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List of the most influential people in Theology,

#2751

William Paley

1743 - 1805 (62 years)

William Paley was an English Anglican clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, which made use of the watchmaker analogy.

#2752

Johann Arndt

1555 - 1621 (66 years)

Johann Arndt was a German Lutheran theologian who wrote several influential books of devotional Christianity. Although reflective of the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy, he is seen as a forerunner of Pietism, a movement within Lutheranism that gained strength in the late 17th century.

#2753

Johann Salomo Semler

Johann Salomo Semler

1725 - 1791 (66 years)

Johann Salomo Semler was a German church historian, biblical commentator, and critic of ecclesiastical documents and of the history of dogmas. He is sometimes known as "the father of German rationalism".

#2754

Nathan Söderblom

Nathan Söderblom

1866 - 1931 (65 years)

Lars Olof Jonathan Söderblom was a Swedish clergyman. He was the Church of Sweden Archbishop of Uppsala between 1914 and 1931, and recipient of the 1930 Nobel Peace Prize. He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on 12 July.

#2755

Dwight L. Moody

Dwight L. Moody

1837 - 1899 (62 years)

Dwight Lyman Moody , also known as D. L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher connected with Keswickianism, who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts , Moody Bible Institute, and Moody Publishers. One of his most famous quotes was "Faith makes all things possible... Love makes all things easy." Moody gave up his lucrative boot and shoe business to devote his life to revivalism, working first in the Civil War with Union troops through YMCA in the United States Christian Commission. In Chicago, he built one of the major evangelical centers in the nation, which is still active.

#2756

Symeon the New Theologian

Symeon the New Theologian

949 - 1022 (73 years)

Symeon the New Theologian was an Eastern Orthodox monk and poet who was the last of three saints canonized by the Eastern Orthodox Church and given the title of "Theologian" . "Theologian" was not applied to Symeon in the modern academic sense of theological study; the title was designed only to recognize someone who spoke from personal experience of the vision of God. One of his principal teachings was that humans could and should experience theoria .

#2757

Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

1802 - 1869 (67 years)

Ernst Wilhelm Theodor Herrmann Hengstenberg , was a German Lutheran churchman and neo-Lutheran theologian from an old and important Dortmund family. He was born at Fröndenberg, a Westphalian town, and was educated by his father Johann Heinrich Karl Hengstenberg, who was a famous minister of the Reformed Church and head of the Fröndenberg convent of canonesses . His mother was Wilhelmine then Bergh. Entering the University of Bonn in 1819, Hengstenberg attended the lectures of Georg Wilhelm Freytag for Oriental languages and of Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler for church history, but his energies we...

#2758

Malik ibn Anas

711 - 795 (84 years)

Malik ibn Anas , whose full name is Mālik bin Anas bin Mālik bin Abī ʿĀmir bin ʿAmr bin Al-Ḥārith bin Ghaymān bin Khuthayn bin ʿAmr bin Al-Ḥārith al-Aṣbaḥī al-Ḥumyarī al-Madanī , reverently known as al-Imām Mālik by Sunni Muslims, was a Muslim jurist, theologian, and hadith traditionist. Born in the city of Medina, Malik rose to become the premier scholar of prophetic traditions in his day, which he sought to apply to "the whole legal life" in order to create a systematic method of Muslim jurisprudence which would only further expand with the passage of time. Referred to as the "Imam of Medi...

#2759

Henry Edward Manning

Henry Edward Manning

1808 - 1892 (84 years)

Henry Edward Manning was an English prelate of the Catholic Church, and the second Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 until his death in 1892. He was ordained in the Church of England as a young man, but converted to Catholicism in the aftermath of the Gorham judgement.

#2760

Eduard Thurneysen

1888 - 1974 (86 years)

Eduard Thurneysen was a Swiss Protestant clergyman and theologian, who was an important representative of dialectical theology. Born in Walenstadt on 10 July 1888, he studied theology under Bernhard Duhm and Paul Wernle at the University of Basel, and from 1911 served as an assistant secretary of the Christliche Verein Junger Menschen in Zürich. From 1913 to 1920 he was a pastor in Leutwil, during which time, he came in close contact with Karl Barth, then a minister in nearby Safenwil.

#2761

Tatian

120 - 180 (60 years)

Tatian of Adiabene, or Tatian the Syrian or Tatian the Assyrian, was an Assyrian Christian writer and theologian of the 2nd century. Tatian's most influential work is the Diatessaron, a Biblical paraphrase, or "harmony", of the four gospels that became the standard text of the four gospels in the Syriac-speaking churches until the 5th-century, after which it gave way to the four separate gospels in the Peshitta version.

#2762

Friedrich Rittelmeyer

1872 - 1938 (66 years)

Friedrich Rittelmeyer was a Lutheran German minister, theologian and the principal founder and first leader of The Christian Community. Rittelmeyer came to prominence in the early 20th century as a leading academic liberal theologian and priest in Germany and wrote several books that advocated a socially engaged "Christianity of deeds" . During the First World War he eventually became one of the most high-profile clergymen in Germany to publicly oppose the war. From the 1910s his thinking was gradually influenced by the philosopher Rudolf Steiner, and in 1922 a group of mainly Lutheran priest...

#2763

Roger Bacon

1220 - 1292 (72 years)

Roger Bacon , also known by the scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. In the early modern era, he was regarded as a wizard and particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method, along with his teacher Robert Grosseteste. Bacon applied the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle. Bacon discove...

#2764

William Wrede

1859 - 1906 (47 years)

Georg Friedrich Eduard William Wrede was a German Lutheran theologian. Biography Wrede was born at Bücken in the Kingdom of Hanover. He became an associate professor at Breslau in 1893, and full professor in 1896. He died in office in 1906.

#2765

Ernst Troeltsch

1865 - 1923 (58 years)

Ernst Peter Wilhelm Troeltsch was a German liberal Protestant theologian, a writer on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history, and a classical liberal politician. He was a member of the history of religions school. His work was a synthesis of a number of strands, drawing on Albrecht Ritschl, Max Weber's conception of sociology, and the Baden school of neo-Kantianism.

#2766

Saint Dominic

1170 - 1221 (51 years)

Saint Dominic, , also known as Dominic de Guzmán , was a Castilian Catholic priest and the founder of the Dominican Order. He is the patron saint of astronomers and natural scientists. He is alternatively called Dominic of Osma, Dominic of Caleruega, and Domingo Félix de Guzmán.

#2767

Barnabas

1 - 61 (60 years)

Barnabas , born Joseph or Joses , was according to tradition an early Christian, one of the prominent Christian disciples in Jerusalem. According to Acts 4:36, Barnabas was a Cypriot Jew. Named an apostle in Acts 14:14, he and Paul the Apostle undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the Judaizers. They traveled together making more converts , and participated in the Council of Jerusalem . Barnabas and Paul successfully evangelized among the "God-fearing" Gentiles who attended synagogues in various Hellenized cities of Anatolia.

#2768

Isaac Watts

1674 - 1748 (74 years)

Isaac Watts was an English Congregational minister, hymn writer, theologian, and logician. He was a prolific and popular hymn writer and is credited with some 750 hymns. His works include "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross", "Joy to the World", and "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past". He is recognised as the "Godfather of English Hymnody"; many of his hymns remain in use today and have been translated into numerous languages.

#2769

Francisco Suárez

Francisco Suárez

1548 - 1617 (69 years)

Francisco Suárez, was a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca movement. His work is considered a turning point in the history of second scholasticism, marking the transition from its Renaissance to its Baroque phases. According to Christopher Shields and Daniel Schwartz, "figures as distinct from one another in place, time, and philosophical orientation as Leibniz, Grotius, Pufendorf, Schopenhauer and Heidegger, all found reason to cite him as a source of inspiration and influence."

#2770

Georg Hermes

1775 - 1831 (56 years)

Georg Hermes was a German Roman Catholic theologian who advocated a rational approach to theology. During his lifetime, his theology was greatly in vogue in Germany, but declined after the posthumous papal condemnation of "Hermesianism".

#2771

B. B. Warfield

1851 - 1921 (70 years)

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was an American professor of Reformed theology at Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921. He served as the last principal of the Princeton Theological Seminary from 1886 to 1902. After the death of Warfield in office, Francis Landey Patton took over the functions of the office as the first president of seminary. Some conservative Presbyterians consider him to be the last of the great Princeton theologians before the split in 1929 that formed Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

#2772

Richard Baxter

1615 - 1691 (76 years)

Richard Baxter was an English Nonconformist church leader and theologian from Rowton, Shropshire, who has been described as "the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen". He made his reputation in the late 1630s by his ministry at Kidderminster in Worcestershire, when he also began a long and prolific career as theological writer.

#2773

Johann Philipp Gabler

Johann Philipp Gabler

1753 - 1826 (73 years)

Johann Philipp Gabler was a German Protestant Christian theologian of the school of Johann Jakob Griesbach and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn. Gabler was born at Frankfurt-am-Main. In 1772 he entered the University of Jena as a theological student. In 1776 he was on the point of abandoning theology when the arrival of Griesbach inspired within him a new enthusiasm for the subject. After having been successively Repetent in the University of Göttingen and teacher in the public schools of Dortmund and Altdorf , he was appointed second professor of theology at the University of Altdorf in 1785, the...

#2774

C. I. Scofield

1843 - 1921 (78 years)

Cyrus Ingerson Scofield was an American theologian, minister, and writer whose best-selling annotated Bible popularized futurism and dispensationalism among fundamentalist Christians. Biography Childhood Cyrus Scofield was born in Clinton Township, Lenawee County, Michigan, the seventh and last child of Elias and Abigail Goodrich Scofield. Elias Scofield's ancestors were of English and Puritan descent, but the family was nominally Episcopalian. Abigail Scofield died three months after Cyrus's birth, and his father twice remarried during Cyrus's minority. Details of his early education are u...

#2775

Andreas Karlstadt

Andreas Karlstadt

1486 - 1541 (55 years)

Andreas Rudolph Bodenstein von Karlstadt , better known as Andreas Karlstadt, Andreas Carlstadt or Karolostadt, in Latin, Carolstadius, or simply as Andreas Bodenstein, was a German Protestant theologian, University of Wittenberg chancellor, a contemporary of Martin Luther and a reformer of the early Reformation.

#2777

Herman Bavinck

1854 - 1921 (67 years)

Herman Bavinck was a Dutch Calvinist theologian and churchman. He was a significant scholar in the Calvinist tradition, alongside Abraham Kuyper, B. B. Warfield, and Geerhardus Vos. Biography Background Bavinck was born on 13 December 1854 in the town of Hoogeveen in the Netherlands to a German father, Jan Bavinck , who was the minister of theologically conservative, ecclesiastically separatist Christian Reformed Church . After his high school education, Bavinck first went to the Theological School in Kampen in 1873, but then moved on to Leiden for further training after one year in Kampen....

#2778

Heinrich Bullinger

Heinrich Bullinger

1504 - 1575 (71 years)

Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer and theologian, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster. One of the most important leaders of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger co-authored the Helvetic Confessions and collaborated with John Calvin to work out a Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper.

#2779

Franciscus Gomarus

Franciscus Gomarus

1563 - 1641 (78 years)

Franciscus Gomarus was a Dutch theologian, a strict Calvinist and an opponent of the teaching of Jacobus Arminius , whose theological disputes were addressed at the Synod of Dort . Life Gomarus was born in Bruges. His parents, having embraced the principles of the Reformation, emigrated from Bruges to the Electorate of the Palatinate in 1578, in order to enjoy freedom to profess their new faith, and they sent their son to be educated at Strasbourg under Johann Sturm. He remained there three years, and then went in 1580 to Neustadt, from which the professors of Heidelberg had been driven by the elector-palatine because they were not Lutherans.

#2780

Michał Sopoćko

1888 - 1975 (87 years)

Michael Sopoćko was a Polish Roman Catholic priest and professor at Vilnius University. He is best known as the spiritual director of Faustina Kowalska. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.

#2781

Saint Stephen

1 - 36 (35 years)

Stephen is traditionally venerated as the protomartyr or first martyr of Christianity. According to the Acts of the Apostles, he was a deacon in the early Church at Jerusalem who angered members of various synagogues by his teachings. Accused of blasphemy at his trial, he made a speech denouncing the Jewish authorities who were sitting in judgment on him and was then stoned to death. Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul, a Pharisee and Roman citizen who would later become a Christian apostle, participated in Stephen's martyrdom.

#2782

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

1627 - 1704 (77 years)

Jacques-Bénigne Lignel Bossuet was a French bishop and theologian renowned for his sermons and other addresses. He has been considered by many to be one of the most brilliant orators of all time and a master French stylist.

#2783

Edward Bouverie Pusey

Edward Bouverie Pusey

1800 - 1882 (82 years)

Edward Bouverie Pusey was an English Anglican cleric, for more than fifty years Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. He was one of the leading figures in the Oxford Movement, with interest in sacramental theology and typology.

#2784

Martin Grabmann

Martin Grabmann

1875 - 1949 (74 years)

Martin Grabmann was a German Roman Catholic priest, medievalist and historian of theology and philosophy. He was a pioneer of the history of medieval philosophy and has been called "the greatest Catholic scholar of his time."

#2785

Luis de Molina

1535 - 1600 (65 years)

Luis de Molina was a Spanish Jesuit priest and scholastic, a staunch defender of free will in the controversy over human liberty and God's grace. His theology is known as Molinism. Life From 1551 to 1562, Molina studied law in Salamanca, philosophy in Alcalá de Henares, and theology in Coimbra. After 1563, he became a professor at the University of Coimbra, and afterward taught at the University of Évora, Portugal. From this post he was called, at the end of twenty years, to the chair of moral theology in Madrid, where he died.

#2786

Hasan al-Basri

642 - 728 (86 years)

Abu Sa'id ibn Abi al-Hasan Yasar al-Basri, often referred to as Hasan of Basra for short, or as Hasan al-Basri, was an ancient Muslim preacher, ascetic, theologian, exegete, scholar, judge, and mystic. Born in Medina in 642, Hasan belonged to the second generation of Muslims, all of whom would subsequently be referred to as the tābiʿūn in Sunni Islamic piety. He became one of "the most celebrated" of the tābiʿūn, enjoying an "acclaimed scholarly career and an even more remarkable posthumous legacy in Islamic scholarship."

#2787

Pierre Poiret

1646 - 1719 (73 years)

Pierre Poiret Naudé was a prominent French mystic and Christian philosopher. He was born in Metz and died in Rijnsburg. Life and accomplishments After the early death of his parents, he supported himself by the engraver's trade and the teaching of French, at the same time studying theology, in Basel, Hanau, and, after 1668, Heidelberg. At Basel he was captivated by Descartes' philosophy, which never quite lost its hold on him. He read also Thomas à Kempis and Tauler, but was especially influenced by the writings of the Dutch Mennonite mystic Hendrik Jansen van Barrefelt , whose works were pu...

#2788

William Howard Durham

1873 - 1912 (39 years)

William Howard Durham was an early Pentecostal preacher and theologian, best known for advocating the Finished Work doctrine. Early life and career Durham was born in 1873 in rural Kentucky and joined his family's Baptist church; however, he would only experience conversion later. He joined the Holiness movement and by 1901 founded the North Avenue Full Gospel Mission, a store-front church in Chicago.

#2789

Samson Raphael Hirsch

Samson Raphael Hirsch

1808 - 1888 (80 years)

Samson Raphael Hirsch was a German Orthodox rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the Torah im Derech Eretz school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally termed neo-Orthodoxy, his philosophy, together with that of Azriel Hildesheimer, has had a considerable influence on the development of Orthodox Judaism.

#2790

Johann Gerhard

1582 - 1637 (55 years)

Johannes Gerhard was a Lutheran church leader and Lutheran Scholastic theologian during the period of Orthodoxy. Biography He was born in the German city of Quedlinburg. During a dangerous illness, at the age of fourteen he came under the personal influence of Johann Arndt, author of Das wahre Christenthum, and resolved to study for the church. He entered the University of Wittenberg in 1599, and studied philosophy and theology. A relative then persuaded him to change his subject, and he studied medicine for two years. In 1603, he resumed his theological reading at Jena, and in the following year received a new impulse from J.W.

#2791

Joachim Jeremias

1900 - 1979 (79 years)

Joachim Jeremias was a German Lutheran theologian, scholar of Near Eastern Studies and university professor for New Testament studies. He was abbot of Bursfelde, 1968–1971. He was born in Dresden and spent his formative years in Jerusalem, where between 1910 and 1918 his father, Friedrich Jeremias , worked as Provost of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. He studied Lutheran theology and Oriental languages at the universities of Tübingen and Leipzig. In Leipzig he obtained both a "Doctor philosophiae " and a "Doctor theologiae " degree , followed by his Habilitation . His mentor was the re...

#2792

Hermann Gunkel

1862 - 1932 (70 years)

Hermann Gunkel , a German Old Testament scholar, founded form criticism. He also became a leading representative of the history of religions school. His major works cover Genesis and the Psalms, and his major interests centered on the oral tradition behind written sources and in folklore.

#2793

Luke the Evangelist

Luke the Evangelist

Luke the Evangelist is one of the Four Evangelists—the four traditionally ascribed authors of the canonical gospels. The Early Church Fathers ascribed to him authorship of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Prominent figures in early Christianity such as Jerome and Eusebius later reaffirmed his authorship, although a lack of conclusive evidence as to the identity of the author of the works has led to discussion in scholarly circles, both secular and religious.

#2794

Jean Gerson

1363 - 1429 (66 years)

Jean Charlier de Gerson was a French scholar, educator, reformer, and poet, Chancellor of the University of Paris, a guiding light of the conciliar movement and one of the most prominent theologians at the Council of Constance. He was one of the first thinkers to develop what would later come to be called natural rights theory, and was also one of the first individuals to defend Joan of Arc and proclaim her supernatural vocation as authentic.

#2795

John Courtney Murray

John Courtney Murray

1904 - 1967 (63 years)

John Courtney Murray was an American Jesuit priest and theologian who was especially known for his efforts to reconcile Catholicism and religious pluralism and particularly focused on the relationship between religious freedom and the institutions of a democratically-structured modern state.

#2796

Menno Simons

1496 - 1561 (65 years)

Menno Simons was a Roman Catholic priest from the Friesland region of the Low Countries who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church and became an influential Anabaptist religious leader. Simons was a contemporary of the Protestant Reformers and it is from his name that his followers became known as Mennonites.

#2797

Athenagoras of Athens

133 - 190 (57 years)

Athenagoras was a Father of the Church, an Ante-Nicene Christian apologist who lived during the second half of the 2nd century of whom little is known for certain, besides that he was Athenian , a philosopher, and a convert to Christianity.

#2798

J. Vernon McGee

1904 - 1988 (84 years)

John Vernon McGee was an American ordained Presbyterian minister, pastor, Bible teacher, theologian, and radio minister. Biography Childhood, education, and early ministry McGee was born in Hillsboro, Texas, to itinerant parents, John McGee and Carrie McGee . His father held many jobs, his last one being an engineer at a cotton mill in Oklahoma, where he died in 1918 when Vernon was 14 years old. After his father's death, Vernon's family relocated to Tennessee. Before entering the ministry, Vernon worked as a bank teller.

#2799

Johann Adam Möhler

Johann Adam Möhler

1796 - 1838 (42 years)

Johann Adam Möhler was a German Roman Catholic theologian and priest associated with the Catholic Tübingen school. He was born at Igersheim in the Bailiwick of Franconia of the Teutonic Order , and after studying philosophy and theology in the lyceum at Ellwangen, entered the University of Tübingen in 1817. Ordained to the priesthood in 1819, he was appointed to a curacy. He returned to Tübingen where he became privatdozent in 1825, an associate professor of theology in 1826 and a full professor in 1828.

#2800

Albert Benjamin Simpson

Albert Benjamin Simpson

1843 - 1919 (76 years)

Albert Benjamin Simpson , also known as A. B. Simpson, was a Canadian preacher, theologian, author, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance , an evangelical denomination with an emphasis on global evangelism that has been characterized as being Keswickian in theology.

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