The Most Influential People Across History
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,
#2051
John Bascombe Lock
1849 - 1921 (72 years)
John Bascombe Lock was an English priest and academic, who was bursar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and author of several mathematical textbooks. He was born 18 March 1849 in Dorchester, son of Joseph Lock , a butcher and farmer, and Elizabeth Marvin née Wills. He was baptised on 24 June 1849 at St Peter's Church, Dorchester. He was educated at William Barnes's School, Dorchester; Bristol Grammar School; and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he gained his BA in 1872. He was ordained deacon in 1872, and priest in 1873. He was assistant master at Eton College from 1872 to ...
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Pierre Busée
1540 - 1587 (47 years)
Pierre Busée was a Dutch Jesuit theologian. He assisted in producing the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum and the catechism of Peter Canisius. Life When twenty-two years old he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Cologne where six years later he became master of novices. In addition to this office he was appointed to give religious instruction to the upper classes in the Jesuit college at Cologne.
Go to Profile#2053
Thomas Richey
1831 - 1905 (74 years)
Thomas Richey was a prominent Irish-American Anglo-Catholic priest, professor, and author in the Episcopal Church. He was born in Newry, County Down, in Ireland and had settled in Pittsburgh by 1847, following his graduation at 16 from Queen's College, Belfast. Richey was a tutor at St. James College, Hagerstown, Maryland under John Barrett Kerfoot from 1848-1851. He was graduated from the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in 1854 and ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Horatio Potter in 1855.
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Paul Tillich
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian who was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich taught at German universities before immigrating to the United States in 1933, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#2055
Bernard Lonergan
1904 - 1984 (80 years)
Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian, regarded by many as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. Lonergan's works include Insight: A Study of Human Understanding and Method in Theology , as well as two studies of Thomas Aquinas, several theological textbooks, and numerous essays, including two posthumously published essays on macroeconomics. The projected 25-volume Collected Works with the University of Toronto Press is now complete. Lonergan held appointments at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome; Regis College, T...
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Geoffrey Hugo Lampe
1912 - 1980 (68 years)
Geoffrey William Hugo Lampe was a British theologian and Anglican priest who dedicated his life to theological teaching and research. He was Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham from 1953 to 1960. He then moved to the University of Cambridge where he was Ely Professor of Divinity from 1960 to 1970 and Regius Professor of Divinity from 1970 until his retirement in 1979. He was also a member of the General Synod of the Church of England.
Go to Profile#2057
Carl Hermann Kraeling
1897 - 1966 (69 years)
Carl Hermann Kraeling , an American theologian, historian, and archaeologist; born in Brooklyn on March 10, 1897, and died in New Haven on November 14, 1966; he is known for his publications on the synagogue and the Christian chapel of Dura-Europos.
Go to Profile#2058
Oswald Thompson Allis
1880 - 1973 (93 years)
Oswald Thompson Allis was an American Presbyterian theologian and Bible scholar. Biography He was born in 1880 and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton Theological Seminary. He received a master's degree from Princeton University and a doctorate from the University of Berlin. Later, Allis received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Hampden Sydney College in 1927.
Go to Profile#2059
Herbert Henry Gowen
1864 - 1960 (96 years)
Herbert Henry Gowen was an Anglican missionary and orientalist who wrote on the history of China and Japan and was long associated with the University of Washington. Early life and education Herbert Gowen was born in Yarmouth, England and earned a B.A. degree from St. Augustine's College in 1886. He was ordained a deacon in the Church of England the same year.
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Steven Schwarzschild
1924 - 1989 (65 years)
Steven S. Schwarzschild was a rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and editor. Biography Schwarzschild was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and grew up in Berlin. He escaped to the United States with his family in 1939.
Go to Profile#2061
L. Harold DeWolf
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Lotan Harold DeWolf , usually cited as L. Harold Dewolf, was an American Methodist minister and professor of systematic theology at Boston University where he was Martin Luther King Jr.'s "primary teacher and mentor".
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Joachim Begrich
1900 - 1945 (45 years)
Joachim Begrich was a German biblical scholar and theologian born in Predel, a hamlet now belonging to Elsteraue in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. He was the son of a pastor and the son-in-law of Old Testament scholar Hermann Gunkel .
Go to Profile#2063
Herbert Brook Workman
1862 - 1951 (89 years)
Herbert Brook Workman was a leading Methodist and secretary of the Wesleyan Methodist Secondary Schools Trust when they took over Elmfield College in 1928. Workman was born in London and educated at Kingswood School and Owens College, Manchester. He entered the Wesleyan ministry in 1885 and served as a circuit minister in England and Scotland until 1903 when he was appointed principal of Westminster College. In 1930 he was elected president of the Wesleyan Conference.
Go to Profile#2064
N. P. Williams
1883 - 1943 (60 years)
Norman Powell Williams , known as N. P. Williams, was an Anglican theologian and priest. Educated at Durham School and at Christ Church, Oxford, he enjoyed a succession of appointments at that university: Fellow of Magdalen , Chaplain of Exeter , Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church . In 1924 he was Bampton lecturer.
Go to Profile#2065
Irving Francis Wood
1861 - 1934 (73 years)
Irving Francis Wood was an American biblical scholar. Professor Wood was born at Walton, New York. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1885 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and taught at Jaffna College, Ceylon, until 1889. Wood then studied for his Bachelor of Divinity degree at Yale and completed it in 1892, the same year he met and married his wife, Katherine Hastings. Katherine bore him two children, Constance and Edna, who both went to get collegiate degrees. He taught for a short time at the University of Chicago before taking a job as a professor of Biblical literature and comparative religion at Smith College in 1893.
Go to Profile#2066
Johan Herman Bavinck
1895 - 1964 (69 years)
Johan Herman Bavinck was a Dutch pastor, missionary and theologian. Family Bavinck was born in Rotterdam as the second son of Reverend Coenraad Bernardus Bavinck. He attended the Marnix Gymnasium there. Both his father and his grandfather Jan Bavinck were pastors. His uncle was Herman Bavinck, pastor and Professor of Dogmatics at the theological school in Kampen and at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. In 1922 Bavinck married Tine Robers. Their children were Koert, Ben and Ineke.
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Albert C. Knudson
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Albert Cornelius Knudson was a Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and the school of liberal theology known as Boston personalism. Biography Albert Cornelius Knudson was born on January 23, 1873, in Grand Meadow, Minnesota. He was the son of Asle Knudson and Synnove Knudsen , both of whom were immigrants from Norway. The family subsequently moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Asle Knudson regularly traveled by train to Grand Meadow to minister at the Danish-Norwegian Methodist Church until shortly before his death in 1939.
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Donald Macpherson Baillie
1887 - 1954 (67 years)
Donald Macpherson Baillie was a Scottish theologian, ecumenist, and parish minister. Life Raised in the Calvinist tradition, Baillie studied at University of Edinburgh and then at the University of Marburg, where he was influenced by the theologian Wilhelm Herrmann. After some time as a Church of Scotland parish minister, he wrote Faith in God and its Christian Consummation . This led to his appointment as a professor of divinity at St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, where he spent the remainder of his life.
Go to Profile#2069
Martin Dibelius
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Martin Franz Dibelius was a German Protestant theologian and New Testament professor at the University of Heidelberg. Dibelius was born in Dresden, Germany, on September 14, 1883. Along with Rudolf Bultmann he helped define a period in research about the historical Jesus characterized by skepticism toward the possibility of describing Jesus with historical certainty. In this capacity he is often regarded as an early pioneer of New Testament form criticism, a highly analytical review of literary forms within the New Testament. After studying at multiple universities, he eventually ended up as a teacher of New Testament exegesis and criticism at Heidelberg University.
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Jakob Jocz
1906 - 1983 (77 years)
Jakób Jocz was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and studied in Germany, England, and Scotland. He received his Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Letters degrees from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He contributed to many professional journals and wrote four other books of Old Testament study and systematic theology. Jocz was ordained in the Anglican Church, and served for many years as Professor of Systematic Theology at Wycliffe Seminary, Toronto.
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James I. McCord
1919 - 1990 (71 years)
James I. McCord was a president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He also won the 1986 Templeton Prize. 150 Years of Princeton Theological Seminary In 1962, as President of Princeton Theological Seminary, McCord hosted the Princeton Theological's 150-year anniversary festivities.
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Lynn H. Hough
1877 - 1971 (94 years)
Lynn Harold Hough was an American Methodist clergyman, theologian, and academic administrator. He served as the 9th president of Northwestern University from 1919 to 1920. Early life and education Lynn H. Hough was born on September 10, 1877, in Cadiz, Ohio. He earned a bachelor's degree from Scio College in 1898 and Drew University in 1905, followed by a doctorate from Garrett Biblical Institute in 1918.
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Edith Stein
1891 - 1942 (51 years)
Edith Stein, OCD was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She is canonized as a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church; she is also one of six patron saints of Europe.
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Albrecht Alt
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
Albrecht Alt , was a leading German Protestant theologian. Eldest son of a Lutheran minister, he completed high school in Ansbach and studied theology at Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen and the University of Leipzig. From 1907 to 1908 he was a candidate for the office of lecturer at Munich Predigerseminar . In 1908 he was a scholarship holder of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology of the Holy Land in Jerusalem and undertook his first Palestine journey. In the same year he became a supervisor of the theological College in Greifswald. In 1909 he wrote Israel und Aegypten a...
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F. W. Grosheide
1881 - 1972 (91 years)
Frederik Willem Grosheide was a Dutch New Testament scholar. He served as Professor of New Testament at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He served as rector magnificus of that institution three times.
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Giovanni Mercati
1866 - 1957 (91 years)
Giovanni Mercati was an Italian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives and librarian of the Vatican Library from 1936 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1936.
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Ned Stonehouse
1902 - 1962 (60 years)
Ned Bernard Stonehouse was a renowned New Testament scholar. He joined J. Gresham Machen in the founding of Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929, where he worked for over thirty years. Stonehouse served as one of the 34 constituting members of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936. He received the A.B. from Calvin College , the Th.B. and Th.M. from Princeton Theological Seminary , and the Ph.D. from the Free University of Amsterdam .
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Regin Prenter
1907 - 1990 (83 years)
Regin Prenter was a Danish Lutheran priest and theologian. Prenter studied theology at Copenhagen, where he belonged to the founding circle of Theologisk Oratorium and became friend of Fr Gabriel Hebert, SSM. He had candidate's degree in theology in 1931 and became priest in Hvilsager-Lime and the Aarhus Cathedral. 1935-36 he spent a year at Lincoln Theological College where he came under influence of Michael Ramsay. Later he took part in many Anglican-Lutheran conferences. During W.W.II Prenter was active in the resistance movement against the Nazis and had doctors degree in theology in 1944 about Martin Luther's theology.
Go to Profile#2079
Geerhardus Vos
1862 - 1949 (87 years)
Geerhardus Johannes Vos was a Dutch-American Calvinist theologian and one of the most distinguished representatives of the Princeton Theology. He is sometimes called the father of Reformed Biblical theology.
Go to Profile#2080
Henry Sloane Coffin
1877 - 1954 (77 years)
Henry Sloane Coffin was president of the Union Theological Seminary, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and one of the most famous ministers in the United States. He was also one of the translators of the popular hymn "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", along with John Mason Neale.
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Hermann Sasse
1895 - 1976 (81 years)
Hermann Otto Erich Sasse was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and author. He was considered one of the foremost confessional Lutheran theologians of the 20th century. Sasses was born on 17 July 1895 in Sonnewalde, Lower Lusatia, Germany, to Hermann Sasse, a pharmacist, and his wife Maria, née Berger. In 1913, he began reading theology and ancient philology at the University of Berlin. He was a German infantryman in World War I, in which he was one of only six men in his battalion to survive the trench warfare in Flanders.
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Jacob B. Agus
1911 - 1986 (75 years)
Jacob B. Agus was a Polish-born American liberal Conservative rabbi and theologian who played a key role in the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. Life Jacob Agus was a leading thinker of the Conservative movement's liberal wing, heading Rabbinical Assembly committees on the sabbath, prayerbook, and ideology of the Conservative movement. He was also a rabbi of Beth El Congregation in Baltimore, Maryland, and a promoter of interfaith communication, which he referred to as "dialogue" or "trialogue."
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Wilbur M. Smith
1894 - 1976 (82 years)
Wilbur Moorehead Smith was an American theologian and one of the founding members of Fuller Theological Seminary. Early life Smith was born in Chicago on June 8, 1894. His father, Thomas Smith, was a successful fruit trader. His mother, Sadie Sanborn Smith, read a lot and had a large library: her father was a follower of the evangelist R. A. Torrey. She taught her son to read when he was five. He developed a love of books that remained with him, and he owned more than 25,000 books.
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Hans Rookmaaker
1922 - 1977 (55 years)
Henderik Roelof "Hans" Rookmaaker was a Dutch Christian scholar, professor, and author who wrote and lectured on art theory, art history, music, philosophy, and religion. In 1948 he met Christian theologian Francis Schaeffer and became a member of L'Abri in Switzerland. Rookmaaker and his wife Anky opened a Dutch branch of L'Abri in 1971.
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Ferdinand Cavallera
1875 - 1954 (79 years)
Ferdinand Cavallera was born in Puy-en-Velay, France, of parents of Piedmontese origin. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1892 and became a biblical scholar, textual critic, and publisher on patristics.
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Leonard Feeney
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Leonard Edward Feeney was an American Jesuit Catholic priest, poet, lyricist, and essayist. He articulated an interpretation of the Roman Catholic doctrine extra Ecclesiam nulla salus . He took the position that baptism of blood and baptism of desire are unavailing and that therefore no non-Catholics will be saved. Those positions are called, after him, Feeneyism.
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Charles George Herbermann
1840 - 1916 (76 years)
Charles George Herbermann was a German-American professor and historian. Biography Charles George Herbermann was born in Saerbeck near Münster, Westphalia, Prussia on 8 December 1840, the son of George Herbermann and Elizabeth Stipp. He arrived in the United States in 1851, and seven years later graduated at College of St. Francis Xavier, New York City. He was appointed professor of Latin language and Literature and librarian at the College of the City of New York. For more than 50 years, he was immersed amidst various issues involved with Catholicism. He was president of the Catholic Club and of the United States Catholic Historical Society .
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Charles R. Erdman Sr.
1866 - 1960 (94 years)
Charles Rosenbury Erdman Sr. was an American Presbyterian minister and professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Early life and education Erdman was born on July 20, 1866, in Fayetteville, New York, to William J. Erdman, a leader in the premillennialist and holiness movements of the late nineteenth century. He earned his B.A. from the College of New Jersey and went on to study at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1887 to 1891. Erdman was ordained on May 8, 1891, in the Presbytery of Philadelphia North, PCUSA.
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Clement Rogers
1866 - 1949 (83 years)
Clement Francis Rogers was an English theologian, who was professor of pastoral theology at King's College London. Rogers, the son of Professor James Rogers, was born in 1866 and educated at Westminster School and Jesus College, Oxford. He was ordained deacon in 1890 and priest in 1891, and became a lecturer at King's College London in 1906 having spent time working in parishes in Yorkshire and London. He became a professor in 1919, retiring in 1932 and becoming an emeritus professor. He served as Chaplain of King's College London from 1932-1936. His works included books based on his experi...
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Clarence Skinner
1881 - 1949 (68 years)
Clarence Russell Skinner was a Universalist minister, teacher, and dean of the Crane School of Theology at Tufts University. Born on March 23, 1881, in Brooklyn, New York, he graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1904 with a BA and was ordained in 1906. He served as minister at the Universalist Church in Mont Vernon, New York from 1906 to 1911, Grace Universalist Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, from 1911 to 1914, and the First Universalist Church of Medford, Massachusetts, from 1917 to 1920. Clarence Skinner was on faculty at Crane Theological School, Tufts University as Professor of Applied Christianity from 1914 to 1933, and served as dean from 1933 to 1945.
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Francis Jeremiah Connell
1888 - 1967 (79 years)
Francis Jeremiah Connell, C.Ss.R. , was a Redemptorist priest, professor, author, and noted Catholic American theologian. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and died in Washington, D.C. Early life Born to Timothy and Mary , Francis attended the Boston public school system from 1893 to 1901. From 1901 to 1905, he attended Boston Latin School.
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Gustav Hölscher
1877 - 1955 (78 years)
Gustav Hölscher was a German Evangelical-Lutheran theologian and a professor of Old Testament Studies. Biography Gustav Diedrich Hillard Hölscher was born in Norden, on Germany's North Sea coast and close to the Dutch frontier. Both his parents came from local families and had grown up in the town, but his own childhood was more itinerant. Wilhelm Hölscher, his father, was a Lutheran pastor and also a considerable theological theologian. In 1880, while Gustav was still very small, Wilhelm Hölscher accepted a job as director of studies at Loccum Abbey, which meant the family relocating to the far side of Bremen.
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Henrik Samuel Nyberg
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Henrik Samuel Nyberg was a Swedish scholar of broad interest and a well known expert of Iranology and Arab studies. Life Nyberg was born in Söderbärke in Southern Dalecarlia on 28 December 1889. When he was 19, he moved to Uppsala to undertake university courses. There, he studied from Classical languages to Sanskrit and to the Semitic idioms. Nyberg set up the Middle Persian curriculum as a possible subject of study at the University of Uppsala and he felt the need for teaching it by meeting Western scholarly standards. Nyberg’s single most important contribution to the study of Iranian religions is his Irans forntida religioner .
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Günther Jacoby
1881 - 1969 (88 years)
Friedrich Günther Jacoby was a German theologian and philosopher. Life Born in Königsberg, Jacoby studied Protestant theology there from 1900 to 1903. He acquired the licentiate degree with a text interpretation of the Biblical book of Jeremiah. After the state examination for the higher school service in religion, Hebrew and German, which he passed in 1904, he studied philosophy in East Prussia and Berlin while working as an assistant teacher and received his doctorate in 1906 under Friedrich Paulsen with the work Herders "Kalligone" und ihre Verhältnis zu Kants "Kritik der Urteilskraft". Tw...
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Nikos Nissiotis
1924 - 1986 (62 years)
Nikolaos "Nikos" A. Nissiotis was a Greek theologian, philosopher, university professor, and basketball coach. Basketball coaching career Nissiotis is largely credited with developing the sport of basketball in Greece. He was the head coach of the Greek League club Panellinios Athens, during its famous "Golden Five", or "Fabulous Five" era, during the 1950s decade. With Panellinios, he won 3 Greek League championships, in the years 1953, 1955, and 1957. He also won two European-wide International Club Tournament Championships with the club, as he won the 1955 Brussels Basketball Tournament and the 1956 San Remo Basketball Tournament.
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François Charrière
1893 - 1976 (83 years)
François Charrière was the Roman Catholic bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg from 1945 to 1970. Biography François Charrière was born into a peasant family in the village of Cerniat on 1 September 1893. He studied at the Collège Saint-Michel in Fribourg and then under the Capuchins at the Collège de Stans, earning his baccalaureate in 1913. He spent the next four years at the major seminary of the diocese and was ordained a priest on 15 July 1917. His first pastoral assignment was at the parish of Notre Dame in Lausanne for three years. He then renewed his studies at the Angelicum, earning his doctorate in canon law in 1923 with a thesis titled "De interdicto".
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Josef Hromádka
1889 - 1969 (80 years)
Josef Lukl Hromádka was a Czech Protestant theologian. He was a founder of the Christian Peace Conference. Born into a Lutheran peasant family in a village in Moravia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hromádka studied theology in Vienna, Basel and Heidelberg, as well as in Aberdeen. He was a supporter of and member from its foundation in 1918 of the unified Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren.
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Gordon Clark
1902 - 1985 (83 years)
Gordon Haddon Clark was an American philosopher and Calvinist theologian. He was a leading figure associated with presuppositional apologetics and was chairman of the Philosophy Department at Butler University for 28 years. He was an expert in pre-Socratic and ancient philosophy and was noted for defending the idea of propositional revelation against empiricism and rationalism, in arguing that all truth is propositional. His theory of knowledge is sometimes called scripturalism.
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Wilhelm Jannasch
1888 - 1966 (78 years)
Wilhelm Jannasch was a German Protestant theologian and clergyman. He studied theology at the universities of Marburg, Bonn, Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1913 he was ordained as a minister in Weimar, and during the following year received his licentiate at Heidelberg. In 1921 he was named senior pastor at St. Giles Church in Lübeck. In 1934 he was forced into early retirement by the Nazi government, and he subsequently became an active member of the Confessing Church. From 1939 onwards, he served as a pastor of the Confessing congregation in Berlin-Friedenau. From 1946 to 1956 he was a professor...
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Charles Journet
1891 - 1975 (84 years)
Charles Journet was a Swiss Roman Catholic theologian. He was the first Swiss named a cardinal. Journet has been considered a figure of holiness and a candidate for canonisation; he has been accorded the title servant of God.
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