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,
#2101
Norman Perrin
1920 - 1976 (56 years)
Norman Perrin was an English-born, American biblical scholar at the University of Chicago. Perrin specialized in the study of the New Testament, and was internationally known for his work on the teaching of Jesus, as well as on the Redaction Criticism of the New Testament.
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Elmer George Homrighausen
1900 - 1982 (82 years)
Elmer George Homrighausen was an American theologian. Biography Homrighausen was born in Wheatland, Iowa, and earned an A.B. from Lakeland College , a B.Th. from Princeton Theological Seminary, an M.A. from Butler University, and a Th.M. from the University of Dubuque.
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Edward Joseph Young
1907 - 1968 (61 years)
Edward Joseph Young was a Reformed theologian and an Old Testament scholar at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1936 until his death. Biography Young received an A.B. from Stanford University in 1929, a Th.B. and a Th.M. from Westminster Theological Seminary in 1935, and a Ph.D. from Dropsie College in 1943. He was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church from 1935–36 and then in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church until his death.
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H. A. Hodges
1905 - 1976 (71 years)
Herbert Arthur Hodges was a British philosopher and theologian. He was Professor of Philosophy at Reading University from 1934 to 1969. He was a member of The Moot, the discussion and study group begun by J. H. Oldham. Its purpose was "to continue, in an informal, confidential but serious way, exploration of the relation between church and society and the realisation of Christian ethics in the public sphere." Other members included T. S. Eliot, with whom Hodges corresponded. Eliot suggested to Karl Mannheim that Hodges was closer to Mannheim than others in the Moot, in at least some areas of ...
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W. O. E. Oesterley
1866 - 1950 (84 years)
Rev. William Oscar Emil Oesterley was a Church of England theologian, and professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at King's College, London, from 1926. His many books span a wide range of topics from Bible commentary and Christian doctrine, Judaism and ancient Israel to more general subjects such as Sacred Dance.
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Hans Conzelmann
1915 - 1989 (74 years)
Hans Conzelmann was a Protestant, German theologian and New Testament scholar. Life Conzelmann studied at the universities of Tübingen and Marburg and, after World War II , he became the assistant to Helmut Thielicke at the University of Tübingen. He served at the same time as a pastor and, from 1948, as a religion teacher in a secondary school. In 1951 he submitted his dissertation and, in 1952, his Habilitation at Heidelberg University. He then took a position teaching New Testament at Heidelberg and was called, in 1954, to the University of Zurich, where he was made full professor in 1956.
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Elihu Grant
1873 - 1942 (69 years)
Elihu Grant was an American scholar and writer on Palestine. Grant was ordained Methodist minister in 1900, and between 1901 and 1904 he was superintendent of the American Friends Schoolss in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Returning to the US he was a professor of biblical literature at Smith College from 1907 to 1917, and thereafter at Haverford College until his retirement in 1938.
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Otto Eissfeldt
1887 - 1973 (86 years)
Otto Eißfeldt, spelled alternatively Otto Eissfeldt, was a German Protestant theologian, known for his work on the Old Testament and comparative near-east religious history. His magisterial 860-page The Old Testament: An Introduction , giving a detailed literary-critical assessment of the history of the formation of each part of the Old Testament on the basis of the documentary hypothesis, has been called the "best of its kind".
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Arnold Ehrhardt
1903 - 1965 (62 years)
Arnold Anton Traugott Ehrhardt was a German jurist and British theologian. Life Arnold was the son of Oscar Ehrhardt, a professor of surgery, and Martha, née Rosenhain, a school teacher from a Jewish family. He went to school in Königsberg and then studied law at Erlangen, Bonn, Berlin and Königsberg. After the First World War he served in the eastern border force and took part in the conflict with the Spartacists. He took his doctoral degree in 1926 in Königsberg and the following year became an assistant to in Göttingen and took his habilitation in civil and Roman law in 1929 in Freiburg. He lectured at the Goethe University of Frankfurt.
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Helmut Thielicke
1908 - 1986 (78 years)
Helmut Thielicke was a German Protestant theologian and rector of the University of Hamburg from 1960 to 1978. Biography Thielicke grew up in Wuppertal, where he went to a humanistic Gymnasium and took his Abitur in 1928. After this he began to study philosophy and theology in Erlangen, but soon had to undergo an operation on his thyroid. Despite the negative outcome of this operation , which were still causing complications 4 years later, he finished his studies and in 1932 he got his doctorate in philosophy with "Das Verhältnis zwischen dem Ethischen und dem Ästethischen" .
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Johannes Quasten
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Johannes Quasten was a Roman Catholic theologian and scholar of patristics. Life Johannes Quasten was a Roman Catholic theologian and scholar of patristics. He studied Roman Catholic theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms University in Münster. In 1926 he was ordained priest. In 1927 he earned his graduate Degree with F.J. Dölger in Münster with a thesis on "Music and singing in the cults of the ancient pagan and early Christian times". Further studies followed in the years 1927-1929 in Rome at the Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana. At the same time, he served as chaplain at the Campo Santo Teutonico or Teutonic Cemetery.
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Douglas Clyde Macintosh
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Douglas Clyde Macintosh was a Canadian theologian. Biography Macintosh was born in Breadalbane, Ontario, on 18 February 1877 and received his undergraduate degree from McMaster University when it was in Toronto. In 1907 was ordained a Baptist minister and taught at Brandon College in Manitoba. In 1909 Macintosh received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago and joined Yale Divinity School, becoming an assistant professor of systematic theology.
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Hubert Jedin
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Hubert Jedin was a Catholic Church historian from Germany, whose publications specialized on the history of ecumenical councils in general and the Council of Trent in particular, on which he published a 2400-page history over the years 1951–1975.
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J. Gresham Machen
1881 - 1937 (56 years)
John Gresham Machen was an American Presbyterian New Testament scholar and educator in the early 20th century. He was the Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary between 1906 and 1929, and led a revolt against modernist theology at Princeton and formed Westminster Theological Seminary as a more orthodox alternative. As the Northern Presbyterian Church continued to reject conservative attempts to enforce faithfulness to the Westminster Confession, Machen led a small group of conservatives out of the church to form the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. When the northern Presbyterian chur...
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Norman Porteous
1898 - 2003 (105 years)
Norman Walker Porteous was a noted theologian and writer on Old Testament issues, and the last surviving military officer of the First World War. Education Porteous entered the University of Edinburgh as first bursar in 1916, but his studies were interrupted by World War I service in France, where he served as a subaltern in the 13th Battalion, The Royal Scots.
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Alexander Schmemann
1921 - 1983 (62 years)
Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann was an influential Orthodox priest, theologian, and author who spent most of his career in the United States. Born in Estonia to émigrés from the Russian Revolution, he grew up primarily in France, where there was a large émigré community in Paris. After being educated there in both Russian and French schools and universities, from 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris. That year he immigrated with his family to New York City to teach at Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary. In 1962 he was selected as dean of the Seminary, serving in this position until his death.
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John of the Cross
1542 - 1591 (49 years)
John of the Cross, OCD was a Spanish Catholic priest, mystic, and a Carmelite friar of converso origin. He is a major figure of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, and he is one of the thirty-seven Doctors of the Church.
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Gustaf Aulén
1879 - 1977 (98 years)
Gustaf Emanuel Hildebrand Aulén was the Bishop of Strängnäs in the Church of Sweden, a Lutheran theologian, and the author of Christus Victor, a work which still exerts considerable influence on contemporary theological thinking on the atonement.
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Marcion of Sinope
85 - 160 (75 years)
Marcion of Sinope was a theologian in early Christianity. Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ, who was an entirely new, alien god, distinct from the "vengeful" God who had created the world. He considered himself a follower of Paul the Apostle, whom he believed to have been the only true apostle of Jesus Christ; his doctrine is called Marcionism. Marcion published the earliest record of a canon of New Testament books.
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Rudolf Otto
1869 - 1937 (68 years)
Rudolf Otto was an eminent German Lutheran theologian, philosopher, and comparative religionist. He is regarded as one of the most influential scholars of religion in the early twentieth century and is best known for his concept of the numinous, a profound emotional experience he argued was at the heart of the world's religions. While his work started in the domain of liberal Christian theology, its main thrust was always apologetical, seeking to defend religion against naturalist critiques. Otto eventually came to conceive of his work as part of a science of religion, which was divided into ...
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Albrecht Ritschl
1822 - 1889 (67 years)
Albrecht Benjamin Ritschl was a German Protestant theologian. Starting in 1852, Ritschl lectured on systematic theology. According to this system, faith was understood to be irreducible to other experiences, beyond the scope of reason. Faith, he said, came not from facts but from value judgments. Jesus' divinity, he argued, was best understood as expressing "revelational-value" of Christ for the community that trusts him as God. He held the Christ's message to be committed to a community.
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Thomas Cranmer
1489 - 1556 (67 years)
Thomas Cranmer was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build the case for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was one of the causes of the separation of the English Church from union with the Holy See. Along with Thomas Cromwell, he supported the principle of royal supremacy, in which the king was considered sovereign over the Church within his realm.
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Francis Xavier
1506 - 1552 (46 years)
Francis Xavier, SJ , venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Spanish Catholic missionary and saint who co-founded the Society of Jesus and, as a representative of the Portuguese empire, led the first Christian mission to Japan.
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Richard Hooker
1554 - 1600 (46 years)
Richard Hooker was an English priest in the Church of England and an influential theologian. He was one of the most important English theologians of the sixteenth century. His defence of the role of redeemed reason informed the theology of the seventeenth-century Caroline Divines and later provided many members of the Church of England with a theological method which combined the claims of revelation, reason and tradition.
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Ferdinand Christian Baur
1792 - 1860 (68 years)
Ferdinand Christian Baur was a German Protestant theologian and founder and leader of the Tübingen School of theology . Following Hegel's theory of dialectic, Baur argued that second century Christianity represented the synthesis of two opposing theses: Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity . This and the rest of Baur's work had a profound impact upon higher criticism of biblical and related texts.
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Gerhard von Rad
1901 - 1971 (70 years)
Gerhard von Rad was a German academic, Old Testament scholar, Lutheran theologian, exegete, and professor at the University of Heidelberg. Early life, education, career Gerhard von Rad was born in Nuremberg, Bavaria, to Lutheran parents. His family were part of the patrician class. He was educated at the University of Erlangen and further at the University of Tübingen.
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Franz Overbeck
1837 - 1905 (68 years)
Franz Camille Overbeck was a German Protestant theologian. In Anglo-American discourse, he is perhaps best known in regard to his friendship with Friedrich Nietzsche; in German theological circles, Overbeck remains discussed for his own contributions.
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Catherine of Siena
1347 - 1380 (33 years)
Caterina di Jacopo di Benincasa , known as Catherine of Siena , was an Italian mystic and pious laywoman who engaged in papal and Italian politics through extensive letter-writing and advocacy. Canonized in 1461, she is revered as a saint and as a Doctor of the Church due to her extensive theological authorship. She is also considered to have influenced Italian literature.
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Thomas Merton
1915 - 1968 (53 years)
Thomas Merton was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and given the name "Father Louis". He was a member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
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Julius Wellhausen
1844 - 1918 (74 years)
Julius Wellhausen was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. In the course of his career, his research interest moved from Old Testament research through Islamic studies to New Testament scholarship. Wellhausen contributed to the composition history of the Pentateuch/Torah and studied the formative period of Islam. For the former, he is credited as one of the originators of the documentary hypothesis.
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Michael Servetus
1511 - 1553 (42 years)
Michael Servetus was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio . He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.
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Lewis Sperry Chafer
1871 - 1952 (81 years)
Lewis Sperry Chafer was an American theologian. He co-founded Dallas Theological Seminary with his older brother Rollin Thomas Chafer , served as its first president, and was an influential proponent of Christian Dispensationalism in the early 20th century. John Hannah described Chafer as a visionary Bible teacher, a minister of the gospel, a man of prayer with strong piety. One of his students, Charles Caldwell Ryrie, who went on to become a world renowned theologian and scholar, stated that Chafer was an evangelist who was also "an eminent theologian."
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John Wycliffe
1320 - 1384 (64 years)
John Wycliffe was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford. He became an influential dissident within the Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism. Wycliffe questioned the privileged status of the clergy, who had bolstered their powerful role in England, and advocated radical poverty of the clergy.
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Charles Spurgeon
1834 - 1892 (58 years)
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was an English Particular Baptist preacher. Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of various denominations, to some of whom he is known as the "Prince of Preachers". He was a strong figure in the Reformed Baptist tradition, defending the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and opposing the liberal and pragmatic theological tendencies in the Church of his day.
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Abu Mansur al-Maturidi
893 - 944 (51 years)
Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Ḥanafī al-Māturīdī al-Samarqandī , often referred to as Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī for short, or reverently referred to as Imām al-Māturīdī by Sunnī Muslims, was a Muslim scholar of Ḥanafī jurisprudence, scriptural exegete, reformer , and scholastic theologian , renowned for being the eponymous founder of the Māturīdī school of Islamic theology, which became the dominant Sunnī school of Islamic theology in Central Asia, and later enjoyed a preeminent status as the theological school of choice for both the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire.
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John Cassian
360 - 435 (75 years)
John Cassian, also known as John the Ascetic and John Cassian the Roman , was a Christian monk and theologian celebrated in both the Western and Eastern churches for his mystical writings. Cassian is noted for his role in bringing the ideas and practices of early Christian monasticism to the medieval West.
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Jan Hus
1369 - 1415 (46 years)
Jan Hus , sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as Iohannes Hus or Johannes Huss, was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the inspiration of Hussitism, a key predecessor to Protestantism, and a seminal figure in the Bohemian Reformation. Hus is considered to be the first Church reformer, even though some designate the theorist John Wycliffe. His teachings had a strong influence, most immediately in the approval of a reformed Bohemian religious denomination and, over a century later, on Martin Luther.
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Martin Bucer
1491 - 1551 (60 years)
Martin Bucer was a German Protestant reformer based in Strasbourg who influenced Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican doctrines and practices. Bucer was originally a member of the Dominican Order, but after meeting and being influenced by Martin Luther in 1518 he arranged for his monastic vows to be annulled. He then began to work for the Reformation, with the support of Franz von Sickingen.
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Eduard Zeller
1814 - 1908 (94 years)
Eduard Gottlob Zeller was a German philosopher and Protestant theologian of the Tübingen School of theology. He was well known for his writings on Ancient Greek philosophy, especially Pre-Socratic Philosophy, and most of all for his celebrated, multi-volume historical treatise The Philosophy of Greeks in their Historical Development . Zeller was also a central figure in the revival of neo-Kantianism.
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Albertus Magnus
1193 - 1280 (87 years)
Albertus Magnus , also known as Saint Albert the Great, Albert of Swabia or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop. Canonized in 1931 as a Catholic saint, he was known during his lifetime as Doctor universalis and Doctor expertus; late in his life the sobriquet Magnus was appended to his name. Scholars such as James A. Weisheipl and Joachim R. Söder have referred to him as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church distinguishes him as one of the 37 Doctors of the Church.
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Mark the Evangelist
12 - 68 (56 years)
Mark the Evangelist also known as John Mark or Saint Mark, is the person who is traditionally ascribed to be the author of the Gospel of Mark. Modern Bible scholars have concluded that the Gospel of Mark was written by an anonymous author rather than by Mark. According to Church tradition, Mark founded the episcopal see of Alexandria, which was one of the five most important sees of early Christianity. His feast day is celebrated on April 25, and his symbol is the winged lion.
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Philip Melanchthon
1497 - 1560 (63 years)
Philip Melanchthon was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, an intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and influential designer of educational systems.
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Francis Schaeffer
1912 - 1984 (72 years)
Francis August Schaeffer was an American evangelical theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor. He co-founded the L'Abri community in Switzerland with his wife Edith Schaeffer, , a prolific author in her own right. Opposed to theological modernism, Schaeffer promoted what he claimed was a more historic Protestant faith and a presuppositional approach to Christian apologetics, which he believed would answer the questions of the age.
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Pelagius
354 - 420 (66 years)
Pelagius was a Romano-British theologian known for promoting a system of doctrines which emphasized human choice in salvation and denied original sin. Pelagius was accused of heresy at the synod of Jerusalem in 415 and his doctrines were harshly criticized by Augustine of Hippo, especially the Pelagian views about mankind's good nature and individual responsibility for choosing asceticism. Pelagius especially stressed the freedom of human will. Very little is known about the personal life and career of Pelagius.
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H. Richard Niebuhr
1894 - 1962 (68 years)
Helmut Richard Niebuhr is considered one of the most important Christian theological ethicists in 20th-century America, best known for his 1951 book Christ and Culture and his posthumously published book The Responsible Self. The younger brother of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Niebuhr taught for several decades at the Yale Divinity School. Both brothers were, in their day, important figures in the neo-orthodox theological school within American Protestantism. His theology has been one of the main sources of postliberal theology, sometimes called the "Yale school". He influenced suc...
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August Hermann Francke
1663 - 1727 (64 years)
August Hermann Francke was a German Lutheran clergyman, theologian, philanthropist, and Biblical scholar. Biography Born in Lübeck, Francke was educated at the Illustrious Gymnasium in Gotha before he studied at the universities of Erfurt and Kiel — where he came under the influence of the Pietist Christian Kortholt — and finally Leipzig. During his student career he made a special study of Hebrew and Greek; and in order to learn Hebrew more thoroughly, he for some time put himself under the instructions of Ezra Edzardi at Hamburg. He graduated at Leipzig, where in 1685 he became a Privatdoze...
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John Scotus Eriugena
810 - 877 (67 years)
John Scotus Eriugena, also known as Johannes Scotus Erigena, John the Scot, or John the Irish-born was an Irish Neoplatonist philosopher, theologian and poet of the Early Middle Ages. Bertrand Russell dubbed him "the most astonishing person of the ninth century". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that he "is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm".
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Justin Popović
1894 - 1979 (85 years)
Justin Popović was a Serbian Orthodox theologian, archimandrite of the Ćelije Monastery, Dostoyevsky scholar, writer, anti-communist advocate and critic of the pragmatic church ecclesiastical life.
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Teresa of Ávila
1515 - 1582 (67 years)
Teresa of Ávila, OCD , also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, was a Carmelite nun and prominent Spanish mystic and religious reformer. Active during the Counter-Reformation, Teresa became the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal, reforming the Carmelite Orders of both women and men. The movement was later joined by the younger Carmelite friar and mystic John of the Cross, with whom she established the Discalced Carmelites. A formal papal decree adopting the split from the old order was issued in 1580.
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Theodore of Mopsuestia
350 - 428 (78 years)
Theodore of Mopsuestia was a Christian theologian, and Bishop of Mopsuestia from 392 to 428 AD. He is also known as Theodore of Antioch, from the place of his birth and presbyterate. He is the best known representative of the middle Antioch School of hermeneutics.
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