#1854

ʻAlí-Muhammad Varqá

#86340

Overall Influence

1912 - 2007 (95 years)

ʻAlí-Muhammad Varqá was a prominent adherent of the Baháʼí Faith. He was the longest surviving Hand of the Cause of God, an appointed position in the Baháʼí Faith whose main function is to propagate and protect the religion on the international level.

#1855

Eduard Nielsen

#192235

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Eduard Mikael V. Nielsen was a Danish theologian. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1956 to 1991. He was a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 1987.

#1856

John Meehan

#177659

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

John Meehan SJ is a Canadian Jesuit priest, historian and academic. He is Director of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He was president and vice-chancellor of the University of Sudbury in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada from September 2019 until 2021. He was formerly rector of the Church of the Gesù in Montreal and president of Campion College in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

#1857

Inés Talamantez

#110119

Overall Influence

Inés M. Talamantez was an ethnographer and scholar of religion. She was professor of religious studies at University of California, Santa Barbara . She was an expert on Native American religion and philosophy.

#1858

Juan Ignacio Larrea Holguín

#27011

Overall Influence

1927 - 2006 (79 years)

Juan Ignacio Larrea Holguín , was archbishop of Guayaquil for ten years, and the first member of the prelature of Opus Dei in Ecuador. He was also a distinguished lawyer, frequently consulted about Ecuadorian Civil law and the author of more than 60 books about jurisprudence.

#1859

Anne van der Meiden

#160920

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Anne van der Meiden was a Dutch theologian, translator, and professor at Utrecht University. He translated the bible into Tweants dialect.

#1860

Julián Carrón

#99105

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Julián Carrón is a Spanish Catholic priest, and theologian and the former leader of the Italian Communion and Liberation movement.

#1861

Edvard Kovač

#129680

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Fr. Edvard Kovač is a Slovenian theologian, philosopher and author. He is a member of the Order of Friars Minor and professor at the University of Ljubljana Theological Faculty and the Catholic University of Toulouse.

#1862

Bernadette Porter

#90088

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Sister Dr. Bernadette Mary Porter is a British Roman Catholic nun, educator and academic administrator. She was educated at Merrow Grange Grammar School , Digby Stuart College and King's College London . She served as Vice-Chancellor, Roehampton University from 1999 to 2004, having previously held various posts at Roehampton Institute.

#1863

José Antonio Dammert Bellido

#167618

Overall Influence

1917 - 2008 (91 years)

José Antonio Dammert Bellido was a Peruvian bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Bellido was born in Lima, Peru and ordained a priest on December 21, 1946. Bellido was appointed Auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Lima, along with Titular Bishop of Amathus in Palaestina, on April 14, 1958 and ordained bishop May 15, 1958. On March 15, 1962 he was appointed Bishop of Diocese of Cajamarca and would remain in post until his retirement on December 1, 1992.

#1864

Barhadbshabba of Hulwan

#188398

Overall Influence

Barḥadbshabba of Ḥulwān was a 7th-century theologian and Christian bishop of the Church of the East who wrote many religious works and a history of the School of Nisibis which is of historical interest.

#1865

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn

#130505

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Niels Jørgen Cappelørn is a Danish theologian, Søren Kierkegaard scholar and former director of Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen. He has written and edited a number of books on Kierkegaard, and was editor of Index til Søren Kierkegaards Papirer, bind XIV-XVI . He was Director of the Danish Bible Society from 1980 to 1993.

#1866

Jorunn Økland

#130326

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Jorunn Økland is a Norwegian gender studies expert and biblical scholar with a background in Classics. She is currently Director at the Norwegian Institute at Athens and Professor of Gender Studies in the Humanities at the University of Oslo , and former Director of its Centre for Gender Research . Her fields of expertise are Pauline Studies, ancient mediterranean material culture, feminist critique of religion, gender and sacred texts, Bible translation, and cultural/secular uses of the Bible.

#1867

Richard of Campsall

#191317

Overall Influence

Richard of Campsall was an English theologian and scholastic philosopher, at the University of Oxford. He was a Fellow of Balliol College and then of Merton College. He is now considered a possible precursor to the views usually associated with William of Ockham.

#1868

John Trillo

#133012

Overall Influence

1915 - 1992 (77 years)

Albert John Trillo was a Church of England bishop. John Trillo grew up in Cricklewood, North London, and was educated at the Quintin School and King's College, London. On leaving school he worked in the film industry, for British Lion, and obtained his BA degree as a part-time student. He was ordained in 1938 and was a curate at Christ Church, Fulham before becoming the priest in charge of St Michael's, Cricklewood. From 1945 he worked for the Student Christian Movement, pioneering its work in Yorkshire grammar schools and becoming its secretary. From 1950-1955 he was rector of Friern Barn...

#1869

Richard Knowling

1851 - 1919 (68 years)

Canon Richard Knowling, DD was the Chaplain of King's College London, canon of Durham and professor of divinity at Durham University. Early life Richard John Knowling was born in Devonport, England and educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton and at Balliol College in Oxford. After taking Honours in Lit.Hum and theology, he was appointed classical master at Abingdon School in 1874. In 1875 Knowling was ordained deacon and from 1878 to 1879 served as curate of Wellington in Somerset, where his father, Prebendary Knowling, was vicar.

#1870

Oskar Holtzmann

1859 - 1934 (75 years)

Oskar Holtzmann was a German theologian who specialized in New Testament studies. From 1877 to 1883 he studied theology at the universities of Strasbourg, Göttingen and Giessen and at the seminary in Friedberg. Afterwards, he served as a pastor in Bickenbach and as a teacher at a number of different schools. In 1889 he became a lecturer at the University of Giessen, where during the following year, he was appointed an associate professor of New Testament exegesis.

#1871

Ole Hallesby

1879 - 1961 (82 years)

Ole Kristian Hallesby was a conservative, Norwegian Lutheran theologian, author and educator. Biography Ole Kristian Hallesby was born in Aremark, in Østfold, Norway. Hallesby grew up as the sixth of eight siblings on a family farm with a father also served as an assistant pastor. His family was from the Lutheran piety of the Haugean heritage. He graduated with a degree in theology in 1903 and was awarded his doctorate in 1909.

#1872

Charles E. Sheedy

1912 - 1990 (78 years)

Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C. was an American priest and theologian of the Congregation of Holy Cross and an administrator at the University of Notre Dame. Youth and training Fr. Sheedy was born on July 1, 1912, to Patrick and Estelle Sheedy in Pittsburgh, PA. The fifth of six children, his birth was preceded by siblings Morgan, Donald, John, and Leo, and followed by Herman. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Notre Dame in 1933, a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1936, and a Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 1945 and a Doctor of Sacred Theology from the Catholic...

#1873

Georg Christian Knapp

Georg Christian Knapp

1753 - 1825 (72 years)

Georg Christian Knapp was a German Protestant theologian. Biography He was born in Glaucha, now a part of Halle, and received his early education in the orphan school at Halle , of which his father was director. He later studied theology at the Universities of Halle and Göttingen. In 1777 he was an associate professor at Halle, where in 1782 he became a full professor of theology. In 1785 he was appointed Kondirektor of the Franckesche Stiftungen , where beginning in 1799, along with August Hermann Niemeyer, he served as co-director. He died in Halle.

#1874

Ignatius Knoblecher

Ignatius Knoblecher

1819 - 1858 (39 years)

Ignatius Knoblecher , also known by his Arabian nickname Abuna Soliman , was a Slovene Roman Catholic missionary in Eastern North Africa. He was one of the first explorers of the White Nile basin. Life Knoblecher was born in the small village of Škocjan in Lower Carniola. He studied at the secondary school in Rudolfswerth , at the lyceum and the theological seminary in Laibach , and at the College of Propaganda in Rome. On 9 March 1845 he was ordained a priest, and a year later graduated as a doctor of theology.

#1875

Joseph Sittler

1904 - 1987 (83 years)

Joseph Andrew Sittler was an American Lutheran minister and theologian who taught at Maywood Seminary, eventually merged into the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He was also active in the Christian ecumenical movement, working with World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches.

#1876

Daniel Sidney Warner

Daniel Sidney Warner

1842 - 1895 (53 years)

Daniel Sidney Warner was an American church reformer and one of the founders of the Church of God and other similar church groups in the holiness movement. He called for evangelism, the preaching of entire sanctification, and the unity of Christians.

#1877

Isaak August Dorner

Isaak August Dorner

1809 - 1884 (75 years)

Isaak August Dorner was a German Lutheran church leader. He was a meditating theologian in nineteenth-century Germany who served as a professor of theology at the University of Berlin and had an international influence.

#1878

Salomo Glassius

Salomo Glassius

1593 - 1656 (63 years)

Salomo Glassius was a German theologian and biblical critic born at Sondershausen, in the principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. In 1612 he entered the University of Jena. In 1615, with the intent of studying law, he moved to Wittenberg. Due to illness, he returned to Jena after a year. Here, as a student of theology under Johann Gerhard, he directed his attention especially to Hebrew and the cognate dialects. In 1619 he was made an adjunctus of the philosophical faculty. He later was appointment as Professor of Hebrew.

#1879

Frédéric Louis Godet

Frédéric Louis Godet

1812 - 1900 (88 years)

Frédéric Louis Godet was a Swiss Protestant theologian. Biography Godet was born on 25 October 1812 in Neuchâtel. His father, Paul-Henri, who was a lawyer, died early. His mother, Eusébie née Gallot, a pious, strong and intelligent pastor's daughter, who founded a girls' school, devoted herself to his early training.

#1880

Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke

Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke

1791 - 1855 (64 years)

Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke was a German theologian. Luecke was born at Egeln near Magdeburg, where his father was a merchant. He studied theology at Halle and Göttingen. In 1814 he received the degree of doctor in philosophy from Halle; in 1816 he moved to the Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, where he became licentiate in theology, and qualified as Privatdozent.

#1881

Johann Konrad Dippel

Johann Konrad Dippel

1673 - 1734 (61 years)

Johann Konrad Dippel, also spelled Johann Conrad Dippel , was a German Pietist theologian, physician, alchemist and occultist. Life Dippel was born at Castle Frankenstein near Mühltal and Darmstadt, and therefore once at his school the addendum Franckensteinensis and once at his university the addendum Franckensteina-Strataemontanus was used.

#1882

Sebastian Castellio

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...

#1883

Anselm of Laon

1050 - 1117 (67 years)

Anselm of Laon , properly Ansel , was a French theologian and founder of a school of scholars who helped to pioneer biblical hermeneutics. Biography Born of very humble parents at Laon before the middle of the 11th century, he is said to have studied under Saint Anselm at Bec, though this is almost certainly incorrect. Other potential teachers of Anselm have been identified, including Bruno of Cologne and Manegold of Lautenbach. By around 1080, he had moved back to his place of birth and was teaching at the cathedral school of Laon, with his brother Ralph. Around 1109, he became dean and chancellor of the cathedral, and in 1115 he was one of Laon's two archdeacons.

#1884

Cleland Boyd McAfee

1866 - 1944 (78 years)

Cleland Boyd McAfee was an American theologian, Presbyterian minister and hymn writer, best known for penning the gospel hymn, "Near to the Heart of God," and its tune called "McAfee". He wrote the song after the concurrent deaths of two of his young nieces, caused by diphtheria. He also is believed to be the creator of the acronym TULIP, which represents the Five Points of Calvinism.

#1885

John of Shanghai and San Francisco

John of Shanghai and San Francisco

1896 - 1966 (70 years)

John of Shanghai and San Francisco was a prominent Eastern Orthodox ascetic and hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia who was active in the mid-20th century. He was a pastor and spiritual father of high reputation and a reputed wonderworker to whom were attributed powers of prophecy, clairvoyance and healing. He is often referred to as "St. John the Wonderworker".

#1886

Louis Segond

1810 - 1885 (75 years)

Louis Segond was a Swiss theologian who translated the Bible into French from the original texts in Hebrew and Greek. He was born in Plainpalais, near Geneva. After studying theology in Geneva, Strasbourg and Bonn, he was pastor of the Geneva National Church in Chêne-Bougeries, then from 1872, Professor of Old Testament in Geneva.

#1887

P. T. Forsyth

1848 - 1921 (73 years)

Peter Taylor Forsyth, also known as P. T. Forsyth, was a Scottish theologian. Biography The son of a postman, Forsyth studied at the University of Aberdeen and then in Göttingen . He was ordained into the Congregational ministry and served churches as pastor at Bradford, Manchester, Leicester and Cambridge, before becoming Principal of Hackney College, London in 1901.

#1888

Nicolaus Hunnius

Nicolaus Hunnius

1585 - 1643 (58 years)

Nicolaus Hunnius was an orthodox Lutheran theologian of the Lutheran scholastic tradition. Hunnius was born at Marburg, the third son of Egidius Hunnius. At the age of fifteen he entered the University of Wittenberg, where he studied philology, philosophy, and theology. In 1609 he joined the philosophical faculty and lectured in philosophy and theology. He followed the same theological direction as his father, inherited his temper and talent as a polemist, and was like him, possessed of great learning. In virtue of his ability Elector John George I. of Saxony appointed him, in 1612, superin...

#1889

Milton Steinberg

Milton Steinberg

1903 - 1950 (47 years)

Milton Steinberg was an American rabbi, philosopher, theologian and author. Life Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised with the combination of his grandparents' traditional Jewish piety and his father's modernist socialism. He graduated as valedictorian of his class at DeWitt Clinton High School and then majored in Classics at City College of New York which he graduated from summa cum laude in 1924. Steinberg received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 1928 and then entered the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he was ordained. In seminary, he was strongly...

#1890

Walther Zimmerli

1907 - 1983 (76 years)

Walther Theodor Zimmerli was a Swiss academic theologian in the Reformed tradition and an Old Testament scholar. Life After finishing secondary school in Schiers, Zimmerli studied theology at the universities of Zurich, Berlin and Göttingen. After passing his practical exams at the end of April 1930, he worked in the Theological Faculty at the University of Göttingen as the assistant to Professors Hemperl and Rahlfs and earned his Licentiate in Theology in 1932.

#1891

Michel de Certeau

1925 - 1986 (61 years)

Michel de Certeau was a French Jesuit priest and scholar whose work combined history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences as well as hermeneutics, semiotics, ethnology, and religion. He was known as a philosopher of everyday life and widely regarded as a historian who had interests ranging from travelogues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to contemporary urban life.

#1892

Johann Friedrich König

1619 - 1664 (45 years)

Johann Friedrich König was a German Lutheran theologian, born in Dresden. From 1656 he was a professor at the university of Rostock. He died in Rostock, aged 44.

#1893

Rudolf Smend

1851 - 1913 (62 years)

Rudolf Smend --"the Elder"-- was a German theologian born in Lengerich, Westphalia. He was an older brother to theologian Julius Smend , and the father of Carl Friedrich Rudolf Smend , an authority on constitutional and ecclesiastical law, and the grandfather of noted Old Testament historian Rudolf Smend who spent his life at the University of Goettingen as one of two chairs of Old Testament .

#1894

Erik Pontoppidan

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.

#1895

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.

#1896

Julius Wegscheider

1771 - 1849 (78 years)

Julius August Ludwig Wegscheider , was a German Protestant theologian. Life Wegscheider was born at Küblingen . He studied theology at the University of Helmstedt, where he was a pupil of Heinrich Philipp Konrad Henke. From 1795 to 1805, he worked as a tutor to the family of a wealthy Hamburg merchant. In 1805 he presented a dissertation titled Graecorum mysteriis religioni non obtrudendis at the University of Göttingen. He then served as a professor of theology at the University of Rinteln , and at the University of Halle from 1810 onwards.

#1897

Heinrich Müller

Heinrich Müller

1631 - 1675 (44 years)

Heinrich Müller was a German devotional author, Protestant writer of hymns, a Lutheran minister and theologian and a professor at the University of Rostock from 1647 to 1650. He famously denounced the font, the pulpit, the confessional, and the altar as "the four dumb idols of the Lutheran Church". He died in Rostock, aged 43.

#1898

Joseph Clifford Fenton

Joseph Clifford Fenton

1906 - 1969 (63 years)

Joseph Clifford Fenton was a Catholic priest who promoted conservative theology. He was a professor of fundamental dogmatic theology at the Catholic University of America and editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review . A strong opponent of liberal beliefs, he was a significant American Catholic theologian of the 20th century. He served as a peritus for Cardinal Ottaviani at the Second Vatican Council, where his position was overruled. He was also secretary of the Catholic Theological Society of America.

#1899

Bartolomé de Medina

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.

#1900

Noah Porter

1811 - 1892 (81 years)

Noah Thomas Porter III was an American Congregational minister, academic, philosopher, author, lexicographer and an outspoken anti-slavery activist. Porter Mountain, of the Adirondack Mountains, was named for him after he was the first to climb it in 1875. He was President of Yale College .

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