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,
#4451
Theophilus Lindsey
1723 - 1808 (85 years)
Theophilus Lindsey was an English theologian and clergyman who founded the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in the country, at Essex Street Chapel. Lindsey's 1774 revised prayer book based on Samuel Clarke's alterations to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer inspired over a dozen similar revisions in the succeeding decades, including the prayer book still used by the United States' first Unitarian congregation at King's Chapel, Boston.
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William Greenough Thayer Shedd
1820 - 1894 (74 years)
William Greenough Thayer Shedd , son of the Reverend Marshall Shedd and Eliza Thayer, was an American Presbyterian theologian born in Acton, Massachusetts. In 1835, Shedd enrolled at the University of Vermont and became a protégé of UVM president James Marsh. Under the influence of his mentor, Shedd was deeply affected by the thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Transcendentalism. He graduated from UVM in 1839 and taught school for one year, during which time he began to attend the Presbyterian church. Being called to the ministry, Shedd entered Andover Theological Seminary in 1840 and studied under theologian Leonard Woods.
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Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe
1808 - 1872 (64 years)
Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe was a pastor of the Lutheran Church, Confesional Lutheran writer, and is often regarded as being a founder of the deaconess movement in Lutheranism and a founding sponsor of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod . From the small town of Neuendettelsau, he sent pastors to North America, Australia, New Guinea, Brazil, and Ukraine. His work for a clear confessional basis within the Bavarian church sometimes led to conflict with the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. His chief concern was that a parish find its life in the eucharist, and from that source evangelism and social ministries would flow.
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Ludwig Ott
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Ludwig Ott was a Roman Catholic theologian and medievalist from Bavaria, Germany. After training at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Ott was ordained a priest in 1930. He received his doctorate in Munich under Martin Grabmann and was mentored by him in studying the development of medieval theology. In 1936 he was , and in 1941 an of dogmatics at the episcopal philosophical and theological college in Eichstätt. From 1960 to 1962 he was the rector of this Catholic university.
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Georgia Harkness
1891 - 1974 (83 years)
Georgia Elma Harkness was an American Methodist theologian and philosopher. Harkness has been described as one of the first significant American female theologians and was important in the movement to legalize the ordination of women in American Methodism.
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Heinrich Schlier
1900 - 1978 (78 years)
Heinrich Schlier was a theologian, initially with the protestant Church and later with the Catholic Church. Biography Schlier was the son of a military doctor and attended the High School-Gymnasium in Landau and Ingolstadt, participated in World War I, and in 1919 studied Evangelical Theology at the university of Marburg, Leipzig and Jena. From 1927, he served as pastor and teacher of the New Testament in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt and Wuppertal. From 1935, Schlier was part of the Confessing Church , an opposition movement which arose in the Evangelical German Church against the attempt of the German Nazi regime to align the teaching and organisation of the Evangelical Church to Nazism.
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Jean Réville
1854 - 1908 (54 years)
Jean Réville was a French Protestant theologian born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was the son of theologian Albert Réville . He studied theology at Geneva, Berlin and Heidelberg, obtaining his licentiate in theology in Paris . He subsequently became a pastor in Sainte-Suzanne, Doubs, and in 1886 received his doctorate in theology at the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris. In 1894 he was appointed professor of patristics to the theological faculty at the Sorbonne.
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Theophylact of Ohrid
1055 - 1107 (52 years)
Theophylact was a Byzantine archbishop of Ohrid and commentator on the Bible. Life Theophylact was born in the mid-11th century at Euripus in Euboea, at the time part of the Byzantine Empire . He became a deacon at Constantinople, attained a high reputation as a scholar, and became the tutor of Constantine Doukas , son of the Emperor Michael VII, for whom he wrote The Education of Princes. In about 1078 he moved to the Province of Bulgaria where he became the archbishop of Achrida .
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Girolamo Savonarola
1452 - 1498 (46 years)
Girolamo Savonarola, OP or Jerome Savonarola was an ascetic Italian Dominican friar from Ferrara and a preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He became known for his prophecies of civic glory, his advocacy of the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule, and the exploitation of the poor.
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Theodosius Harnack
1817 - 1889 (72 years)
Theodosius Andreas Harnack was a Baltic German theologian. A professor of Divinity, he started his career as a Privatdozent for church history and homiletics at the University of Dorpat in 1843, he was further appointed university preacher in 1847. Since 1848 he held an ordinary chair as professor for practical and systematic theology. Between 1853 and 1866 Harnack was professor at Frederick Alexander University in Erlangen, Bavaria, German Confederation .
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Pasquier Quesnel
1634 - 1719 (85 years)
Pasquier Quesnel, CO was a French Jansenist theologian. Life Quesnel was born in Paris, and, after graduating from the Sorbonne with distinction in 1653, he joined the French Oratory in 1657. There he soon became prominent; he took a leading part in scholarly controversy, for example against Joseph Anthelmi.
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Kurt Scharf
1902 - 1990 (88 years)
Kurt Scharf was a German clergyman and bishop of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg. Life Kurt Scharf was born in Landsberg an der Warthe in the Prussian Province of Brandenburg . After completing his Abitur he studied Protestant theology in Berlin and was a member of the Studentenverbindung Verein Deutscher Studenten Berlin . In the 1930s he worked as a pastor for the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union in Sachsenhausen, a locality of Oranienburg and as such had occasional opportunities to tend to the inmates of the homonymous concentration camp there.
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Johann Peter Lange
1802 - 1884 (82 years)
Johann Peter Lange , was a German Calvinist theologian of peasant origin. Biography He was born at Sonnborn near Elberfeld, and studied theology at Bonn under K. I. Nitzsch and G. C. F. Lücke, held several pastorates, and eventually settled at Bonn as professor of theology in succession to Isaac August Dorner, becoming also in 1860 counsellor to the Coblence Consistory of the old-Prussian Rhenish Ecclesiastical Province.
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Clement of Ohrid
840 - 916 (76 years)
Saint Clement or Kliment of Ohrid was one of the first medieval Bulgarian saints, scholar, writer, and apostle to the Slavs. He was one of the most prominent disciples of Cyril and Methodius and is often associated with the creation of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts, especially their popularisation among Christianised Slavs. He was the founder of the Ohrid Literary School and is regarded as a patron of education and language by some Slavic people. He is considered to be the first bishop of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, one of the Seven Apostles of Bulgarian Orthodox Church since the 10th century, and one of the premier saints of modern Bulgaria.
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Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda
1490 - 1573 (83 years)
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda was a Spanish humanist, philosopher, and theologian of the Spanish Renaissance. He is mainly known for his participation in a famous debate with Bartolomé de las Casas in Valladolid, Spain, in 1550–1551. The debate centered on the legitimacy of the conquest and colonization of America by the Spanish Empire and on the treatment of the Native Americans. The main philosophical referents of Ginés de Sepúlveda were Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Roman law and Christian theology. These influences allowed him to argue for the cultural superiority and domination of the Spani...
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Peter Martyr Vermigli
1499 - 1562 (63 years)
Peter Martyr Vermigli was an Italian-born Reformed theologian. His early work as a reformer in Catholic Italy and his decision to flee for Protestant northern Europe influenced many other Italians to convert and flee as well. In England, he influenced the Edwardian Reformation, including the Eucharistic service of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. He was considered an authority on the Eucharist among the Reformed churches, and engaged in controversies on the subject by writing treatises. Vermigli's Loci Communes, a compilation of excerpts from his biblical commentaries organised by the topics o...
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Constantin von Tischendorf
1815 - 1874 (59 years)
Lobegott Friedrich Constantin Tischendorf was a German biblical scholar. In 1844, he discovered the world's oldest and most complete Bible dated to around the mid-4th century and called Codex Sinaiticus after Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, where Tischendorf discovered it.
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Karl Friedrich Bahrdt
1741 - 1792 (51 years)
Karl Friedrich Bahrdt , also spelled Carl Friedrich Bahrdt, was an unorthodox German Protestant biblical scholar, theologian, and polemicist. Controversial during his day, he is sometimes considered an "enfant terrible" and one of the most immoral characters in German learning.
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John Murray
1741 - 1815 (74 years)
John Murray was one of the founders of the Universalist denomination in the United States, a pioneer minister and an inspirational figure. Early life He was born in Alton, Hampshire , in England on December 10, 1741. His father was an Anglican and his mother a Presbyterian, both strict Calvinists, and his home life was attended by religious severity. In 1751 the family settled near Cork, Ireland. In 1760 Murray returned to England and joined George Whitefield's congregation; but embracing, somewhat later, the Universalistic teachings of Welsh minister James Relly he was excommunicated. In 177...
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Gabriel Biel
1418 - 1495 (77 years)
Gabriel Biel was a German scholastic philosopher and member of the Canons Regular of the Congregation of Windesheim, who were the clerical counterpart to the Brethren of the Common Life. Biel was born in Speyer and died in Einsiedel near Tübingen. In 1432 he was ordained to the priesthood and entered Heidelberg University to obtain a baccalaureate. He succeeded academically and became an instructor in the faculty of the arts for three years, until he pursued a higher degree at the University of Erfurt. His first stay was brief, lasting only until he transferred to the University of Cologne. He did not complete his degree there either, and would return to Erfurt in 1451 to finish.
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Catherine of Alexandria
287 - 305 (18 years)
Catherine of Alexandria, also spelled Katherine is, according to tradition, a Christian saint and virgin, who was martyred in the early fourth century at the hands of the emperor Maxentius. According to her hagiography, she was both a princess and a noted scholar who became a Christian around the age of 14, converted hundreds of people to Christianity and was martyred around the age of eighteen. More than 1,100 years after Catherine's martyrdom, Joan of Arc identified her as one of the saints who appeared to and counselled her.
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Karl Josef von Hefele
1809 - 1893 (84 years)
Karl Josef von Hefele was a Roman Catholic bishop and theologian of Germany. Biography Hefele was born at Unterkochen in Württemberg and was educated at Tübingen, where in 1839 he became professor-ordinary of Church history and patristics in the Roman Catholic faculty of theology, while collaborating along with William Robinson Clark to his major work.
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August Hlond
1881 - 1948 (67 years)
August Hlond, SDB was a Polish Salesian prelate who served as Archbishop of Poznań and Gniezno and as Primate of Poland. He was later appointed as Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw and was made a cardinal of the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI in 1927.
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Abu Hasan al-Ash'ari
873 - 935 (62 years)
Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī , often reverently referred to as Imām al-Ashʿarī by Sunnī Muslims, was a Muslim scholar of Shafi jurisprudence, scriptural exegete, reformer , and scholastic theologian , renowned for being the eponymous founder of the Ashʿarite school of Islamic theology.
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John A. Mackay
1889 - 1983 (94 years)
John A. Mackay was a Presbyterian theologian, missionary, and educator. He was a strong advocate of the Ecumenical Movement and World Christianity. Early life and education John A. Mackay was born on May 17, 1889, in Inverness, Scotland, the eldest of five children. The family attended the Free Presbyterian Church, a very small denomination. At the age of 14 at a communion service at Rogart, Scotland, Mackay had a profound religious experience that influenced the remainder of his life.
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Johann Georg Walch
1693 - 1775 (82 years)
Johann Georg Walch was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born in Meiningen, where his father, Georg Walch, was general superintendent. He studied at Leipzig and Jena, amongst his teachers being J. F. Buddeus, whose only daughter he married. He published in 1716 a work, Historia critica Latinae linguae, which soon came into wide use. Two years later he became professor extraordinarius of philosophy at Jena. In 1719, he was appointed professor ordinarius of rhetoric, in 1721 of poetry, and in 1724 professor extraordinarius of theology. In 1728 he became professor ordinarius of theology...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Caspar René Gregory
1846 - 1917 (71 years)
Caspar René Gregory was an American-born German theologian. Life Gregory was born to Mary Jones and Henry Duval Gregory in Philadelphia. He was the brother of the American zoologist Emily Ray Gregory. After completing his bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1864, he studied theology at two Presbyterian seminaries: in 1865–1867 at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and in 1867–1873 at the Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1873, he decided to continue his studies at the University of Leipzig under Constantin von Tischendorf, to whose work on textual criticism of the New Testament he had been referred by his teacher Ezra Abbot.
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Alexander Balmain Bruce
1831 - 1899 (68 years)
Alexander Balmain Bruce was a Scottish churchman and theologian. He was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. Life He was born at Aberdalgie in the parish of Abernethy, Perthshire, on 13 January 1831, was the son of David Bruce, a farmer. His elder brother was the Presbyterian minister David Bruce. He was educated at Auchterarder parish school.
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Samuel Prideaux Tregelles
1813 - 1875 (62 years)
Samuel Prideaux Tregelles was an English biblical scholar, lexicographer, Christian Hebraist, textual critic, and theologian. Life Tregelles was born at Wodehouse Place, Falmouth, of Quaker parents, but he himself was for many years in communion with the Plymouth Brethren and then later in life became a Presbyterian . He was the son of Samuel Tregelles and his wife Dorothy and was the nephew of Edwin Octavius Tregelles. He was educated at Falmouth classical school from 1825 to 1828.
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Wilhelm Abraham Teller
1734 - 1804 (70 years)
Wilhelm Abraham Teller was a German Protestant theologian who championed a rational approach to Christianity. Life and career Teller was born in Leipzig. His father, Romanus Teller , was a pastor at Leipzig, and afterwards became professor of theology in the University of Leipzig. He edited the earlier volumes of a which was designed as an adaptation for German readers of the exegetical works of Andrew Willet, Henry Ainsworth, Simon Patrick, Matthew Poole, Matthew Henry and others. Wilhelm Abraham studied philosophy and theology in the university of his native town. Amongst the men whose in...
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Jean du Vergier de Hauranne
1581 - 1643 (62 years)
Jean du Vergier de Hauranne, the Abbé of Saint-Cyran, was a French Catholic priest who introduced Jansenism into France. Life Born in the city of Bayonne to a family of Gascon and Basque merchants, Vergier studied with the Jesuits of Agen. At the age of sixteen he was sent to study at the Sorbonne, and then took up theology at the Catholic University of Leuven. There he formed a friendship with Cornelius Jansen and, as the wealthier of the two, became Jansen's patron for a number of years, getting Jansen a job as a tutor in 1606. Two years later, he obtained for Jansen a position teaching at the episcopal college back in Bayonne.
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John Jay Butler
1814 - Present (212 years)
John Jay Butler was an ordained minister and theologian in the early Free Will Baptist movement in New England, serving as Professor of Systematic Theology at Cobb Divinity School at Bates College in Maine and later at Hillsdale College in Michigan.
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Franz Xaver von Funk
1840 - 1907 (67 years)
Franz Xaver von Funk was a German Catholic theologian and historian. Biography Funk was born at Abts-Gmünd, Württemberg, and educated at Tübingen, at the seminary of Rottenburg am Neckar, and in Paris, where he studied economics. In 1870 he was appointed professor of theology at Tübingen and in 1876 became an editor of the Tübingen Theologische Quartalschrift. Though he is perhaps best remembered today for his edition of the Apostolic Fathers, he produced a number of other works on early Christian literature. Funk thought the apostolic constitutions were written as late as the beginning of t...
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