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,
#2201
Karl Adam
1876 - 1966 (90 years)
Karl Adam was a German Catholic theologian, known for his work in the fields of ecclesiology and Christology. He spent most of his academic career at the University of Tübingen, where he published work influenced by Lebensphilosophie and German Romanticism including The Spirit of Catholicism , which argued for an understanding of the church as a community and for a revitalisation of Christian faith. Following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Adam sought rapprochement between the Nazi regime and the German Catholic Church. In pursuit of this aim, he published work during the Nazi era that...
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Wessel Gansfort
1419 - 1489 (70 years)
Wessel Harmensz Gansfort was a theologian and early humanist of the northern Low Countries. Many variations of his last name are seen and he is sometimes incorrectly called Johan Wessel. Gansfort has been called one of the reformers before the Reformation. He protested against a perceived paganizing of the papacy, superstitious and magicalal uses of the sacraments, the authority of ecclesiastical tradition, and the tendency in later scholastic theology to lay greater stress, in a doctrine of justification, upon the instrumentality of the human will than on the work of Christ for man's salvation.
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Hans Hinrich Wendt
1853 - 1928 (75 years)
Hans Hinrich Wendt was a German Protestant theologian. Life After studying theology at Leipzig, Göttingen and Tübingen, he became in 1885 professor ordinarius of systematic theology at Heidelberg, and in 1893 was called to Jena. His work on the teaching of Jesus made him widely known. He also edited several editions of the Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles in Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer's series. In May 1904 he delivered two addresses in London on The Idea and Reality of Revelation, and Typical Forms of Christianity, as the Essex Hall Lectures .
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Nemesius
350 - 420 (70 years)
Nemesius of Emesa was a Christian philosopher, and the author of a treatise Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου or De natura hominis . According to the title of his book, he was the Bishop of Emesa . His book is an attempt to compile a system of anthropology from the standpoint of Christian philosophy; it was very influential in later Greek, Arabic and Christian thought.
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Stanislaus Kostka
1550 - 1568 (18 years)
Stanisław Kostka S.J. was a Polish novice of the Society of Jesus. He is venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Stanislaus Kostka . He was born at Rostkowo, Przasnysz County, Poland, on 28 October 1550, and died in Rome during the night of 14–15 August 1568. He entered the Society of Jesus in Rome on his 17th birthday , and is said to have foretold his death a few days before it occurred.
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William Stringfellow
1928 - 1985 (57 years)
Frank William Stringfellow was an American lay theologian, lawyer and social activist. He was active mostly during the 1960s and 1970s. Life and career Early life and education Born in Johnston, Rhode Island, on April 26, 1928, he grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Northampton High School in 1945. He managed to obtain several scholarships and entered Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, at the age of fifteen. He later earned a scholarship to the London School of Economics and served in the US 2nd Armored Division. Stringfellow then attended Harvard Law School. After hi...
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Cuthbert Tunstall
1474 - 1559 (85 years)
Cuthbert Tunstall was an English humanist, bishop, diplomat, administrator and royal adviser. He served as Bishop of Durham during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. Childhood and early career Cuthbert Tunstall was born at Hackforth near Bedale in North Yorkshire in 1474, son of Thomas Tunstall of Thurland Castle in Lancashire, who was later an esquire of the body of Richard III. His half-brother, Brian Tunstall, the so-called "stainless knight," was killed at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. Sir Walter Scott mentions "stainless Tunstall's banner white" in Canto Six, l...
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Louis Auguste Sabatier
1839 - 1901 (62 years)
Louis Auguste Sabatier , French Protestant theologian, was born at Vallon-Pont-d'Arc, Ardèche and died in Strasbourg. He was educated at the Protestant theological faculty of Montauban as well as at the universities of Tübingen and Heidelberg.
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Philoxenus of Mabbug
440 - 523 (83 years)
Philoxenus of Mabbug , also known as Xenaias and Philoxenus of Hierapolis, was one of the most notable Syriac prose writers during the Byzantine period and a vehement champion of Miaphysitism. Early life He was born, probably in the third quarter of the 5th century, at Tahal, a village in the district of Beth Garmaï east of the Tigris. He was by birth a subject of Persia, but all his active life of which we have any record was passed in the territory of the Byzantine Empire. His parents were from the Median city of Ecbatana. The statements that he had been a slave and was never baptized appear to be malicious inventions of his theological opponents following his death.
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Eusèbe Renaudot
1646 - 1720 (74 years)
Eusèbe Renaudot was a French theologian and Orientalist. Biography Renaudot was born in Paris, and brought up and educated for a career in the church. After being educated by the Jesuits, and joining the Oratorians in 1666, he was in poor health, left his order, and never took more than minor orders. Despite his interest in theology and his title of abbé, much of his life was spent at the French court, where he attracted the notice of Colbert and was often employed in confidential affairs.
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Johann Heinrich van Ess
1772 - 1847 (75 years)
Johann Heinrich van Ess , was a German Catholic theologian, born at Warburg, Westphalia. He was educated at the Dominican order gymnasium of his native town, and in 1790 entered, as a novice, the Benedictine abbey of Marienmunster, in the Bishopric of Paderborn. His Benedictine name was Leander. He was priest at Schwalenberg from 1799 to 1821 after which he became extraordinary professor of theology and joint-director of the teacher's seminary at Marburg. In 1818 he received the doctorate of theology and of canonical law.
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Peter Dens
1690 - 1775 (85 years)
Peter Dens was a Flemish Roman Catholic theologian. Biography Dens was born at Boom near Antwerp. Most of his life was spent in the archiepiscopal college of Mechelen, where he was for twelve years reader in theology and for forty president. His great work was the Theologia moralis et dogmatica, a compendium in catechetical form of Roman Catholic doctrine and ethics which has been much used as a students textbook.
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Julius Smend
1857 - 1930 (73 years)
Julius Smend was a German theologian born in Lengerich, Westphalia. He was a brother to theologian Rudolf Smend and the father of musicologist Friedrich Smend. He studied theology in Bonn, Halle and Göttingen, receiving his ordination in 1881. Afterwards he worked as an auxiliary minister in Bonn, and in 1885 became a minister in Seelscheid. In 1891 he taught classes at the seminary in Friedberg, and two years later was appointed professor of practical theology at the University of Strasbourg.
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Pierre Viret
1511 - 1571 (60 years)
Pierre Viret was a Swiss Reformed theologian, evangelist and Protestant reformer. Early life Pierre Viret was born in 1509 or 1510 in Orbe, then in the Barony of Vaud, now in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. He was the son of Guillaume Viret, a tailor and shearer. After attending school in his hometown, Viret studied at the Collège de Montaigu of the University of Paris, where he came in contact with and converted to the Reformed faith. He returned to Orbe in 1531 to escape the persecutions in Paris.
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Martin D'Arcy
1888 - 1976 (88 years)
Martin Cyril D'Arcy was a Roman Catholic priest, philosopher of love, and a correspondent, friend, and adviser of a range of literary and artistic figures including Evelyn Waugh, Dorothy L. Sayers, W. H. Auden, Eric Gill and Sir Edwin Lutyens. He has been described as "perhaps England's foremost Catholic public intellectual from the 1930s until his death".
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Joseph Widmer
1779 - 1844 (65 years)
Joseph Widmer was a Swiss Catholic theologian. A native of Hohenrain, he died in Beromünster. He studied philosophy at Lucerne, and theology at Landshut under Sailer and Zimmer, the former exercising a great and abiding influence over him. After ordination Widmer was appointed professor of philosophy in 1804, and of moral and pastoral theology in 1819 at the lyceum of Lucerne. In 1833 he was removed from his position by the Government and received a canonry in the collegiate chapter at Beromunster; in 1841 he became the provost of this chapter. In connection with Joseph Heinrich Aloysius Gü...
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Isaac Barrow
1630 - 1677 (47 years)
Isaac Barrow was an English Christian theologian and mathematician who is generally given credit for his early role in the development of infinitesimal calculus; in particular, for proof of the fundamental theorem of calculus. His work centered on the properties of the tangent; Barrow was the first to calculate the tangents of the kappa curve. He is also notable for being the inaugural holder of the prestigious Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, a post later held by his student, Isaac Newton.
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James Madison Pendleton
1811 - 1891 (80 years)
James Madison Pendleton was a leading 19th-century American Baptist preacher, educator and theologian. Early life James Madison Pendleton was born November 20, 1811, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, the son of John Pendleton and Frances Jackson Thompson. He was named for President James Madison. When he was small his parents moved to Christian County, Kentucky. At age seventeen, he united with the Bethel church in Christian County and was baptized.
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Bernhard Josef Hilgers
1803 - 1874 (71 years)
Bernhard Josef Hilgers was a German Catholic church historian born in Dreiborn in der Eifel. Biography Hilgers studied at the University of Bonn, and in 1827 was ordained as a priest in Cologne. He spent a year as an associate pastor in Münstereifel, followed by five years service as a chaplain at the mental asylum in Siegburg. In 1834 he received his doctorate of theology at Münster, and during the following year, obtained his habilitation at the Catholic theological faculty in Bonn. From 1838 he served as pastor at the Church of St Remigius, Bonn, then in 1846 became a full professor of chu...
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Adriaan Reland
1676 - 1718 (42 years)
Adriaan Reland was a noted Dutch Orientalist scholar, cartographer and philologist. Even though he never left the Netherlands, or visited the Holy Land, he made significant contributions to Middle Eastern and Asian linguistics and cartography, including Persia, Japan and the Holy Lands.
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Gilbert Burnet
1643 - 1715 (72 years)
Gilbert Burnet was a Scottish philosopher and historian, and Bishop of Salisbury. He was fluent in Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Burnet was highly respected as a cleric, a preacher, an academic, a writer and a historian. He was always closely associated with the Whig party, and was one of the few close friends in whom King William III confided.
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Thomas Thayer
1812 - 1886 (74 years)
Thomas Baldwin Thayer was the leading Universalist theologian in the late nineteenth century. Biography Thayer entered Harvard at an early age, but left after the first year and began to teach, at the same time studying divinity. He was ordained in 1832, and from 1833 to 1845 was pastor of the 1st Universalist Society in Lowell, Massachusetts, where his ministry was important in the history of Universalism in New England. During the crusade against Universalism from 1840 to 1842, he established and edited in its defense the Star of Bethlehem, and with his co-worker, Abel C. Thomas, wrote the ...
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Heinrich Joseph Wetzer
1801 - 1853 (52 years)
Heinrich Joseph Wetzer was a German Orientalist. His greatest achievement was the part he took in the production of the first edition of the Kirchenlexikon for which he drew up the Nomenclator and which he edited with Benedict Welte.
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Henry Ware Jr.
1794 - 1843 (49 years)
Henry Ware Jr. was an influential Unitarian theologian, early member of the faculty of Harvard Divinity School, and first president of the Harvard Musical Association. He was a mentor of Ralph Waldo Emerson when Emerson studied for the ministry in the 1820s.
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Thomas Bradwardine
1300 - 1349 (49 years)
Thomas Bradwardine was an English cleric, scholar, mathematician, physicist, courtier and, very briefly, Archbishop of Canterbury. As a celebrated scholastic philosopher and doctor of theology, he is often called Doctor Profundus .
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Richard Watson
1781 - 1833 (52 years)
Richard Watson was a British Methodist theologian, a leading figure of Wesleyan Methodism in the early 19th century. Biography Early life and education Watson was born on 22 February 1781, at Barton-upon-Humber, in Lincolnshire. He was the seventh of eighteen children of Thomas and Ann Watson. His father, a saddler, held Calvinist views, and Richard was brought up in the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. Reacting against those teachings, he attended a Wesleyan chapel as a boy, and was received there in 1794.
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Benajah Harvey Carroll
1843 - 1914 (71 years)
Benajah Harvey Carroll, known as B. H. Carroll , was a Baptist pastor, theologian, teacher, and author. Biography Carroll was born near Carrollton in Carroll County in north central Mississippi, one of twelve children to Benajah Carroll and the former Mary Eliza Mallard. His father was a Baptist minister. The family moved to Burleson County, Texas in 1858.
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Benjamin Whichcote
1609 - 1683 (74 years)
Benjamin Whichcote was an English Establishment and Puritan divine, Provost of King's College, Cambridge and leader of the Cambridge Platonists. He held that man is the "child of reason" and so not completely depraved by nature, as Puritans held. He also argued for religious toleration.
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James Buchanan
1804 - 1870 (66 years)
James Buchanan was a preacher and theological writer. He was born in 1804 at Paisley, and studied at the university of Glasgow. In 1827 he was ordained Church of Scotland minister of Roslin, near Edinburgh, and in 1828 he was translated to the large and important charge of North Leith. In this charge he attained great fame as a preacher, being remarkable or a clear, vigorous, and flowing style, a graceful manner, a vein of thrilling tenderness, broken from time to time by passionate appeals, all in the most pronounced evangelic strain. In 1840 Buchanan was translated to the High Church , Edinburgh, and in 1843, after the disruption, he became first minister of St.
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John T. Christian
1854 - 1925 (71 years)
John Tyler Christian was a Baptist preacher, author and educator. He was born December 14, 1854, near Lexington, Kentucky. His family moved to Henry County, Kentucky, when he was six years old. He professed faith in Christ and joined the Campbellsburg Baptist Church at the age of sixteen.
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John Robinson
1919 - 1983 (64 years)
John Arthur Thomas Robinson was an English New Testament scholar, author and the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich. He was a lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later Dean of Trinity College until his death in 1983 from cancer. Robinson was considered a major force in New Testament studies and in shaping liberal Christian theology. Along with the Harvard theologian Harvey Cox, he spearheaded the field of secular theology and, like William Barclay, was a believer in universal salvation.
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Theodore Bar Konai
700 - 800 (100 years)
Theodore Bar Konai was a distinguished Syriac exegete and apologist of the Church of the East who seems to have flourished at the end of the eighth century. His most famous work was a book of scholia on the Old and New Testaments.
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William Henry Channing
1810 - 1884 (74 years)
William Henry Channing was an American Unitarian clergyman, writer and philosopher. Biography William Henry Channing was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Channing's father, Francis Dana Channing, died when he was an infant, and responsibility for the young man's education was assumed by his uncle, William Ellery Channing, the pre-eminent Unitarian theologian of the early nineteenth century. The younger William graduated from Harvard College in 1829 and from Harvard Divinity School in 1833. He was ordained and installed over the Unitarian church in Cincinnati in 1835. He became warmly interested in the schemes of Charles Fourier and others for social reorganization.
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Henri Grenier
1899 - 1980 (81 years)
Henri Grenier was a French Canadian priest, theologian, and philosopher. He was the author of a manual of Thomistic philosophy, once widely used in Roman Catholic seminaries. Life Grenier was born in Gaspé, Quebec, and ordained for the diocese of Gaspé in 1924. He studied philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome , and at the major seminary in Gaspé . From 1927-1930 he studied theology at the Angelicum and Canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University. He held doctorates in philosophy, theology, and canon law. From 1930 to 1947 he was professor of theology at the seminary of Québec. In 1938 he was incardinated in the diocese of Québec.
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Walter Travers
1548 - 1635 (87 years)
Walter Travers was an English Puritan theologian. He was at one time chaplain to William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, and tutor to his son Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury. He is remembered mostly as an opponent of the teaching of Richard Hooker. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he was admitted to Christ's College before migrating to Trinity, and then travelled to Geneva to visit Theodore Beza. He was ordained by Thomas Cartwright in Antwerp, where in the late 1570s his work was favoured by the encouragement of Sir Francis Walsingham and Henry Killigrew . He was a lectur...
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Franz Anton Staudenmaier
1800 - 1856 (56 years)
Franz Anton Staudenmaier was a Catholic theologian. He was a major figure in the Catholic theology of Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century. Life Born at Donzdorf, Württemberg, he was a pupil at the Latin school of Schwäbisch Gmünd between 1815 and 1818 and at the Gymnasium at Ellwangen from 1818 to 1822. During the years 1822-1826, he studied theology and philosophy at the University of Tübingen, where Johann Sebastian von Drey, Johann Georg Herbst, Johann Baptist von Hirscher, and Möhler were his teachers.
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Ernst Lohmeyer
1890 - 1946 (56 years)
Ernst Lohmeyer was a German scholar of the New Testament, Protestant theologian and Bible professor, executed by Soviet authorities occupying the former East Germany. Life Ernst Lohmeyer was born on July 7, 1890, in Dorsten , as a son of parson, Carl Heinrich Ludwig Lohmeyer . On July 24, 1912, he wrote his bachelor's thesis on "Der Begriff der Diatheke in der antiken Welt und in der Griechischen Bibel". In 1914, he wrote a dissertation "Die Lehre vom Willen bei Anselm von Canterbury", for which he received a doctor of philology. After his army service between 1913 and 1918, he graduated in Heidelberg and was appointed Professor extraordinarius , and Professor ordinarius .
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Johann Friedrich Kleuker
1749 - 1827 (78 years)
Johann Friedrich Kleuker was a German Protestant theologian and University professor. Career In 1770 Kleuker started his studies in theology, philology and philosophy at the Georg August University of Göttingen. In 1773 started working as a tutor in Bückeburg, where he became friends with Johann Gottfried Herder. In 1775 Herder gave Kleuker the position of vice-rector in Lemgo. In 1778 he became a secondary school principal in Osnabrück. In 1798 Kleuker became professor of theology at the University of Kiel.
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Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Elder
1831 - 1910 (79 years)
Friedrich Christian Carl von Bodelschwingh , better known as Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Elder, was a German theologian and politician. He is remembered as the founder of the v. Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel charitable foundations.
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Tommy Fallot
1844 - 1904 (60 years)
Tommy Fallot was a French pastor who is known as the founder of Christian socialism in France. Early years Tommy Fallot was born on 4 October 1844 in Fouday, Bas-Rhin. His grandfather was Daniel Legrand , an industrialist and Christian in Ban de la Roche, Alsace who felt that the gospel message was primarily for the poor and unfortunate, despite their suffering. Fallot earn a doctorate in theology in Strasbourg in 1872. His thesis was on "The Poor and the Gospel". He spent four years as Lutheran pastor of Wildersbach, near the Ban de la Roche. He then left the Lutheran church and moved to Par...
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Franz Xaver von Baader
1765 - 1841 (76 years)
Franz von Baader , born Benedikt Franz Xaver Baader, was a German Catholic philosopher, theologian, physician, and mining engineer. Resisting the empiricism of his day, he denounced most Western philosophy since Descartes as trending into atheism and has been considered a revival of the Scholastic school.
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Willem Muurling
1805 - 1882 (77 years)
Willem Muurling was a Dutch theologian who was a native of Bolsward. He was father-in-law to theologian Abraham Kuenen . He studied theology at Utrecht, and from 1832 to 1837, served as a pastor in Stiens. Afterwards, he taught classes at the Rijksatheneum in Franeker, relocating to the University of Groningen in 1840, where he was as a professor of theology.
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Henry Liddon
1829 - 1890 (61 years)
Henry Parry Liddon , usually cited as H. P. Liddon, was an English theologian. From 1870 to 1882, he was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford. Biography The son of a naval captain, Liddon was born on 20 August 1829 at North Stoneham, near Eastleigh, Hampshire. He was educated at King's College School, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated, taking a second class, in 1850. As vice principal of the theological college at Cuddesdon he wielded considerable influence, and, on returning to Oxford as vice-principal of St Edmund Hall, became...
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Adolf Kamphausen
1829 - 1910 (81 years)
Adolf Kamphausen was a German Protestant theologian. He was known for his liberal views in regard to Biblical exegesis. He was born in Solingen and educated at the University of Bonn. In 1855, as private secretary to Bunsen, he assisted him in his great Völlstandiges Bibelwerk für die Gemeinde. At the same time he was privatdocent at Heidelberg, and in 1863 he became an associate professor of theology at Bonn. In 1868 he attained a full professorship, serving as university rector in 1893/94.
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Leonhard Ragaz
1868 - 1945 (77 years)
Leonhard Ragaz was a Swiss Reformed theologian and, with Hermann Kutter, one of the founders of religious socialism in Switzerland. He was influenced by Christoph Blumhardt. He was married to the feminist and peace activist Clara Ragaz-Nadig.
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Gabriel Vásquez
1549 - 1604 (55 years)
Gabriel Vásquez , known as Bellomontanus, was a Spanish Jesuit theologian and scholastic philosopher. Vásquez was the foremost academic rival of his fellow Jesuit Francisco Suárez, whose philosophical views he often and openly criticized. Suárez's treatment of the jus gentium, like his treatment of natural law, was partly directed at combatting the arguments of Vásquez.
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James Denney
1856 - 1917 (61 years)
James Denney was a Scottish theologian and preacher. He is probably best known today for his theological articulation of the meaning of the atonement within Christian theology, atonement for him being “the most profound of all truths”. Many have misunderstood his position, arguing that he was known for his defense of the doctrine of penal substitution. However, Denny himself protested vigorously against this characterization.
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Alois Emanuel Biedermann
1819 - 1885 (66 years)
Alois Emanuel Biedermann was a Swiss Protestant theologian. He was a prominent dogmatician of the so-called "Young Hegelian" school of thought, and an important advocate of "free Christianity" in Switzerland.
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Johann Wilhelm Baier
1647 - 1695 (48 years)
Johann Wilhelm Baier was a German theologian in the Lutheran scholastic tradition. He was born at Nuremberg, and died at Weimar. He studied philology, especially Oriental, and philosophy at Altdorf from 1664 to 1669, in which year he went to Jena and became a disciple of the celebrated Johannes Musäus, the representative of the middle party in the Syncretistic Controversy, whose daughter he married in 1674. Taking his doctor’s degree the same year, in 1675 he became professor of church history at the university, and lectured with great success on several different branches of theology.
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William Griffith Thomas
1861 - 1924 (63 years)
William Henry Griffith Thomas was an Anglican cleric and scholar from the English-Welsh border country. He has been quoted by theologian Alister McGrath in the science-versus-religion debate. Life and work Griffith Thomas was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, England, to a Welsh family. According to the General Register Office marriage record for his parents, his mother was the daughter of William Griffith, a surgeon of Oswestry. She married William Thomas on August 30, 1860. William Thomas was a draper and the son of Thomas Thomas, a farmer. By the 1861 census, Mrs. Thomas was widowed and living in Oswestry with her parents and infant son.
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