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,
#2301
James Bethune-Baker
1861 - 1951 (90 years)
James Franklin Bethune-Baker was the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge from 1911 to 1935. A Modern Churchman, Bethune-Baker was known for his work on the person and writings of Nestorius. He was co-editor of the Journal of Theological Studies from 1904 to 1935. He was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge for sixty years. His funeral service took place in Pembroke College Chapel on 17 January 1951, but he was buried in the Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge. He was a cousin of Arthur Christopher Benson, who is also buried in the Ascension Parish B...
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Jean Bagot
1591 - 1664 (73 years)
Jean Bagot was a Jesuit theologian. Bagot was born at Rennes, France. He entered the Society of Jesus, 1 July 1611, taught belles-lettres for many years at various colleges in France, philosophy for five years, theology for thirteen years, and became theologian to the General of the Society. In 1647 he published the first part of his work Apologeticus Fidei titled Institutio Theologica de vera Religione In 1645 the second part, Demonstratio dogmatum Christianorum, appeared, and in 1646 Dissertationes theologicae on the Sacrament of Penance. In his Avis aux Catholiques, Bagot attacked the new doctrine on grace, directing against it also his Lettre sur la conformite de S.
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Matthew Poole
1624 - 1679 (55 years)
Matthew Poole was an English Non-conformist theologian and biblical commentator. Life to 1662 He was born at York, the son of Francis Pole, but he spelled his name Poole, and in Latin Polus; his mother was a daughter of Alderman Toppins there. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, from 1645, under John Worthington. Having graduated B.A. at the beginning of 1649, he succeeded Anthony Tuckney, in the sequestered rectory of St Michael le Querne, then in the fifth classis of the London province, under the parliamentary system of presbyterianism. This was his only preferment. He proceeded M.A.
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Karl Heinrich Sack
1789 - 1875 (86 years)
Karl Heinrich Sack was a German Protestant theologian and university professor. Life Karl Heinrich Sack, son of Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack, was born at Berlin on 17 October 1789. He studied at Gottingen and Berlin, and commenced his lectures at the Berlin University in 1817. In 1818 he was made professor extraordinary, and in 1832 professor of theology in Bonn.
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Paul Sutermeister
1864 - 1905 (41 years)
Paul Sutermeister was a Swiss theologian, pastor and contributing editor of the Berner Tagblatt. Biography Paul Sutermeister's father was Otto Sutermeister; his family came from Zofingen. He attended high school in Berne and studied theology at the universities of Basel and Göttingen. He began his sermon in the Appenzell region. “His popular book ‘Der Dorfkaiser’, in which he criticized sharply the lottery and the ruthless exploitation of vulnerable people by the village magnate [...] costed him his job as a pastor in Walzenhausen and led him to the activity in the daily press.” As foreign ed...
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Johann Jakob Pfeiffer
1740 - 1791 (51 years)
Johann Jakob Pfeiffer was a German evangelical theologian, as well as a professor, and later, dean, at the University of Marburg. Life and career Pfeiffer was the son of Kassel master dyer, Hieronymus Pfeiffer and his wife Anne Elisabeth . He was educated in Kassel's preparatory schools, and in 1755 he enrolled at the Collegium Carolinum. There, he studied under Johann Gottlieb Stegmann and Justus Heinrich Wetzel. In 1757, Pfeiffer began his studies at the University of Marburg. At university, he studied theology, mathematics, logic, and metaphysics. By 1760 he was attending the University o...
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Salomon Schweigger
1551 - 1622 (71 years)
Salomon Schweigger was a German Lutheran theologian, minister, anthropologist and orientalist of the 16th century. He provided a valuable insight during his travels in the Balkans, Constantinople and the Middle East, and published a famous travel book of his exploits. He also published the first German language translation of the Qur'an.
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Rosa Gutknecht
1885 - 1959 (74 years)
Laura Elisabeth Rosa Gutknecht was a German-born Swiss theologian and cleric. In 1918, together with Elise Pfister, she was one of the first two women to graduate in theology. The same year, both were ordained as pastors of the Reformed Church of Zürich. They are considered to be the first women in Europe to be ordained as pastors.
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Johann Funck
1518 - 1566 (48 years)
Johann Funck, Funk or Funccius was a German Lutheran theologian. He was beheaded after a court intrigue. Life Funck was born in Wöhrd, now part of Nuremberg. After obtaining an M.A. at the University of Wittenberg and preaching in several places, he was recommended to Albert, Duke of Prussia, by Veit Dietrich, and went to Königsberg in 1547. Initially the pastor at Altstadt Church, Funck was made court preacher in 1549.
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Samuel Maresius
1599 - 1673 (74 years)
Samuel Des Marets or Desmarets was a French Protestant theologian. Life He was born in Picardy, northern France. He studied in Paris, in Saumur Academy under Gomarus, and in Geneva at the time of the Synod of Dort. He was ordained in 1620, and preached at Laon until a controversy with Roman Catholic missionaries. Feeling his life was in danger, he left in 1624. which led to an attack on his life.
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Bartholomew Des Bosses
1668 - 1738 (70 years)
Bartholomew Des Bosses was a Jesuit theologian and philosopher, known mainly for his voluminous correspondence with Leibniz. Biography Des Bosses joined the Society of Jesus in 1686. In 1700, he taught at the Jesuit college in Emmerich, later moving to Hildesheim. He remained there until moving in 1710 to Cologne, taking up an appointment as professor of mathematics at the Jesuit college there. Apart from a stay in Paderborn in 1712 and 1713, he remained in Cologne for the rest of his life.
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Robert Rainy
1826 - 1906 (80 years)
Robert Rainy , was a Scottish Presbyterian divine. Rainy Hall in New College, Edinburgh is named after him. Life He was born on New Year's Day 1826 at 28 Montrose Street in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of Dr. Harry Rainy LLD a surgeon who later served as Professor of Forensic Medicine in the University of Glasgow, and his wife Barbara Gordon . The family lived at 28 Montrose Street. One of his uncles was George Rainy, the noted slave plantation owner and personality involved in the Highland Clearances.
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Jean Beleth
1101 - 1185 (84 years)
Jean Beleth was a twelfth-century French liturgist and theologian. He is thought to have been rector in a Paris theological college. That he was possibly of English origin was a hypothesis discussed by John Pits, and supported by Thomas Tanner; but is no longer taken seriously.
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William Buell Sprague
1795 - 1876 (81 years)
William Buell Sprague was an American Congregational and Presbyterian clergyman and compiler of Annals of the American Pulpit , a comprehensive biographical dictionary of the leading American Protestant Christian ministers who died before 1850.
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Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker
1822 - 1899 (77 years)
Karl Heinrich Weizsäcker was a German Protestant theologian. Life and work Weizsäcker was born in Öhringen near Heilbronn in Württemberg, the son of Sophie and Christian Ludwig Friedrich Weizsäcker. He studied at Tübingen and Berlin.
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Ralph Emerson
1787 - 1863 (76 years)
Ralph Emerson was Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Pastoral Theology in the Andover Theological Seminary. He was born on August 18, 1787, in Hollis, New Hampshire, where his father was a leading citizen, and where his grandfather, Rev. Daniel Emerson, was a pastor from 1743 to 1801. He graduated from Yale College in 1811. After studying theology at Andover, he held the office of Tutor in Yale College, from 1814 to 1816, and at the close of this service he was ordained and installed as pastor of the Congregational church in Norfolk, Connecticut. Here he remained till 1829, when he was a...
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George Barker Stevens
1854 - 1906 (52 years)
George Barker Stevens was an American Congregational and Presbyterian clergyman, theologian, author, educator, and Yale Divinity School professor. Stevens was born July 13, 1854, in Spencer, New York, the son of Thomas Jackson Stevens and Weltha Barker Stevens. His father was a farmer of Dutch descent.
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Ernst Bertheau
1812 - 1888 (76 years)
Ernst Bertheau was a German orientalist and theologian, known for his exegetical studies of the Old Testament. From 1832 he studied theology and oriental languages in Berlin, then continued his education at the University of Göttingen as a pupil of Heinrich Ewald, Karl Gieseler and Friedrich Lücke. In 1839 he obtained his habilitation for Old Testament exegesis and oriental languages at Göttingen, where in 1843 he became a full professor. At the university, he gave lectures on exegesis, archaeology and theology of the Old Testament and instructions in Arabic, Chaldean and Syriac.
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Filaret Scriban
1811 - 1873 (62 years)
Filaret Scriban was a Moldavian and Romanian theologian within the Romanian Orthodox Church. Born in Burdujeni, Botoșani County, then a village near Suceava, his father was a priest. Leaving for Iași, the capital of Moldavia, he studied at the Vasilian College and at Academia Mihăileană between 1830 and 1837. Meanwhile, between 1834 and 1837, he taught at the normal school associated with Trei Ierarhi Monastery and was a part-time teacher at Academia Mihăileană from 1837 to 1839. He was sent to study at Kiev Theological Academy, where he remained from 1839 to 1842 and obtained a master's degree in theology.
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John Rainolds
1549 - 1607 (58 years)
John Rainolds was an English academic and churchman, of Puritan views. He is remembered for his role in the Authorized Version of the Bible, a project of which he was initiator. Life He was born about Michaelmas 1549 at Pinhoe, near Exeter. He was fifth son of Richard Rainolds; William Rainolds was his brother. His uncle Thomas Rainolds held the living of Pinhoe from 1530 to 1537, and was subsequently Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and Dean of Exeter. John Rainolds appears to have entered the University of Oxford originally at Merton, but on 29 April 1563 he was elected to a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, where two of his brothers, Hierome and Edmond, were already fellows.
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Maurice Vernes
1845 - 1923 (78 years)
Maurice Vernes was a French Protestant theologian and historian of religion. He studied theology at the Protestant seminary in Montauban and the University of Strasbourg, receiving his doctorate in 1874. From 1877 he taught as a lecturer at the Sorbonne, and two years later, became a professor at the Faculté de théologie protestante de Paris . In 1886, he was named director-adjoint at the École pratique des hautes études . From 1901 he taught classes as a professor at the Collège libre des sciences sociales in Paris.
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John Jeremiah Lawler
1862 - 1948 (86 years)
John Jeremiah Lawler was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Lead in South Dakota from 1916 until his death in 1948. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul in Minnesota from 1910 to 1916.
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Caspar Olevian
1536 - 1587 (51 years)
Caspar Olevian was a significant German Reformed theologian during the Protestant Reformation and along with Zacharias Ursinus was said to be co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism. That theory of authorship has been questioned by some modern scholarship.
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Ibn Ashir
1582 - 1631 (49 years)
Abd al-Wahid ibn Ashir , commonly known as Ibn Ashir, or Sidi Ben Acher was a Moroccan jurist of the Maliki school of thought. His most well known work is the Al-Murshid al-Mu'een, a lengthy Qasidah which is meant to encourage learning of the Maliki fiqh.
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Robert Lightfoot
1883 - 1953 (70 years)
Robert Henry Lightfoot was an Anglican priest and theologian, who was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1934 to 1949. Life Lightfoot was the youngest son of Prideaux Lightfoot, Archdeacon of Oakham, and grandson of a former Rector of Exeter College, Oxford. He was born on 30 September 1883 and was educated at Uppingham School and Eton College before studying classics and then theology at Worcester College, Oxford. He was advised that he was not good enough to obtain an academic job, so became curate of a parish in Haslemere in 1909. ...
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William Douglas Mackenzie
1859 - 1936 (77 years)
William Douglas Mackenzie, D.D., LL.D. was an American Congregational theologian, born at Fauresmith, Orange River Colony, South Africa, educated in Edinburgh at Watson's College School and at the Congregational Theological Hall . He studied at Göttingen, then emigrated to the United States whereat he served as professor of systematic theology at Chicago Theological Seminary at Hartford from 1895 to 1903, president of the Hartford Seminary after 1904, and served as President Emeritus of the Hartford Seminary Foundation from 1930–?. Mackenzie was also a member of the Hartford Civitan Club.
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Charles Carroll Everett
1829 - 1900 (71 years)
Charles Carroll Everett was an American divine and philosopher. Early life and education Charles was born on June 19, 1829, in Brunswick, Maine, to Ebenezer Everett and Joanna Batchedler Prince. His father was a prominent citizen of Brunswick, a Harvard educated lawyer, banker, and long-time trustee of Bowdoin College. During the 1840s he was also elected to represent Brunswick in the Maine Legislature. The Everetts were an old, notable, and well connected New England family. Among his father's first cousins were Massachusetts Senator and Secretary of State Edward Everett and Ambassador Alexander Hill Everett.
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Louis Massebieau
1840 - 1904 (64 years)
Jean Adolphe Massebieau , known as Louis, was a French Protestant historian and theologian. In 1877 he became maître de conférences at the Faculté de théologie protestante de Paris. In 1880 he was named maître de conférences at the École pratique des hautes études . His daughter, Louise Compain, was a feminist author and co-founder of the feminist movement in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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Gábor Szeremlei
1807 - 1867 (60 years)
Gábor Szeremlei was a Hungarian Protestant theologian, professor and doctor of philosophy. Life Szeremlei was born in 1807 in Disznóshorvát , Borsod county. His mother was the Czech-born Anna Hofman, His father was Sámuel Szeremlei Császár . The exact date of his birth is unknown, because his birth wasn't registered in the baptismal birth register. The birth year is sure, because he was born after his father arrived to Disznóshorvát, and in 1808 a younger brother's name was registered in Disznóshorvát.
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John Kaye
1783 - 1853 (70 years)
John Kaye was a British churchman. Early life and education He was born the only son of Abraham Kaye in Hammersmith, London and educated at the school of Sir Charles Burney in Hammersmith and then Greenwich. He entered Christ's College, Cambridge and graduated Senior wrangler in 1804. He was the 21st Master of Christ's College from 1814 to 1830. Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1814,
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Raymond of Sabunde
1385 - 1436 (51 years)
Raymond of Sabunde was a Catalan scholar, teacher of medicine and philosophy and finally regius professor of theology at Toulouse. He was born in Barcelona , and died in Toulouse. His Theologia Naturalis sive Liber naturae creaturarum, etc., written 1434–1436 but published in 1484, marks an important stage in the history of natural theology. It was first written in Latin . His followers composed a more classical Latin version of the work. It was translated into French by Michel de Montaigne and edited in Latin at various times .
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Ian Theodor Beelen
1807 - 1884 (77 years)
Ian Theodor Beelen was a Dutch exegete and orientalist. Life After a course of studies at Rome, crowned by the Doctorate of Theology, he was in 1836 appointed Professor of Sacred Scripture and Oriental languages in the recently reorganized Catholic University of Leuven. This position he held till 1876, when he resigned his place to his pupil, Thomas Joseph Lamy.
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Richard McIlwaine
1834 - 1913 (79 years)
Richard McIlwaine was the eleventh President of Hampden–Sydney College from 1883 to 1904. He wrote an autobiographical account of his life experiences titled Memories of Three Score Years and Ten.
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Thomas Hartwell Horne
1780 - 1862 (82 years)
Thomas Hartwell Horne was an English theologian and librarian. Life He was born in London and educated at Christ's Hospital until he was 15 when his father died and he had to work. He then became a clerk to a barrister, and used his spare time to write.
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John of Montson
1340 - 1412 (72 years)
John of Montson was an Aragonese Dominican theologian and controversialist. His refusal to tolerate other beliefs regarding the Immaculate Conception resulted in his condemnation and clandestine exile to Spain.
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Tilemann Heshusius
1527 - 1588 (61 years)
Tilemann Heshusius was a Gnesio-Lutheran theologian and Protestant reformer. Life Heshusius came from an influential family in Wesel. He was a student of Philipp Melanchthon at the University of Wittenberg and was consequently close to him. During the time of the Augsburg Interim, he lived in Oxford and Paris. In 1550 he took his master's degree and was received by the Senate of the philosophical faculty; he lectured on rhetoric and as well as theology. In 1553 he became Superintendent in Goslar and acquired his doctoral degree in Wittenberg on 19 May that year at the expense of the city. H...
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Tobias Clausnitzer
1619 - 1684 (65 years)
Tobias Clausnitzer was a German Lutheran pastor and hymn writer. Leben und Wirken Born in Thum, Clausnitzer studied theology at the University of Leipzig from 1642. In 1644, he became military chaplain for a unit of the Swedish army. When the Thirty Years' War ended, he held a service celebrating the Peace of Westphalia in Weiden in der Oberpfalz in 1649. He settled, became pastor, and later also and inspector of Parkstein and Weiden. He died in 1684 as Superintendent in Weiden.
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Albrecht Wolters
1822 - 1878 (56 years)
Albrecht Julius Constantin Wolters was a German Protestant theologian. He was the father of classical archaeologist Paul Wolters . He studied theology at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, where he was a pupil of August Neander. After passing his first theological examination, he spent three years as a tutor in Naples, then serving as an assistant pastor in the city of Krefeld . In 1850 became a teacher at a higher Töchterschule in Cologne, and from July 1851 to May 1857, worked as a pastor in Wesel.
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Gerald of Wales
1146 - 1220 (74 years)
Gerald of Wales was a Cambro-Norman priest and historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and wrote extensively. He studied and taught in France and visited Rome several times, meeting the Pope. He was nominated for several bishoprics but turned them down in the hope of becoming Bishop of St Davids, but was unsuccessful despite considerable support. His final post was as Archdeacon of Brecon, from which he retired to academic study for the remainder of his life. Much of his writing survives.
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Nils Wallerius
1706 - 1764 (58 years)
Nils Wallerius was a Swedish physicist, philosopher and theologian. He was one of the first scientists to study and document the characteristics of evaporation through modern scientific methods. He was also among the first and more notable followers of the philosophies of German philosopher Christian Wolff .
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Hermann Strack
1848 - 1922 (74 years)
Hermann Leberecht Strack was a German Protestant theologian and orientalist; born in Berlin. Biography From 1877, Strack was assistant professor of Old Testament exegesis and Semitic languages at the University of Berlin. He was the foremost Christian authority in Germany on Talmudic and rabbinic literature, and studied rabbinics under Steinschneider. Since the reappearance of anti-Semitism in Germany, Strack had been the champion of the Jews against the attacks of such men as Hofprediger Adolf Stoecker, Professor August Rohling, and others. In 1885 Strack became the editor of Nathanael. Zeit...
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Franz Boll
1805 - 1875 (70 years)
Franz Christian Boll was a Lutheran theologian and historian. He was the father of physiologist Franz Christian Boll , and the brother of naturalist Ernst Boll , with whom he collaborated throughout his career.
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Stephen Nye
1648 - 1719 (71 years)
Stephen Nye was an English clergyman, known as a theological writer and for his Unitarian views. Life Son of John Nye, he graduated B.A. at Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1665. He became rector of Little Hormead, Hertfordshire in 1679. Thomas Firmin was a close associate.
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George Smeaton
1814 - 1889 (75 years)
George Smeaton was a 19th-century Scottish theologian and Greek scholar. Life He was born in Berwickshire on 8 April 1814. He studied Theology at Edinburgh University and Divinity Hall in Edinburgh. From around 1835 he operated as an urban missionary in North Leith, the harbour area of Edinburgh.
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Isaac of Troki
1533 - 1594 (61 years)
Isaac ben Abraham of Troki, Karaite scholar and polemical writer Works Isaac's learning earned him the respect and deference of his fellow Karaites, and his knowledge of the Latin and Polish languages and of Christian dogmatics enabled him to engage in amicable conversations on religious subjects not only with Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox clergymen, but also with Socinian and other sectarian elders. The fruit of these personal contacts, and of Isaac Troki's concurrent extensive reading in the New Testament and the Christian theological and anti-Jewish literature, was his famous apology of Judaism entitled Hizzuk Emunah .
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Hilarius of Sexten
1839 - 1899 (60 years)
Hilarius of Sexten was an Austrian Capuchin moral theologian. Life After a course of studies at Brixen, he entered the Capuchin Franciscan Order in 1858 and was ordained priest in 1862. Having labored in parochial duties for some years, he was appointed to teach moral theology at Meran in 1872. Both secular and regular clergy consulted him in difficult cases.
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Tomas de Lemos
1555 - 1629 (74 years)
Tomás de Lemos was a Spanish Dominican theologian and controversialist. Life At an early age he entered the Order of St. Dominic in his native town; he obtained, in 1590 the lectorate in theology and was at the same time appointed regent of studies in the convent of St. Paul at Valladolid. In 1594 he was assigned to the chair of theology in the university of that city.
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Alexander Viets Griswold Allen
1841 - 1908 (67 years)
Alexander Viets Griswold Allen was an American author, Episcopal clergyman and theologian. Biography Allen was born in Otis, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1841, to Ethan and Lydia Child Allen, née Burr.
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Diego Alvarez
1550 - 1635 (85 years)
Diego Álvarez was a Spanish theologian who opposed Molinism. He was archbishop of Trani from 1607 to his death. Life Diego Álvarez was born at Medina de Rioseco, Old Castile, about 1555. He entered the Dominican Order in his native city, and taught theology for twenty years in the Spanish cities of Burgos, Trianos, Plasencia, and Valladolid, and for ten years at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome. From 1603 to 1606 he was elected Regent of the Collegium Divi Thomae of the Dominicans in Rome.
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Hans Lietzmann
1875 - 1942 (67 years)
Hans Lietzmann was a German Protestant theologian and church historian who was a native of Düsseldorf. He initially studied in Jena, then continued his education in Bonn, where he was a student of Hermann Usener. In 1905 he was appointed professor of church history at the University of Jena, and in 1923 was a successor to Adolf von Harnack at the University of Berlin. During his career he obtained an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens, and in 1927 became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He died in Locarno, Switzerland on 25 June 1942.
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