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,
#4401
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.
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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.
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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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Harold Ockenga
1905 - 1985 (80 years)
Harold John Ockenga was a leading figure of mid-20th-century American Evangelicalism, part of the reform movement known as "Neo-Evangelicalism". A Congregational minister, Ockenga served for many years as pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also a prolific author on biblical, theological, and devotional topics. Ockenga helped to found the Fuller Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, as well as the National Association of Evangelicals .
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C. H. Dodd
1884 - 1973 (89 years)
Charles Harold Dodd was a Welsh New Testament scholar and influential Protestant theologian. He is known for promoting "realized eschatology", the belief that Jesus' references to the kingdom of God meant a present reality rather than a future apocalypse. He was influenced by Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Otto.
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Robert Lewis Dabney
1820 - 1898 (78 years)
Robert Lewis Dabney was an American Christian theologian, Southern Presbyterian pastor, Confederate States Army chaplain, and architect. He was also chief of staff and biographer to Stonewall Jackson. His biography of Jackson remains in print today.
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Johann Eck
1486 - 1543 (57 years)
Johann Maier von Eck , often anglicized as John Eck, was a German Catholic theologian, scholastic, prelate, and a pioneer of the counter-reformation who was among Martin Luther's most important interlocutors and theological opponents.
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Francis Turretin
1623 - 1687 (64 years)
Francis Turretin was a Genevan-Italian Reformed scholastic theologian. Turretin is especially known as a zealous opponent of the moderate Calvinist theology of the Academy of Saumur . He was an earnest defender of the Calvinistic orthodoxy represented by the Synod of Dort, and as one of the authors of the Helvetic Consensus, which defended the formulation of predestination from the Synod of Dort and the verbal inspiration of the Bible.
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William Tyndale
1494 - 1536 (42 years)
William Tyndale was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known as a translator of the Bible into English, and was influenced by the works of prominent Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.
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Martin Chemnitz
1522 - 1586 (64 years)
Martin Chemnitz was an eminent second-generation German, Evangelical Lutheran, Christian theologian, and a Protestant reformer, churchman, and confessor. In the Evangelical Lutheran tradition he is known as Alter Martinus, the "Second Martin": Si Martinus non fuisset, Martinus vix stetisset goes a common saying concerning him. He is listed and remembered in the Calendar of Saints and Commemorations in the Liturgical Church Year as a pastor and confessor by both the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.
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Augustine of Canterbury
534 - 605 (71 years)
Augustine of Canterbury was a Christian monk who became the first archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597. He is considered the "Apostle to the English" and a founding figure of the Church of England.
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Martyn Lloyd-Jones
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a Welsh Congregationalist minister and medical doctor who was influential in the Calvinist wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London.
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Theophan Prokopovich
1681 - 1736 (55 years)
Feofan/Theophan Prokopovich was a Russian Imperial Orthodox theologian, writer, poet, mathematician, and philosopher of Ukrainian origin. Rector of the Academia Mohileana in Kiev , and Archbishop of Novgorod. He elaborated upon and implemented Peter the Great's reform of the Russian Orthodox Church. Prokopovich wrote many religious verses and some of the most enduring sermons in the Russian language.
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Lyman Beecher
1775 - 1863 (88 years)
Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became writers or ministers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.
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Klaas Schilder
1890 - 1952 (62 years)
Klaas Schilder was a Dutch Neo-Calvinist theologian and professor in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and later in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands . Schilder was born into a national church family in Kampen, the Netherlands; the family joined the Gereformeerde Kerken when he was a child. After graduating from a Reformed gymnasium , he took his theological studies at the Theological University of the Reformed Churches in Kampen and graduated cum laude in 1914. Schilder was a pastor at Ambt-Vollenhove, Vlaardingen, Gorinchem, Delft, Oegstgeest, and Rotterdam-Delfshaven. Duri...
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Novatian
220 - 258 (38 years)
Novatian was a scholar, priest, and theologian. He is considered by the Catholic Church to have been an antipope between 251 and 258. Some Greek authors give his name as Novatus, who was an African presbyter.
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Allard Pierson
1831 - 1896 (65 years)
Allard Pierson was a Dutch theologian, historian, and art historian. He was a leading proponent of radical criticism in the Netherlands. Life Pierson's father was a merchant in Amsterdam, his mother an author of pietist works. The Walloon-origin family was prominent in the Christian revival movement of the Reveil and attended the meetings of Isaac da Costa and Nicolaas Beets. Pierson studied theology at Utrecht University, where he was influenced by Opzoomer. He became a Protestant minister in Leuven in 1854, and in 1857 in the Walloon church in Rotterdam, where he was highly esteemed. Howeve...
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Michael Schmaus
1897 - 1993 (96 years)
Michael Schmaus was a German Roman Catholic theologian specializing in dogmatics. Life Schmaus was born in Oberbaar, Bavaria. He was ordained a priest in 1922 and got his doctorate in Catholic Dogmatic Theology under Martin Grabmann in 1924.
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Wilhelm Stählin
1883 - 1975 (92 years)
Wilhelm Stählin was a German Lutheran theologian, bishop, preacher and one of the major initiators of the Liturgical Movement in German Protestantism in the 20th Century. After completing his school education in Augsburg Stählin began studying theology in 1901 in Erlangen, Rostock and Berlin. In 1905 he completed this theological examinations and served afterwards as a vicar in Bavaria. After a trip to England in 1908 Stählin became a parish pastor in Egloffstein and married. In 1913 he received his doctorate at the University of Marburg. His dissertation dealt with the problem of biblical metaphors.
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Valentinus
Valentinus was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen.
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Franz Delitzsch
1813 - 1890 (77 years)
Franz Delitzsch was a German Lutheran theologian and Hebraist. Delitzsch wrote many commentaries on books of the Bible, Jewish antiquities, Biblical psychology, as well as a history of Jewish poetry, and works of Christian apologetics. Today, Delitzsch is best known for his translation of the New Testament into Hebrew , and his series of commentaries on the Old Testament published with Carl Friedrich Keil.
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Romano Guardini
1885 - 1968 (83 years)
Romano Guardini was an Italian, naturalized German Catholic priest, philosopher and theologian. Life Romano Michele Antonio Maria Guardini was born in Verona in 1885 and was baptized in the Church of San Nicolò all'Arena. His father Romano Tullo was a poultry wholesaler. Guardini had three younger brothers. The family moved to Mainz when he was one year old and he lived in Germany for the rest of his life. He attended the Rabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium. Guardini wrote that as a young man he was “always anxious and very scrupulous.”
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Edmund Schlink
1903 - 1984 (81 years)
Edmund Schlink was a German-Lutheran pastor and theologian. Between 1946 and his retirement in 1971 he was a professor of dogmatic and ecumenical theology at Heidelberg University. Biography Schlink was born in Darmstadt, near where his father, Wilhelm Schlink, was a professor of mechanics and aeronautics. The family of his mother, Ella, had been influenced by Herrnhut pietism. His only sibling, his sister Klara , who later called herself Mutter Basilea Schlink, became a popular religious writer and leader. Edmund Schlink attended public schools in Darmstadt. In 1922 he matriculated at Tübing...
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Francisco de Vitoria
1480 - 1546 (66 years)
Francisco de Vitoria was a Spanish Roman Catholic philosopher, theologian, and jurist of Renaissance Spain. He is the founder of the tradition in philosophy known as the School of Salamanca, noted especially for his concept of just war and international law. He has in the past been described by scholars as the "father of international law", along with Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius, though some contemporary academics have suggested that such a description is anachronistic, since the concept of postmodern international law did not truly develop until much later. American jurist Arthur Nussbaum noted Vitoria's influence on international law as it pertained to the right to trade overseas.
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Loraine Boettner
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Loraine Boettner was an American theologian, teacher, and author in the Reformed tradition. He is best known for his works on predestination, Roman Catholicism, and Postmillennial eschatology. Biography Boettner was born on March 7, 1901, in Linden, Missouri. His father, William Boettner, was a Christian school superintendent and had been born in Schwartzenhazel, Germany. He attended his father's church until he was eighteen, when he then joined his mother's church, the Centennial Methodist Church. Boettner attended the Lone Cedar and Fairview elementary schools, before going to Tarkio High School.
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Dietrich von Hildebrand
1889 - 1977 (88 years)
Dietrich Richard Alfred von Hildebrand was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and religious writer. Hildebrand was called "the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church" by Pope Pius XII. He was a leading philosopher in the realist phenomenological and personalist movements, producing works in every major field of philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, and aesthetics. Pope John Paul II greatly admired the philosophical work of Hildebrand, remarking once to his widow, Alice von Hildebrand, "Your husband is one of the great ethicist...
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Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
1150 - 1210 (60 years)
Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī or Fakhruddin Razi , often known by the sobriquet Sultan of the Theologians, was an influential Muslim polymath, scientist and one of the pioneers of inductive logic. He wrote various works in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics, astronomy, cosmology, literature, theology, ontology, philosophy, history and jurisprudence. He was one of the earliest proponents and skeptics that came up with the concept of multiverse, and compared it with the astronomical teachings of Quran. A rejector of the geocentric model and the Aristotelian notions of a single universe revolvin...
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John Keble
1792 - 1866 (74 years)
John Keble was an English Anglican priest and poet who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. Keble College, Oxford, was named after him. Early life Keble was born on 25 April 1792 in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where his father, also named John Keble, was vicar of Coln St. Aldwyns. He and his brother Thomas were educated at home by their father until each went to Oxford. In 1806, Keble won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He excelled in his studies and in 1810 achieved double first-class honours in both Latin and mathematics. In 1811, he won the university prizes for both the English and Latin essays and became a fellow of Oriel College.
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Tyrannius Rufinus
345 - 411 (66 years)
Tyrannius Rufinus, also called Rufinus of Aquileia , was a monk, philosopher, historian, and theologian who worked to translate Greek patristic material, especially the work of Origen, into Latin. Life Rufinus was born in 344 or 345 in the Roman city of Julia Concordia , near Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic Sea. It appears that both of his parents were Christians.
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Marie-Joseph Lagrange
1855 - 1938 (83 years)
Marie-Joseph Lagrange was a Catholic priest in the Dominican Order, theologian and founder of the École Biblique in Jerusalem. Life Albert Marie-Henri Lagrange was born 7 March 1855, in Bourg-en-Bresse, France. At the age of three, he received a blessing from the Curé d’Ars. At the junior Seminary of Autun, he studied languages: Greek, German, English, and Italian. He studied law at Paris, obtaining a Doctorate in 1878; and he was admitted to practice.
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M. L. Andreasen
1876 - 1962 (86 years)
Milian Lauritz Andreasen , was a Seventh-day Adventist theologian, pastor and author. He was one of the Seventh-day Adventist church's most prominent theologians during the 1930s and 1940s. Andreasen held to the belief that Christians can overcome sin, known popularly as Last Generation Theology, controversial for its views on atonement and salvation. Andreasen became well known for his protests against Seventh-day Adventist church leaders during the last years of his life.
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Johannes Tauler
1300 - 1361 (61 years)
Johannes Tauler OP was a German mystic, a Roman Catholic priest and a theologian. A disciple of Meister Eckhart, he belonged to the Dominican order. Tauler was known as one of the most important Rhineland mystics. He promoted a certain neo-platonist dimension in the Dominican spirituality of his time.
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Howard Thurman
1899 - 1981 (82 years)
Howard Washington Thurman was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century. Thurman's theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists, and he was a key mentor to leaders within the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr.
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Wilhelm Herrmann
1846 - 1922 (76 years)
Johann Georg Wilhelm Herrmann was a Lutheran German theologian. Career Hermann taught at Halle before becoming professor at Marburg. Influenced by Kant and Ritschl, his theology was in the idealist tradition, seeing God as the power of goodness. Jesus was to be seen as an exemplary man. Even if Jesus never existed, according to Herrmann, his traditional portrayal was still valid. His book The Communion of the Christian God was seen as a highlight of nineteenth century Liberal Christianity, although he is also credited with preserving certain conservative ideals against liberal revisionism. ag...
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Theodore Beza
1519 - 1605 (86 years)
Theodore Beza was a French Calvinist Protestant theologian, reformer and scholar who played an important role in the Protestant Reformation. He was a disciple of John Calvin and lived most of his life in Geneva. Beza succeeded Calvin as the spiritual leader of the Republic of Geneva.
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Edwin Abbott Abbott
1838 - 1926 (88 years)
Edwin Abbott Abbott was an English schoolmaster, theologian, and Anglican priest, best known as the author of the novella Flatland . Biography Edwin Abbott Abbott was the eldest son of Edwin Abbott , headmaster of the Philological School, Marylebone, and his wife, Jane Abbott . His parents were first cousins.
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Julian of Norwich
1342 - 1500 (158 years)
Julian of Norwich , also known as Juliana of Norwich, the Lady Julian, Dame Julian or Mother Julian, was an English anchoress of the Middle Ages. Her writings, now known as Revelations of Divine Love, are the earliest surviving English language works by a woman, although it is possible that some anonymous works may have had female authors. They are also the only surviving English language works by an anchoress.
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Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette
1780 - 1849 (69 years)
Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette was a German theologian and biblical scholar. Life and education Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette was born 12 January 1780 in Ulla , Thuringia, where his father was a pastor. As a boy, he was sent to the gymnasium at the nearby city of Weimar. Here he was much influenced by Johann Gottfried von Herder, who frequently examined at the school. In 1799, de Wette entered the University of Jena to study theology, his principal teachers being J. J. Griesbach and H. E. G. Paulus. By the time he submitted his dissertation in September 1804, he was in regular contact...
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Nicolaas Beets
1814 - 1903 (89 years)
Nicolaas Beets was a Dutch theologian, writer and poet. He published also under the pseudonym Hildebrand. Life Nicolaas Beets was born in Haarlem, the son of a pharmacist. From 1833 till 1839 he studied theology at the university of Leiden where he received his doctorate.
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Isidore of Seville
560 - 636 (76 years)
Isidore of Seville was a Hispano-Roman scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of the ancient world".
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Padre Pio
1887 - 1968 (81 years)
Pio of Pietrelcina , widely known as , was an Italian Capuchin friar, priest, stigmatist, and mystic. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, celebrated on 23 September. Pio joined the Capuchins at fifteen and spent most of his religious life in the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo. He was marked by stigmata in 1918, leading to several investigations by the Holy See. Despite temporary sanctions imposed by the Vatican, his reputation kept increasing during his life, attracting many followers to San Giovanni Rotondo. He was the founder of the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, a hospital ...
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Gottlieb Christoph Adolf von Harless
1806 - 1879 (73 years)
Gottlieb Christoph Adolf von Harless , was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born on 21 November 1806 in Nuremberg. As a youth, he was interested in music and poetry, and was attracted by ancient and German classical literature, especially by Jean Paul. He was indifferent to Christianity. In 1823 he entered the University of Erlangen, at first studying philology, then law; but he finally tried theology. The teacher who particularly influenced him was Georg Benedikt Winer.
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Walther Eichrodt
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Walther Eichrodt was a German Old Testament scholar and Protestant theologian. From 1908 to 1914 he studied theology in Bethel, Greifswald and Heidelberg, obtaining his habilitation at the University of Erlangen in 1918. In 1922 he succeeded Albrecht Alt as an associate professor of history of religions and Old Testament studies at the University of Basel, where from 1934 to 1960 he taught classes as a full professor. In 1953 he was named university rector.
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Johann Jakob Herzog
1805 - 1882 (77 years)
Johann Jakob Herzog , was a Swiss-German Protestant theologian. Herzog studied theology at the University of Basel and Berlin, earning his doctorate at the University of Basel in 1830. In 1835-1846 he was a professor of historical theology at the Academy in Lausanne. Afterwards he served as a professor in Halle, and eventually , he settled at Erlangen as a professor of church history.
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Nikolaj Velimirović
1880 - 1956 (76 years)
Nikolaj Velimirović was bishop of the eparchies of Ohrid and Žiča in the Serbian Orthodox Church. An influential theological writer and a highly gifted orator, he was often referred to as the new John Chrysostom and historian Slobodan G. Markovich calls him "one of the most influential bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the twentieth century".
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Karl Schwarz
1812 - 1885 (73 years)
Karl Schwarz was a German Protestant theologian. Life Birth and early life He was born at Wiek, Rügen. His father, Theodor Schwarz, pastor at Wiek, was well known as a preacher, and as the writer of a number of popular works under the pseudonym "Theodor Melas".
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Cerinthus
100 - 200 (100 years)
Cerinthus was an early Gnostic, who was prominent as a heresiarch in the view of the early Church Fathers. Contrary to the Church Fathers, he used the Gospel of Cerinthus, and denied that the Supreme God made the physical world. In Cerinthus' interpretation, the Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism and guided him in ministry and the performing of miracles, but left him at the crucifixion. Similarly to the Ebionites, he maintained that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was a mere man, the biological son of Mary and Joseph.
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August Neander
1789 - 1850 (61 years)
Johann August Wilhelm Neander was a German theologian and church historian. Biography Neander was born in Göttingen as David Mendel. His father, Emmanuel Mendel, was said to have been a Jewish peddler. While very young, his parents separated and he moved with his mother to Hamburg. After completing grammar school , he enrolled in a gymnasium where he discovered Plato. Some of his fellow students included Wilhelm Neumann, writer Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, and poet Adelbert von Chamisso.
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John Bosco
1815 - 1888 (73 years)
John Melchior Bosco, SDB , popularly known as Don Bosco , was an Italian Catholic priest, educator, writer, and saint of the 19th century. While working in Turin, where the population suffered many of the ill effects of industrialization and urbanization, he dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth. He developed teaching methods based on love rather than punishment, a method that became known as the Salesian Preventive System.
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Heinrich Paulus
1761 - 1851 (90 years)
Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus was a German theologian and critic of the Bible. He is known as a rationalist who offered natural explanations for the biblical miracles of Jesus. Career Paulus was a professor of theology and oriental languages at the University of Jena , then professor at the University of Würzburg . He spent time in Bamberg, Nürnberg and Ansbach before becoming professor of exegesis and church history at the University of Heidelberg , where he was instrumental in hiring Hegel in 1816. His theological rationalism greatly influenced Hegel's own theology.
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