The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Theology,
#3101
Francis Sylvius
1581 - 1649 (68 years)
Francis Sylvius was a Flemish Roman Catholic theologian. Life After completing his course of humanities at Mons, he studied philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven and theology at University of Douai, in a seminary founded by the bishop of Cambrai in connection with the faculty of theology. While studying theology he taught philosophy at the royal college. On 9 November 1610, he was made doctor of theology with the highest honours.
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Richard of Middleton
1249 - 1302 (53 years)
Richard of Middleton was a member of the Franciscan Order, a theologian, and scholastic philosopher. Life Richard's origins are unclear: he was either Norman French or English . As a Bachelor of the Sentences of Peter Lombard at the University of Paris in 1283, he played a part in the Franciscan commission examining Peter Olivi. He was regent master of the Franciscan studium in Paris from 1284 to 1287, and, on 20 September 1295 in Metz, he was elected Franciscan minister provincial of France. He was also subsequently tutor to Louis of Toulouse, son of Charles II of Anjou. He died sometime b...
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Karl August Traugott Vogt
1808 - 1869 (61 years)
Karl August Traugott Vogt, name sometimes given as Carl Vogt was a German Protestant theologian. He was the father of philologist Friedrich Vogt . Vogt was born in Wittenberg. In 1830 he obtained his habilitation at the University of Berlin, where he later became an associate professor of church history and practical theology. During his time spent in Berlin, he gave sermons at the Trinity Church. In 1837 he relocated as a full professor to the University of Greifswald, where on three occasions he served as university rector . In Greifswald, he also served as an ecclesiastical superintendent and as a member of the Consistory.
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Georges Dandoy
1882 - 1962 (80 years)
Georges Dandoy was a Belgian Jesuit priest, missionary in India, theologian and Indologist. He is included in the so-called ‘Calcutta School of Indology’ . Education After a year of philosophical studies at Namur , he was sent to Stonyhurst, England to complete his philosophy , and to begin studying Sanskrit at Oxford University . Sent to Kolkata, he began teaching at St Xavier’s College before beginning his theological studies at St Mary’s, Kurseong, near Darjeeling . He was ordained priest in November 1914.
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Norbert of Xanten
1080 - 1134 (54 years)
Norbert of Xanten, O. Praem , also known as Norbert Gennep, was a bishop of the Catholic Church, founder of the Premonstratensian order of canons regular, and is venerated as a saint. Norbert was canonized by Pope Gregory XIII in the year 1582, and his statue appears above the Piazza colonnade of St. Peter's Square in Rome.
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John Caird
1820 - 1898 (78 years)
John Caird DD LLD was a Scottish theologian. He entered the Church of Scotland, of which he became one of the most eloquent preachers. He served as the Principal of the University of Glasgow from 1873 until 1898.
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Daniel Tilenus
1563 - 1633 (70 years)
Daniel Tilenus was a German-French Protestant theologian. Initially a Calvinist, he became a prominent and influential Arminian teaching at the Academy of Sedan. He was an open critic of the Synod of Dort of 1618-9.
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Louis-Isaac Lemaistre de Sacy
1613 - 1684 (71 years)
Louis-Isaac Lemaistre de Sacy , a priest of Port-Royal, was a theologian and French humanist. He is best known for his translation of the Bible, the most widespread French Bible in the 18th century, also known as the Bible de Port-Royal.
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Johann Nepomuk Oischinger
1817 - 1876 (59 years)
Johann Nepomuk Paul Oischinger was a German Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher who was a native of Witzmannsberg, Bavaria. Oischinger studied theology and philosophy at the University of Munich, where he had as instructors Franz Xaver von Baader , Joseph Görres , Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , Ignaz von Döllinger , Heinrich Klee , Johann Adam Möhler and Franz Xaver Reithmayr . In 1841 he received his ordination in Regensburg, and shortly afterwards returned to Munich, where he worked as a private scholar and journalist for the remainder of his career.
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Caspar Erich Schieler
1851 - 1934 (83 years)
Caspar Erasmus Schieler was a German theologian, church historian and priest in the late 19th century and early 20th century. According to documents provided by Mainz Cathedral and the Diocesan Seminary, Schieler studied philosophy and theology at the Episcopal Seminary in Mainz , receiving the Doctor of Divinity degree. Schieler first served as a priest at the age of twenty-five at Mainz, Cathedral ordained under Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler in the year 1876. Due to the Kulturkampf, Schieler was interrogated by the German government and forced to pastor his parish in secret, to avoid further attention.
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Lauri Ingman
1868 - 1934 (66 years)
Lars Johannes Ingman was a Finnish theologian, bishop and politician. In 1906 he began to serve as the editor of Vartija, a Christian magazine. From 1916 to 1930 he was the professor of practical theology in the University of Helsinki. He was also a member of the conservative National Coalition Party, where he acted as the speaker of the parliament and a minister in several cabinets, and served as the Prime Minister of Finland twice, in 1918–1919 and 1924–1925. In 1930 he was elected Archbishop of Turku, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.
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Liselotte Richter
1906 - 1968 (62 years)
Liselotte Richter was a German philosopher and theologian. She was the first female professor of philosophy in Germany. Early life Luise Charlotte Richter was born in 1906 and grew up with her twin brother Fritz in a middle-class family, first in Berlin-Tegel and then in Charlottenburg.
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Francisco Macedo
1596 - 1681 (85 years)
Francisco Macedo , known as S. Augustino, was a Portuguese Franciscan theologian. Life He entered the Jesuit Order in 1610, which however he left in 1638 in order to join the Discalced Augustinians. These also he left in 1648, for the Franciscans. In Portugal he sided with the House of Braganza.
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Abraham Hinckelmann
1652 - 1695 (43 years)
Abraham Hinckelmann , a German Protestant theologian, was an Islamologist who was one of the first to print a complete Qur'an in Hamburg. Later, a cleric named Ludovico Marracci from the "Society of the Monks of the Divine Path" published a better version.
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E. J. P. Jorissen
1829 - 1912 (83 years)
Eduard Johan Pieter Jorissen was a Dutch lawyer and politician. He graduated in theology and served as State Attorney of the South African Republic from 1876 to 1877 under Thomas François Burgers.
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Willem Duynstee
1886 - 1968 (82 years)
Willem Duynstee was a Catholic priest, jurist, moralist, and professor born at Sittard, the Netherlands, in 1886. After gaining a doctorate in criminal law in 1908, Willem joined the Redemptorists and was ordained a priest in 1913. In 1935, he was the first to provide a Thomist understanding of psychological repression and therapy which was fundamentally different from that of the neurologist Sigmund Freud. Duynstee was proficient in the anthropology and philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, whereas Freud invented his own language and explanations for what became the onset of psychoanalysis.
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John Edgar McFadyen
1870 - 1933 (63 years)
John Edgar McFadyen B. A. , M. A., D. D. was a Scottish theologian, was professor of language, literature and Old Testament theology in the University of Glasgow. He was born in Glasgow and died in 1933.
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Stephan Praetorius
1536 - 1603 (67 years)
Stephan Praetorius was a German Lutheran theologian and pastor. His life and work Prætorius was born in Salzwedel, Margraviate of Brandenburg. He was educated at the University of Rostock, where he also taught in the local schools; was ordained by Agricola at Berlin in 1565; became preacher in the same year at the monastery of the Holy Ghost at Salzwedel, and soon after deacon of the Church of St. Mary's; and from 1569 until his death was pastor in Salzwedel.
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Hugh Black
1868 - 1953 (85 years)
Hugh Black was a Scottish-American theologian and author. Life Black was born on March 26, 1868, in Rothesay, Scotland. He received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Glasgow in 1887, and studied divinity at Free Church College Glasgow from 1887 until 1891. Black was ordained in 1891 and became associate pastor at St George's Free Church in Edinburgh in 1896, where he worked with Alexander Whyte.
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Stanislovas Rapolionis
1485 - 1545 (60 years)
Stanislovas Svetkus Rapolionis was a Lutheran activist and Protestant reformer from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With patronage of Albert, Duke of Prussia, he obtained the doctorate of theology from the Protestant University of Wittenberg where he studied under Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. After graduation, he became the first professor of theology at the newly established University of Königsberg, also known as Albertina. As professor he began working on several Protestant publications and translations, including a Bible translation into Polish. It is believed that he also started the first translation of the Bible into Lithuanian.
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Johannes van den Driesche
1550 - 1616 (66 years)
Johannes van den Driesche [or Drusius] was a Flemish Protestant divine, distinguished specially as an Orientalist, Christian Hebraist and exegete. Life He was born at Oudenarde, in Flanders. Intended for the church, he studied Greek and Latin at Ghent, and philosophy at Leuven; but his father having been outlawed for his religion, and deprived of his estate, retired to England, where the son followed him in 1567. He found a teacher of Hebrew in Antoine Rodolphe Chevallier, with whom he resided for some time at Cambridge. In 1572 he became professor of Oriental languages at Oxford.
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Cornelius van Steenoven
1661 - 1725 (64 years)
Cornelis van Steenoven was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest who later served as the seventh Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht from 1724 to 1725. Consecrated without the permission of the pope, Steenoven was at the center of the 18th-century controversy between national churches and what many considered to be the overreaching powers of the papacy.
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James A. Burns
1867 - 1940 (73 years)
The Rev. James Aloysius Burns, C.S.C. was an American priest and President of the University of Notre Dame from 1919 to 1922. He was crucial in transforming Notre Dame into a national research university. He was professor of chemistry at Notre Dame from 1895 to 1900. He was a theorist of education, and wrote numerous books on the topic.
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John Gordon Davies
1919 - 1990 (71 years)
John Gordon Davies was Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham. He was educated at King's School , Christ Church and Westcott House . He worked in the dockland parish of Rotherhithe before joining the University of Birmingham, and he was also Director of the Institute for the Study of Worship and Religious Architecture in the University.
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Al-Baqillani
950 - 1013 (63 years)
Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib al-Bāqillānī , often known as al-Bāqillānī, was an Sunni Arab polymath who specialized in theology, jurisprudence, logic and hadith who spent much of his life defending and strengthening the Ash'ari school of theology within Islam. An accomplished rhetorical stylist and orator, al-Baqillani was held in high regard by his contemporaries for his expertise in debating theological and jurisprudential issues. Al-Dhahabi called him "The Learned Imam, Incomparable Master, Foremost of the Scholars, Author of many books, The Example of Articulateness and Intelligence."
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Anthony Jacob Henckel
1668 - 1728 (60 years)
Anthony Jacob Henckel was a German theologian who founded the first Lutheran church in North America upon his immigration from Germany to Philadelphia's Germantown neighborhood. Family Henckel had one older and four younger siblings. His mother and father were Anna Eulalia Dentzer and George Henckel. They were married on 2 May 1666. His father was a Lutheran school teacher.
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Bartholomäus Keckermann
1571 - 1609 (38 years)
Bartholomäus Keckermann was a German writer, Calvinist theologian and philosopher. He is known for his Analytic Method. As a writer on rhetoric, he is compared to Gerhard Johann Vossius, and considered influential in Northern Europe and England.
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Alanus de Rupe
1428 - 1475 (47 years)
Alanus de Rupe ; was a Roman Catholic theologian noted for his views on prayer. Some writers claim him as a native of Germany, others of Belgium; but his disciple, Cornelius Sneek, says that he was born in Brittany. He died at Zwolle.
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Athanase Laurent Charles Coquerel
1795 - 1868 (73 years)
Athanase Laurent Charles Coquerel was a French Protestant theologian, born in Paris, elected deputy of the Constituent Assembly after the revolution of February 1848. Life He received his early education from his aunt, Helen Maria Williams, an Englishwoman, who at the close of the 18th century gained a reputation by various translations and by her Letters from France. He completed his theological studies at the Protestant seminary of Montauban, and in 1816 was ordained minister. In 1817 he was invited to become pastor of the chapel of St Paul at Jersey, but he declined, being unwilling to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.
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Auxentius of Milan
301 - 374 (73 years)
Auxentius of Milan or of Cappadocia , was an Arian theologian and bishop of Milan. Because of his Arian faith, Auxentius is considered by the Catholic Church as an intruder and he is not included in the Catholic lists of the bishops of Milan such as that engraved in the Cathedral of Milan.
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Jonathan Friedrich Bahnmaier
1774 - 1841 (67 years)
Jonathan Friedrich Bahnmaier was a German Protestant theologian, university professor, and hymnwriter. Life Jonathan Friedrich Bahnmaier was born on 12 July 1774, at Oberstenfeld, near Marbach, in Wurtemberg, where his father was minister. He studied theology at Tubingen, and assisted his father in his ministry until his death, in 1803.
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D. N. Jackson
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Doss Nathan Jackson was a Baptist pastor from the United States who was fundamental in the founding of the North American Baptist Association . He was a debater and conference speaker, publisher and a prolific writer of Christian literature and theological works including Studies in Baptist Doctrine and History.
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Maurice Zundel
1897 - 1975 (78 years)
Maurice Zundel was a Swiss theologian. Formation Zundel completed his Doctor of Philosophy in 1927 at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum with a dissertation directed by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange entitled L'Influence du nominalisme sur la pensée chrétienne.
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Bela Bates Edwards
1802 - 1852 (50 years)
Bela Bates Edwards was an American man of letters. Biography Edwards was born at Southampton, Massachusetts, on 4 July 1802. He graduated at Amherst College in 1824, was a tutor there from 1827 to 1828, graduated at Andover Theological Seminary in 1830, and was licensed to preach. From 1828 to 1833 he was assistant Secretary of the American Education Society , and from 1828 to 1842 was editor of the society's newsletter, which after 1831 was called the American Quarterly Register.
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William Henry Furness
1802 - 1896 (94 years)
William Henry Furness was an American clergyman, theologian, Transcendentalist, abolitionist, and reformer. Biography Furness was born in Boston, where he attended the Boston Latin School and developed a lifelong friendship with schoolmate Ralph Waldo Emerson. He graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1823. He preached in Watertown and Boston, Massachusetts and in Baltimore, Maryland in early 1823. At the age of 22 he became the minister of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, which had operated without a minister for 29 years. He served there from 1825 until his retirement in 1875.
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Francis J. Hall
1857 - 1932 (75 years)
Francis Joseph Hall was an American Episcopal theologian and priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Hall was the one of the first to attempt an Anglican systematic theology. Early life and education Hall was born on December 24, 1857, in Ashtabula, Ohio, as the son of Joseph and Juliet E. Giswold Hall and grandson of John Hall , an early missionary priest in Ohio and later rector of St. Peter's Church, Ashtabula. He was educated in the local schools in Ashtabula until 1866, when he and his parents moved to Chicago, Illinois. His grandfather, with his parents' permission, dedicated his life to the church at his birth.
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Božo Milanović
1890 - 1980 (90 years)
Msgr. Božo Milanović , was a Croatian priest, theologian and politician from Istria, and, along with Antonio Santino, one of the greatest anti-fascists of Istria. He is credited with decisively contributing to the unification of Istria with Croatia.
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John of La Rochelle
1190 - 1245 (55 years)
John of La Rochelle , was a French Franciscan and theologian. Life He was born in La Rochelle , towards the end of the 12th century, and seems to have entered the Franciscan Order at an early age. He was a pupil of Alexander of Hales and was the first Franciscan to receive a bachelor's degree of theology from the University of Paris. He produced multiple treatises, sermons, commentaries on scripture, and also played a large role in the Summa fratris Alexandri, a theological Summa written by Alexander. “Hales left the beginnings of the theological Summa, and it was completed by John of la Rochelle and others”.
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Pavel Djidjov
1919 - 1952 (33 years)
Pavel Djidjov was a Bulgarian theologian who was executed after a show trial and beatified in 2002 by Pope John Paul II. Education, career Pavel Djidjov was born to a Latin rite Catholic family in Plovdiv. He was baptized on 2 August 1919 and given the name Joseph. He took the name Pavel when he entered the Assumptionist novitiate in Nozeroy, France, in October 1938.
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Reuben H. Sawyer
1866 - 1962 (96 years)
Reuben H. Sawyer or Reuben Herbert Sawyer was an American clergyman and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Oregon. As an important advocate of Anglo Israelism , he associated religious beliefs with ultra-conservative and radical political activism.
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Eadmer
1060 - 1120 (60 years)
Eadmer or Edmer was an English historian, theologian, and ecclesiastic. He is known for being a contemporary biographer of his archbishop and companion, Saint Anselm, in his Vita Anselmi, and for his Historia novorum in Anglia, which presents the public face of Anselm. Eadmer's history is written to support the primacy of Canterbury over York, a central concern for Anselm.
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David Caspari
1648 - 1702 (54 years)
David Caspari was a German Lutheran theologian. He was the father of Georg Caspari. Born in Königsberg, Duchy of Prussia, Caspari studied at the Albertina and the universities of Jena, Wittenberg, Leipzig, Altdorf, Strassburg, and Helmstedt. He became sub-inspector at the Albertina in 1676. Two years later he was appointed rector of Riga Cathedral's school. Caspari died in Riga as the school's superintendent.
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Johann Marbach
1521 - 1581 (60 years)
Johann Marbach was a German Lutheran reformer and controversialist. Life He was born at Lindau in Bavaria. He began his studies at Strasbourg in 1536, and three years later went to Wittenberg, where he shared a house with Martin Luther and took his doctor's degree in 1543. After holding temporary positions at Jena and Isny, in 1545 he accepted a call to Strasbourg. Here, from 1545 to 1558, he was pastor of the Church of St. Nicholas; canon at St. Thomas' from 1546; professor from 1549, and from 1551 president of the Church Convocation.
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Samuel Worcester
1770 - 1821 (51 years)
Samuel Worcester was a United States clergyman noted for his participation in a controversy over Unitarianism. Biography Against his father's wishes, he decided to educate himself for a profession rather than become a farmer. After attending and then teaching in local schools, he went to New Ipswitch Academy, and then entered Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1795. He was licensed to preach in 1796.
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Johannes Browallius
1707 - 1755 (48 years)
Johannes Browallius , also called John Browall, was a Finnish and Swedish Lutheran theologian, physicist, botanist and at one time friend of Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus. Career He was a Professor of Physics from 1737–46, Professor of Theology 1746–49 and was the Bishop of Turku, then a diocese of the Church of Sweden, and Vice-Chancellor of The Royal Academy of Turku from 1749 until his death in 1755.
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Moritz von Aberle
1819 - 1875 (56 years)
Moritz von Aberle was a German Catholic theologian. Life Moritz von Aberle was born on 25 April 1819 at Rottum in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He became a professor in the Obergymnasium at Ehingen in 1845, director of the Wilhelmstift in 1848, and a professor of moral theology and New Testament exegesis in the university at Tübingen in 1850, a position he retained till the day of his death. He died at Tübingen on 3 November 1875.
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Ernst Ranke
1814 - 1888 (74 years)
Ernst Constantin Ranke was a German Protestant theologian; since 1850, a professor of church history. He was the brother of historian Leopold von Ranke , theologian Friedrich Heinrich Ranke and philologist Karl Ferdinand Ranke .
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D. Elton Trueblood
1900 - 1994 (94 years)
David Elton Trueblood , who was usually known as "Elton Trueblood" or "D. Elton Trueblood", was a noted 20th-century American Quaker author and theologian, former chaplain both to Harvard and Stanford universities.
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Stephan Agricola
1491 - 1547 (56 years)
Stephan Agricola was a Lutheran church reformer. Born in Abensberg, at a young age he joined the Augustinian order. As a monk, he studied Augustine deeply. As a student, he went to the universities in Bologna and Venice, where in 1519 he became a Doctor of Theology. He began to preach on whole books of the Bible in 1520. He was led to Lutheranism through his study of Augustine's works on the scriptures. He was accused of Lutheranism as a heresy. Although he claimed his independence of Luther, he was arrested and imprisoned in Mühldorf on November 17, 1522. In 1523 he escaped and came to Augsb...
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Theodor Kliefoth
1810 - 1895 (85 years)
Theodor Friedrich Dethlof Kliefoth was a German Neo-Lutheran. He was born in Körchow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin on 18 January 1810 and he died in Schwerin on 26 January 1895. Life He was educated at the gymnasium of Schwerin, and at the Universities of Berlin and Rostock. In 1833 he was appointed instructor of Duke William of Mecklenburg, and in 1837 accompanied Grand Duke Frederick Francis as tutor to Dresden. He became pastor at Ludwigslust in 1840, and superintendent of Schwerin in 1844. Since 1835 he had been the leading spirit in the ecclesiastical and theological affairs of his state. With th...
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