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,
#3001
Karl Hase
1800 - 1890 (90 years)
Karl August von Hase was a German Protestant theologian and church historian. Background He was born at Steinbach in Saxony. He studied at Leipzig and Erlangen, and in 1829 was called to Jena as professor of theology. He retired in 1883 and was made a baron. He was the great-grandfather of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
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Frédéric Auguste Lichtenberger
1832 - 1899 (67 years)
Frédéric Auguste Lichtenberger was a French theologian. Biography He obtained his degree in theology, and was made professor at the University of Strasbourg . In 1877 he was appointed professor in the newly founded Protestant faculty at Paris, of which he also became dean. In 1896, he received a D.D. from the University of Glasgow.
Go to Profile#3003
Charles de Foucauld
1858 - 1916 (58 years)
Charles Eugène de Foucauld de Pontbriand, PFJ was a French soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnographer, Catholic priest and hermit who lived among the Tuareg people in the Sahara in Algeria. He was assassinated in 1916. His inspiration and writings led to the founding of the Little Brothers of Jesus, among other religious congregations. He was canonized by Pope Francis in 2022.
Go to Profile#3004
Leslie Weatherhead
1893 - 1976 (83 years)
Leslie Dixon Weatherhead was an English Christian theologian in the liberal Protestant tradition. Weatherhead was noted for his preaching ministry at City Temple in London and for his books, including The Will of God, The Christian Agnostic, and Psychology, Religion, and Healing.
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Eusebius of Emesa
295 - 360 (65 years)
Eusebius of Emesa was a learned Christian cleric of the Greek church, and a pupil of Eusebius of Caesarea. He was born in Edessa and became the bishop of Emesa . The Latin form of his name is Eusebius Emesenus.
Go to Profile#3006
Shah Waliullah Dehlawi
1703 - 1762 (59 years)
Qutb ud-Din Ahmad ibn ʿAbd-ur-Rahim al-ʿUmari ad-Dehlawi , commonly known as Shah Waliullah Dehlawi , was an Islamic Sunni scholar and Sufi of the Naqshbandi order, who is seen by his followers as a renewer. He emphasized the importance of following Sharia and believed in the unification of Hanafi and Shafi'i schools of law, aiming to reduce legal differences.
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Louis-Nazaire Bégin
1840 - 1925 (85 years)
Louis-Nazaire Bégin was a Canadian Cardinal of the Catholic Church. Begin held a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and was later appointed Archbishop of Quebec by Pope Leo XIII and created cardinal by Pope Pius X .
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Paul Petter Waldenström
1838 - 1917 (79 years)
Paul Petter Waldenström was a Swedish lecturer, priest in the Church of Sweden and theologian, member of the Riksdag, and writer, who became the most prominent leader of the free church movement in late 19th-century Sweden.
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Johann Tobias Beck
1804 - 1878 (74 years)
Johann Tobias Beck was a German theologian. Biography Graduating from the University of Tübingen in 1826, he was ordained a minister, but later accepted an appointment as professor of theology at the University of Basel. In 1843 he went to Tübingen, where he filled the same position.
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Walter Bauer
1877 - 1960 (83 years)
Walter Bauer was a German theologian, lexicographer of New Testament Greek, and scholar of the development of Early Christianity. Life Bauer was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, and raised in Marburg, where his father was a professor. He studied theology at the universities of Marburg, Strassburg, and Berlin. Bauer taught at Breslau and Göttingen, where he later died.
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Ebenezer Erskine
1680 - 1754 (74 years)
Ebenezer Erskine was a Scottish minister whose actions led to the establishment of the Secession Church . Early life Ebenezer's father, Henry Erskine, served as minister at Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland, but was ejected in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity and imprisoned for several years. Ebenezer and his brother Ralph were both born during this difficult period in their father's life. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 Henry was appointed to the parish of Chirnside, Berwickshire.
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Johannes Cocceius
1603 - 1669 (66 years)
Johannes Cocceius was a Dutch theologian born in Bremen. Life After studying at Hamburg and the University of Franeker, where Sixtinus Amama was one of his teachers, he became in 1630 professor of biblical philology at the Gymnasium illustre in his native town. In 1636 he was transferred to Franeker, where he held the chair of Hebrew, and from 1643 the chair of theology also, until 1650, when he succeeded the elder Friedrich Spanheim as professor of theology at the University of Leiden.
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John Witherspoon
1723 - 1794 (71 years)
John Witherspoon was a Scottish-American Presbyterian minister, educator, farmer, slaveholder, and a Founding Father of the United States. Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common sense realism, and while president of the College of New Jersey became an influential figure in the development of the United States' national character. Politically active, Witherspoon was a delegate from New Jersey to the Second Continental Congress and a signatory to the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. He was the only active clergyman and the only college president to sign the Declaration....
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Abraham Calovius
1612 - 1686 (74 years)
Abraham Calovius was a Lutheran theologian, and was one of the champions of Lutheran orthodoxy in the 17th century. Biography He was born in Mohrungen , Ducal Prussia, a fief of Crown of Poland. After studying at Königsberg, in 1650 he was appointed professor of theology at Wittenberg, where he afterwards became general superintendent and primarius.
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Johann Sebastian von Drey
1777 - 1853 (76 years)
Johann Sebastian von Drey was a German Catholic professor of theology at the University of Tübingen. With Johann Adam Möhler, Drey was a founder of the Catholic Tübingen school. Life He was born in Killingen, in the parish of Röhlingen, in the then ecclesiastical principality of Ellwangen.
Go to Profile#3016
Bernhard Duhm
1847 - 1928 (81 years)
Bernhard Lauardus Duhm was a German Lutheran theologian, born in Bingum, today part of Leer, East Frisia. He was a member of the history of religions school. Early life and education Duhm studied theology at the University of Göttingen, where he had as instructors Albrecht Ritschl , Heinrich Ewald and Julius Wellhausen , with the latter becoming a good friend and colleague to Duhm. In 1873, he became a lecturer at the University of Göttingen and subsequently an associate professor of Old Testament studies . In 1888, he relocated to the University of Basel, where he was one of the more influe...
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Thomas Hooker
1586 - 1647 (61 years)
Thomas Hooker was a prominent English colonial leader and Congregational minister, who founded the Connecticut Colony after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and an advocate of universal Christian suffrage.
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Joseph Kleutgen
1811 - 1883 (72 years)
Joseph Wilhelm Karl Kleutgen was a German Jesuit theologian and philosopher. He was a member of the Society of Jesus, and contributed significantly to the establishment of Neo-scholasticism. Life Kleutgen was born in Dortmund, Westphalia. He began his studies with the intention of becoming a priest, but owing to the Protestant atmosphere of the school which he attended, his zeal for religion gradually cooled. From 28 April 1830, to 8 January 1831, he studied philology at the University of Munich. He was intensely interested in Plato's philosophy and the Greek tragic poets. As member of the ...
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Werner Elert
1885 - 1954 (69 years)
Werner August Friedrich Immanuel Elert was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of both church history and systematic theology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His writings in the fields of Christian dogmatics, ethics, and history have had great influence on modern Christianity in general and modern Lutheranism in particular.
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Carl Stange
1870 - 1959 (89 years)
Carl Stange was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. In his work, he mainly dealt with issues of ethics and the philosophy of religion. He studied theology, history and philosophy at the universities of Halle, Göttingen, Leipzig and Jena, obtaining his habilitation for systematic theology in 1895 at Halle. In 1903 he became an associate professor at the University of Königsberg, and during the following year, was named a full professor of systematic theology at the University of Greifswald, where in 1911/12 he served as university rector. In 1912 he was appointed professor of syste...
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Johann Georg Rosenmüller
1736 - 1815 (79 years)
Johann Georg Rosenmüller , a German Protestant theologian, was born at Ummerstadt in Hildburghausen, on 18 December 1736. He was appointed Professor of Theology at Erlangen in 1773, Primarius Professor of Theology at Erlangen in 1773, Primarius Professor of Divinity at Giessen in 1783, and was called in 1785 to Leipzig, where he remained until his death in 1815. His two sons were Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller, and Johann Christian Rosenmüller.
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Ezra Stiles
1727 - 1795 (68 years)
Ezra Stiles was an American educator, academic, Congregationalist minister, theologian, and author. He is noted as the seventh president of Yale College and one of the founders of Brown University. According to religious historian Timothy L. Hall, Stiles' tenure at Yale distinguishes him as "one of the first great American college presidents."
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Mesrop Mashtots
361 - 440 (79 years)
Mesrop Mashtots was an early Medieval Armenian linguist, composer, theologian, statesman, and hymnologist in the Sasanian Empire. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Armenian Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. He is best known for inventing the Armenian alphabet AD, which was a fundamental step in strengthening Armenian national identity. He is also considered to be the creator of the Caucasian Albanian and Georgian alphabets by a number of scholars.
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Johann Joachim Lange
1670 - 1744 (74 years)
Johann Joachim Lange was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. Lange was born in Gardelegen and educated in Leipzig, Erfurt and Halle. He was influenced by Christian Thomasius and the pietist August Hermann Francke. He became a professor of theology at Halle in 1709, and opposed the philosophy of Christian Wolff. He died in Halle on 7 May 1744.
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Thomas Wolsey
1473 - 1530 (57 years)
Thomas Wolsey was an English statesman and Catholic bishop. When Henry VIII became King of England in 1509, Wolsey became the king's almoner. Wolsey's affairs prospered and by 1514 he had become the controlling figure in virtually all matters of state. He also held important ecclesiastical appointments. These included the Archbishop of York—the second most important role in the English church—and that of papal legate. His appointment as a cardinal by Pope Leo X in 1515 gave him precedence over all other English clergy.
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Pierius
201 - Present (1825 years)
Pierius was a Christian priest and probably head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, conjointly with Achillas. He flourished while Theonas was bishop of Alexandria, and died at Rome after 309. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 4 November.
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Vincent Ferrer
1350 - 1419 (69 years)
Vincent Ferrer, OP was a Valencian Dominican friar and preacher, who gained acclaim as a missionary and a logician. He is honored as a saint of the Catholic Church and other churches of Catholic traditions.
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August Carl Eduard Baldamus
1812 - 1893 (81 years)
August Carl Eduard Baldamus was a German ornithologist. August Baldamus studied theology at the University of Berlin. In 1859 he became professor at the Gymnasium in Köthen where he met Carl Andreas Naumann and his brother Johann Friedrich Naumann both ornithologists. In 1849 he became Pastor in Diebzig, in 1859 moving to the same office in Osternienburg. He retired to Coburg in 1870. Baldamus was the founder of the Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft and published the ornithological journal Naumannia between 1849 and 1858.
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Luigi Taparelli
1793 - 1862 (69 years)
Luigi Taparelli was an Italian Jesuit scholar of the Society of Jesus and counter-revolutionary who coined the term social justice and elaborated the principles of subsidiarity, as part of his natural law theory of just social order. He was the brother of the Italian statesman Massimo d'Azeglio.
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Étienne Tempier
1210 - 1279 (69 years)
Étienne Tempier was a French bishop of Paris during the 13th century. He was Chancellor of the Sorbonne from 1263 to 1268, and bishop of Paris from 1268 until his death. He is best remembered for promulgating a Condemnation of 219 philosophical and theological propositions that addressed concepts that were being disputed in the faculty of arts at the University of Paris.
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Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya
1292 - 1350 (58 years)
Shams ad-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ayyūb az-Zurʿī d-Dimashqī l-Ḥanbalī , commonly known as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya or Ibn al-Qayyim for short, or reverentially as Imam Ibn al-Qayyim in Sunni tradition, was an important medieval Islamic jurisconsult, theologian, and spiritual writer. Belonging to the Hanbali school of orthodox Sunni jurisprudence, of which he is regarded as "one of the most important thinkers," Ibn al-Qayyim was also the foremost disciple and student of Ibn Taymiyyah, with whom he was imprisoned in 1326 for dissenting against established tradition during Ib...
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Wu Leichuan
1870 - 1944 (74 years)
Wu Leichuan was a leading Chinese theologian in the early 20th century and Chancellor of Yenching University. Biography From his childhood, Wu poured his energy into mastering the Confucian classics and working his way up through the imperial examinations, obtaining the level of Jìnshì in 1898 in Beijing after passing the metropolitan and imperial examinations. He converted to Christianity in 1915 and became Yenching University's first Chinese vice-president and chancellor between 1926 and 1934.
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Wilhelm Bousset
1865 - 1920 (55 years)
Wilhelm Bousset was a German theologian and New Testament scholar. He was of Huguenot ancestry and a native of Lübeck. His most influential work was Kyrios Christos, an attempt to explain the origins of devotion to Christ as the product of second century Hellenistic forces, and is still the most widely influential academic work on early Christology, even if its conclusions are not supported by modern scholarship.
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Willibald Beyschlag
1823 - 1900 (77 years)
Johann Heinrich Christoph Willibald Beyschlag was a German theologian from Frankfurt am Main. Biography He studied theology at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, afterwards serving as an assistant pastor in Koblenz , then as a pastor in Trier . During the following year, Beyschlag began working as a religious instructor in Mainz. In 1856 he became a court preacher in Karlsruhe, and four years later, he was appointed a professor of practical theology and New Testament exegesis at the University of Halle.
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Edward Beecher
1803 - 1895 (92 years)
Edward Beecher was an American theologian, the son of Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Biography Beecher was born August 27, 1803, in East Hampton, New York. He graduated from Yale College in 1822. After this, he studied theology at Andover Theological School.
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Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch
1725 - 1778 (53 years)
Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch was a German theologian, linguist, and naturalist from Jena. Life The son of the theologian Johann Georg Walch, he studied Semitic languages at the University of Jena, and also natural science and mathematics. In 1749 he published Einleitung in die Harmonie der Evangelien, and in 1750 was appointed professor extraordinarius of theology. Five years later he became professor ordinarius of logic and metaphysics; in 1759 he exchanged this for a professorship of rhetoric and poetry.
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Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider
1776 - 1848 (72 years)
Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider was a German Protestant scholar and theologian from Gersdorf, Saxony. He is noted for, among other things, having planned and founded the monumental Corpus Reformatorum. He is the father of Carl Anton Bretschneider, a mathematician.
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Christoph Friedrich von Ammon
1766 - 1850 (84 years)
Christoph Friedrich von Ammon was a German theological writer and preacher. He was born at Bayreuth, Bavaria and died at Dresden. He studied at Erlangen, held various professorships in the philosophical and theological faculties of Erlangen and Göttingen, succeeded Franz Volkmar Reinhard in 1813 as court preacher and member of the Upper Consistory of the Church of Saxony at Dresden, retired from these offices in 1849. Seeking to establish for himself a middle position between rationalism and supernaturalism, he declared for a "rational supernaturalism," and contended that there must be a gradual development of Christian doctrine corresponding to the advance of knowledge and science.
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Eusebius Amort
1692 - 1775 (83 years)
Eusebius Amort was a German Roman Catholic theologian. Life Amort was born at Bibermuhle, near Tolz, in Upper Bavaria. He studied at Munich, and at an early age joined the Canons Regular at Polling, where, shortly after his ordination in 1717, he taught theology and philosophy. The Parnassus Boicus learned society was based on a plan started in 1720 by three Augustinian fathers: Eusebius Amort, Gelasius Hieber , a famous preacher in the German language and Agnellus Kandler , a genealogist and librarian. The initial plans fell through, but in 1722 they issued the first volume of the Parnassus...
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Gaston Fessard
1897 - 1978 (81 years)
Gaston Fessard was a French Jesuit and theologian. Father Fessard was the author of the first issue of Cahiers du Témoignage chrétien in November 1941, titled "France, Beware the Loss of Your Soul," which opposed Nazism in the name of Christian values. He also argued against the obligation to obey the Vichy government, elaborating his theory of the "slave prince," borrowed from Clausewitz: it is useful to obey the prince while he is sovereign and acts in the common interest, but resistance becomes necessary when the sovereignty of the slave-prince is limited and actions are dictated by the occupier.
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Berengar of Tours
990 - 1088 (98 years)
Berengar of Tours , in Latin Berengarius Turonensis, was an 11th-century French Christian theologian and archdeacon of Angers, a scholar whose leadership of the cathedral school at Chartres set an example of intellectual inquiry through the revived tools of dialectic that was soon followed at cathedral schools of Laon and Paris. Berengar of Tours was distinguished from mainline Catholic theology by two views: his assertion of the supremacy of Scripture and his denial of transubstantiation.
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Franz Joseph Dölger
1879 - 1940 (61 years)
Franz Joseph Dölger was a German Catholic theologian and church historian. He studied theology at the University of Würzburg, being ordained into the priesthood in 1902. Afterwards he worked as a chaplain in Amorbach and Würzburg, and in June 1904, obtained his doctorate in theology.
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August Wilhelm Knobel
1807 - 1863 (56 years)
August Wilhelm Karl Knobel was a German Protestant theologian born in Tzschecheln near Sorau, Niederlausitz. From 1826 he studied philosophy, philology and theology at the University of Breslau, earning his doctorate in 1831. Afterwards, he became a lecturer, and later an associate professor at Breslau. In 1838 he became a professor of theology at Breslau, and shortly afterwards relocated to the University of Giessen.
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Muhsin al-Hakim
1889 - 1970 (81 years)
Muhsin al-Tabatabaei al-Hakim was an Iraqi Shia religious authority. He became the leading marja' of Najaf in 1946 after the death of Abu al-Hasan al-Isfahani, and of the majority of the Shia world in 1961, after the death of Hossein Borujerdi.
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Johann Wilhelm Petersen
1649 - 1727 (78 years)
Johann Wilhelm Petersen was a German theologian, mystic, and Millennialist. Johann Wilhelm Petersen grew up in Lübeck and studied theology at the Katharineum in Lübeck, as well as in Giessen, Rostock, Leipzig, Wittenberg and Jena. He studied with Philipp Jakob Spener in Frankfurt, and they became friends in 1675. Through his affiliation with Spener, Petersen became interested in Pietism.
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Seakle Greijdanus
1871 - 1948 (77 years)
Seakle Greijdanus was a Reformed theologian in the Netherlands, who first served in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and later in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands . Greijdanus was born in Arum, Friesland and studied theology at the Free University in Amsterdam, where he specialized in dogmatics.
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Edwards Amasa Park
1808 - 1900 (92 years)
Edwards Amasa Park was an American Congregational theologian. Biography Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Park was the son of Calvin Park . Edwards Amasa Park graduated at Brown University in 1826, was a teacher at Braintree for two years, and in 1831 graduated from Andover Theological Seminary. He was co-pastor of the orthodox Congregational church of Braintree in 1831-1833; professor of mental and moral philosophy at Amherst in 1835; and Bartlet professor of sacred rhetoric , and Abbot professor of Christian theology at Andover. He died at Andover on 4 June 1900.
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Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples
1450 - 1537 (87 years)
Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples was a French theologian and a leading figure in French humanism. He was a precursor of the Protestant movement in France. The "d'Étaples" was not part of his name as such, but used to distinguish him from Jacques Lefèvre of Deventer, a less significant contemporary who was a friend and correspondent of Erasmus. Both are also sometimes called by the German version of their name, Jacob/Jakob Faber. He himself had a sometimes tense relationship with Erasmus, whose work on Biblical translation and in theology closely paralleled his own.
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Édouard Guillaume Eugène Reuss
1804 - 1891 (87 years)
Edouard Guillaume Eugène Reuss was a Protestant theologian from Alsace. Life He was born at Strasbourg, where he studied philology . He went on to study theology at Göttingen under Johann Gottfried Eichhorn; and Oriental Languages at Halle under Wilhelm Gesenius, and afterwards at Paris under Silvestre de Sacy . In 1828 he became Privatdozent at Strasbourg. From 1829 to 1834 he taught Biblical criticism and Oriental languages at the Strasbourg Theological School; he then became assistant, and afterwards, in 1836, regular professor of theology at that university. He became Professor of Old Testament at the same institution in 1864.
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William Robertson Smith
1846 - 1894 (48 years)
William Robertson Smith was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica. He is also known for his book Religion of the Semites, which is considered a foundational text in the comparative study of religion.
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