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,
#4501
Praxeas
200 - 300 (100 years)
Praxeas was a Monarchian from Asia Minor who lived in the end of the 2nd century/beginning of the 3rd century. He believed in the unity of the Godhead and vehemently disagreed with any attempt at division of the personalities or personages of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Christian Church. He was opposed by Tertullian in his tract Against Praxeas , and was influential in preventing the Roman Church from granting recognition to the New Prophecy.
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Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen
1691 - 1747 (56 years)
Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen was a German-American Dutch Reformed minister, theologian and the progenitor of the Frelinghuysen family in the United States of America. Frelinghuysen is most remembered for his religious contributions in the Raritan Valley during the beginnings of the First Great Awakening. Several of his descendants became influential theologians and politicians throughout American history.
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Johannes von Kuhn
1806 - 1887 (81 years)
Johannes Evangelist von Kuhn was a German Catholic theologian. With Franz Anton Staudenmaier he occupied the foremost rank among the speculative dogmatists of the Catholic Tübingen school. Life Kuhn was born in Wäschenbeuren in the Kingdom of Württemberg. He pursued his classical studies at Schwäbisch Gmünd, Ellwangen, and Rottweil, and courses in philosophy and theology from 1825 to 1830 at Tübingen; entered the seminary at Rottenburg in the autumn of 1830, and was there ordained on 14 September 1831. In the autumn of 1832, he became professor of New Testament exegesis in the Catholic theological faculty then attached to the University of Giessen.
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Louis Eugène Marie Bautain
1796 - 1867 (71 years)
Louis Eugène Marie Bautain , was a French philosopher and theologian. Life Bautain was born at Paris. At the École Normale he came under the influence of Victor Cousin. In 1816 he adopted the profession of higher teaching, and was soon after called to the chair of philosophy in the University of Strasbourg. He held this position for many years, and gave a parallel course of lectures as professor of the literary faculty in the same city. The reaction against speculative philosophy, which carried away De Maistre and Lamennais, influenced him also.
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Nathaniel Lardner
1684 - 1768 (84 years)
Nathaniel Lardner was an English theologian. Life Lardner was born at Hawkhurst, Kent in 1684. He was the elder son of Richard Lardner , an independent minister, and of a daughter of Nathaniel Collyer or Collier, a Southwark tradesman. His sister Elizabeth married Daniel Neal, who studied with Lardner in Utrecht.
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Johann Severin Vater
1771 - 1826 (55 years)
Johann Severin Vater was a German theologian, biblical scholar, and linguist. Biography He was a student and professor at Jena and Halle. In 1809, he became professor at Königsberg. In 1820, he resumed his chair at Halle. Although he taught theology, he is chiefly known as a philologist. In 1817, Vater was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society
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James Strong
1822 - 1894 (72 years)
James Strong was an American academic, biblical scholar, lexicographer, Methodist theologian and professor, best known for being the creator of Strong's Concordance. Biography Strong was born in New York City and graduated, in 1844, as valedictorian from Wesleyan University. Subsequently, he was mayor of his hometown on Long Island. Later, having settled in Flushing, New York, he pursued biblical studies, held various local offices, and organized, built, and was the president of the Flushing railroad. In 1856 the Wesleyan University granted him the degree of Doctor of Divinity . From 1858 until 1861, Strong was both Acting President and Professor of Biblical Literature at Troy University.
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J. B. Lightfoot
1828 - 1889 (61 years)
Joseph Barber Lightfoot , known as J. B. Lightfoot, was an English theologian and Bishop of Durham. Life Lightfoot was born in Liverpool, where his father John Jackson Lightfoot was an accountant. His mother, Ann Matilda Barber, was from a family of Birmingham artists. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, under James Prince Lee. His contemporaries included Brooke Foss Westcott and Edward White Benson. In 1847, Lightfoot went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and read for his degree along with Westcott. He graduated senior classic and 30th wrangler, and was elected a fellow of his college.
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Jakob Böhme
1575 - 1624 (49 years)
Jakob Böhme was a German philosopher, Christian mystic, and Lutheran Protestant theologian. He was considered an original thinker by many of his contemporaries within the Lutheran tradition, and his first book, commonly known as Aurora, caused a great scandal. In contemporary English, his name may be spelled Jacob Boehme ; in seventeenth-century England it was also spelled Behmen, approximating the contemporary English pronunciation of the German Böhme.
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John Tulloch
1823 - 1886 (63 years)
John Tulloch was a Scottish theologian. Life Tulloch was born at Dron, south of Bridge of Earn, Perthshire, one of twin sons of Elizabeth , the daughter of a Perthshire farmer, and William Weir Tulloch, parish minister of Tibbermore, near Perth.
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Georg Christian Adler
1734 - 1804 (70 years)
Georg Christian Adler was a German scholar. Adler was born in Brandenburg, and studied theology at the University of Halle. In 1755, he was appointed preacher in Arnis, Schleswig; in 1758 in Sarau; and in 1759 in Altona. He remained in Altona, where he became provost in 1791, and died in 1804.
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Henry Eyster Jacobs
1844 - 1932 (88 years)
Henry Eyster Jacobs was an American religious educator, Biblical commentator and Lutheran theologian. Biography Jacobs was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the son of professor Michael and Juliana M Jacobs. His sister Julia Jacobs Harpster became a missionary in India; his brother Michael William Jacobs became a judge. He graduated from Pennsylvania College in 1862 and from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 1865. Between 1870 and 1883, he was professor at Pennsylvania College. He was then appointed professor of systematic theology in The Lutheran Theological Seminary in Mount Airy, where he also assumed the office of dean in 1894.
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John Duncan
1796 - 1870 (74 years)
John Duncan , also known as 'Rabbi' Duncan, was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, a missionary to the Jews in Hungary, and Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at New College, Edinburgh. He is best remembered for his aphorisms.
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Christian Frederick Boerner
1683 - 1753 (70 years)
Christian Frederick Boerner , professor of theology at Leipzig. Boerner was born in Dresden, and lived most of his life in Leipzig. Boerner had two sons, Christian Frederic, and Frederic , who were both physicians.
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Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel
1851 - 1935 (84 years)
Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel was a German theologian and professor of New Testament exegesis born in Zaukeroda near Dresden. He studied theology in Jena, where he had as instructors Otto Pfleiderer and Richard Adelbert Lipsius . In 1879 he received his habilitation, and from 1893 to 1923 was a full professor at the University of Zurich.
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Francis Alison
1705 - 1779 (74 years)
Francis Alison was a leading minister in the Synod of Philadelphia during The Old Side-New Side Controversy Biography Early life and education Alison was born in Donegal, Ireland and studied at the University of Glasgow. It appears he arrived in the United States in 1734 or 1735 in order to help the fledgling Presbyterian Church as a minister. He was ordained a full-fledged minister in 1737 and served the New London congregation.
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Elisabeth Schmitz
1893 - 1977 (84 years)
Elisabeth Schmitz was a German Lutheran theologian, teacher, and author of "On the Situation of German Non-Aryans", a memorandum that attempted to persuade those in the Confessing Church to stand against the persecution of Jews in 1930s Germany. She also sheltered Jews and was granted the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" in 2011 by the Commission of Yad Vashem.
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Frederick William Robertson
1816 - 1853 (37 years)
Frederick William Robertson , known as Robertson of Brighton, was an English divine. Biography Born in London, the first five years of his life were passed at Leith Fort, where his father, a captain in the Royal Artillery, was then resident. The military spirit entered into his blood, and throughout life he was characterised by the qualities of the ideal soldier. In 1821 Captain Robertson retired to Beverley, where the boy was educated. At the age of fourteen he spent a year at Tours, from which he returned to Scotland, and continued his education at the Edinburgh Academy and university.
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Saint Eligius
588 - 660 (72 years)
Eligius , venerated as Saint Eligius, was a Frankish goldsmith, courtier and bishop who was chief counsellor to Dagobert I and later Bishop of Noyon–Tournai. His deeds were recorded in Vita Sancti Eligii, written by his friend Audoin of Rouen.
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Hermann Witsius
1636 - 1708 (72 years)
Hermann Witsius was a Dutch theologian. Life He was born at Enkhuizen. He studied at the University of Groningen, Leiden, and Utrecht. He was ordained in the ministry, becoming the pastor of Westwoud in 1656 and afterwards at Wormer, Goes, and Leeuwarden. He became professor of divinity successively at the University of Franeker in 1675 and at the University of Utrecht in 1680. Witsius became Chancellor of Utrecht University in 1686. In 1698 he was appointed to the University of Leiden as the successor of the younger Friedrich Spanheim. He died in Leiden.
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Johannes Maccovius
1588 - 1644 (56 years)
Johannes Maccovius , also known as Jan Makowski, was a Polish Reformed theologian. Early travels and personal life Makowski was born in Lobzenica, Poland. After visiting various universities and as the tutor of young Polish nobles, holding disputations with Jesuits and Socinians, Maccovius entered the University of Franeker in the Netherlands, in 1613. There he became privat-docent in 1614 and professor of theology in 1615. In later years, the fame of Maccovius attracted many students to Franeker, where he spent the rest of his life.
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Joseph Langen
1837 - 1901 (64 years)
Joseph Langen was a German theologian and priest, who was instrumental for the German Old Catholic movement. Langen was born at Cologne, studied at Bonn, and was ordained priest for the Roman Catholic Church in 1859. He was nominated professor extraordinary at the University of Bonn in 1864, and a professor in ordinary of the exegesis of the New Testament in 1867—an office which he held till his death. He was one of the band of professors who in 1870 supported Döllinger in his resistance to the Vatican decrees, and was excommunicated along with Döllinger, Johann Nepomuk Huber, Johann Friedrich, Franz Heinrich Reusch, Joseph Hubert Reinkens and others, for refusing to accept them.
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Pope Urban V
1310 - 1370 (60 years)
Pope Urban V , born Guillaume de Grimoard, was the head of the Catholic Church from 28 September 1362 until his death, in December 1370 and was also a member of the Order of Saint Benedict. He was the only Avignon pope to be beatified.
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Richard Sibbes
1577 - 1635 (58 years)
Richard Sibbes was an Anglican theologian. He is known as a Biblical exegete, and as a representative, with William Perkins and John Preston, of what has been called "main-line" Puritanism because he always remained in the Church of England and worshiped according to the Book of Common Prayer.
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Abraham Scultetus
1566 - 1625 (59 years)
Abraham Scultetus was a German professor of theology, and the court preacher for the Elector of the Palatinate Frederick V. Biography Early life Abraham was born in Grünberg in Schlesien in Silesia and was brought up as a Lutheran. He began his studies in theology in 1588 in Wittenberg and then in 1590 in Heidelberg. When he became Reformed and gave up his Lutheranism is unknown. By 1595 he was working for the Elector of the Palatinate, who at that time was Frederick IV. He continued to serve the churches of the Palatinate and accompanied Frederick V on his honeymoon with his wife Elisabeth, daughter of King James I of England, in 1613.
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William George Ward
1812 - 1882 (70 years)
William George Ward was an English theologian and mathematician. A Roman Catholic convert, his career illustrates the development of religious opinion at a time of crisis in the history of English religious thought.
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Reginald of Piperno
1230 - 1290 (60 years)
Reginald of Piperno was an Italian Dominican, theologian and companion of Thomas Aquinas. Biography Reginald was born at Piperno about 1230. Since 1927 this town of the Lazio region in central Italy is Priverno. He entered the Dominican Order at Naples. Thomas Aquinas chose him as his socius and confessor at Rome about 1265. From that time Reginald was Aquinas's constant and intimate companion.
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Johann Melchior Goeze
1717 - 1786 (69 years)
Johann Melchior Goeze was a Lutheran pastor and theologian during the period of Late Orthodoxy. From 1760 to 1770 he served as senior of Hamburg presiding as spiritual leader over the Lutheran state church of the city-state.
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John Brown
1784 - 1858 (74 years)
John Brown was a Scottish minister and theologian, known for his exegesis as a preacher. Life The grandson of John Brown of Haddington, he was born at Whitburn, Linlithgowshire. He studied at Glasgow university, and afterwards at the divinity hall of the Burgher branch of the Secession church at Selkirk, under George Lawson. In 1806 he was ordained minister of the Burgher congregation at Biggar, Lanarkshire, where he laboured for sixteen years. While there he had a controversy with Robert Owen the socialist.
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Karl Theodor Keim
1825 - 1878 (53 years)
Karl Theodor Keim was a German Protestant theologian. He was born at Stuttgart. His father, Johann Christian Keim, was headmaster of a gymnasium. Here Karl Theodor received his early education, and then proceeded to the Stuttgart Obergymnasium. In 1843 he went to the university of Tübingen, where he studied philosophy under J. F. Reiff, a follower of Hegel, and Oriental languages under Heinrich Ewald and Heinrich Meier. F. C. Baur, the leader of the new Tübingen school, was lecturing on the New Testament and on the history of the church and of dogma, and by him in particular Keim was greatly ...
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Dominic Barberi
1792 - 1849 (57 years)
Dominic Barberi, CP was an Italian theologian and Passionist priest who was prominent in spreading Catholicism in England. He contributed to the conversion of John Henry Newman. In 1963, he was beatified by Pope Paul VI.
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Edmond Richer
1559 - 1631 (72 years)
Edmond Richer was a French theologian known for several works advocating the Gallican theory, that the pope's power was limited by authority of bishops, and by temporal governments. He was born in Chaource.
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Gottlob Christian Storr
1746 - 1805 (59 years)
Gottlob Christian Storr was a German Protestant theologian, born in Stuttgart. He was the son of theologian Johann Christian Storr and the older brother of naturalist Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr .
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Jean-Alphonse Turrettini
1671 - 1737 (66 years)
Jean-Alphonse Turrettini was a theologian from the Republic of Geneva. The son of François Turrettini, he was born in Geneva. He studied theology at Geneva under Louis Tronchin , and after travelling in Holland, England and France was received into the "Vénérable Compagnie des Pasteurs" of Geneva in 1693. Here he became pastor of the Italian congregation, and in 1697 professor of church history, and later of theology.
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Andrew Willet
1562 - 1621 (59 years)
Andrew Willet was an English clergyman and controversialist. A prolific writer, he is known for his anti-papal works. His views were conforming and non-separatist, and he appeared as a witness against Edward Dering before the Star-chamber. Joseph Hall eulogised Willet in Noah's Dove, and Thomas Fuller modelled 'the Controversial Divine' of his Holy State on him.
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Erich Sauer
1898 - 1959 (61 years)
Erich Sauer was a German dispensationalist Christian theologian associated with the Plymouth Brethren. His various books have sold around one million copies. Early life Sauer was born in Berlin in 1898, his mother was already a Christian and he attended Open Brethren congregations.
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Zacharias Ursinus
1534 - 1583 (49 years)
Zacharias Ursinus was a sixteenth-century German Reformed theologian and Protestant reformer, born Zacharias Baer in Breslau . He became the leading theologian of the Reformed Protestant movement of the Palatinate, serving both at the University of Heidelberg and the College of Wisdom . He is best known as the principal author and interpreter of the Heidelberg Catechism.
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Campegius Vitringa
1659 - 1722 (63 years)
Campegius Vitringa Sr., or Kempe Vitringa was a Dutch Protestant theologian and Hebraist. His youngest of four children was Campeius Vitringa . Vitringa, a follower of Johannes Cocceius, was a supporter of prophetic theology. He was educated at the universities of Franeker and Leiden, and became professor of Oriental languages at the former in 1681. When locating prophetic outcomes, he would associate events to the near rather than the far-off future, placing a distinct focus on the period of the Maccabees . Like Joseph Mede , Vitringa believed wholeheartedly that the Millennium was yet to come, but did not expect any immediate changes.
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Edmund Bonner
1500 - 1569 (69 years)
Edmund Bonner was Bishop of London from 1539 to 1549 and again from 1553 to 1559. Initially an instrumental figure in the schism of Henry VIII from Rome, he was antagonised by the Protestant reforms introduced by the Duke of Somerset and reconciled himself to Catholicism. He became notorious as "Bloody Bonner" for his role in the persecution of heretics under the Catholic government of Mary I of England, and ended his life as a prisoner under Queen Elizabeth I.
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Georg Fritze
1874 - 1939 (65 years)
Georg Fritze was a German theologian, Protestant pastor, religious socialist and anti-fascist. Career Fritze studied Evangelical Theology in Halle and Marburg. He sat his first theological exam in the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1896, and his second exam in the University of Marburg in 1898. He then did military service from 1889 to 1890. He became an assistant preacher, and later "second pastor" in the Belgian Mission Church in Charleroi , where he ordained on September 30, 1900 . After four years he returned to the Prussian Provincial Church in Saxony, where he made up the vicariate.
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John Smyth
1570 - 1612 (42 years)
John Smyth was an English Anglican, Baptist, then Mennonite minister and a defender of the principle of religious liberty. Early life Smyth is thought to have been the son of John Smyth, a yeoman of Sturton-le-Steeple, Nottinghamshire. He was educated locally, most likely under Rev Quipp at Sturton though at the grammar school in Gainsborough has also been suggested. Then he attended in Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow in 1594. Smyth was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1594 in England.
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Johann August Nösselt
1734 - 1807 (73 years)
Johann August Nösselt was a German Protestant theologian. Beginning in 1751, he studied theology at the University of Halle, where one of his instructors was Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten . In 1755-56 he took an extended study trip throughout Germany, Switzerland and France, eventually returning to Halle, where in 1760 he became an associate professor of theology. In 1764 he attained the title of "full professor" at Halle.
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Heinrich Klee
1800 - 1840 (40 years)
Heinrich Klee was a German theologian and Biblical exegete who argued against liberal and Rationalist currents in Catholic thought. Biography At the age of seventeen Klee entered the seminary at Mainz. In 1824, a year after his ordination, he was appointed to the professorship of exegesis and ecclesiastical history in the same seminary, and in the following year also to that of philosophy. In the meantime he obtained the Doctorate of Theology from the University of Würzburg after presenting the thesis Tentamen theologico-historicum de chiliasmo primorum saecolurum. In 1829 the government of B...
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David Watson
1933 - 1984 (51 years)
David Christopher Knight Watson was an English Anglican priest, evangelist and author. Early life and education David Watson was born on 7 March 1933 at Catterick Camp, Scotton, Yorkshire to Godfrey Charles Knight Watson, a captain in the Royal Artillery, and his wife Margaret Sara Winifred. He was educated at Bedford School and Wellington College . He was head boy of Wellington College.
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Asahel Nettleton
1783 - 1844 (61 years)
Asahel Nettleton was an American theologian and Evangelist from Connecticut who was highly influential during the Second Great Awakening. The number of people converted to Christianity as a result of his ministry was estimated by one biographer at 30,000. He participated in the New Lebanon Conference in 1827, during which he and Lyman Beecher opposed the teachings of Charles Grandison Finney.
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Erik Peterson
1890 - 1960 (70 years)
Erik Peterson Grandjean was a German Catholic theologian,patrologist and Church historian. Biography Erik Peterson was born in Hamburg. He studied theology from 1910 to 1914 in Strasbourg, Greifswald, Berlin, Basel and Göttingen, where he defended his doctoral dissertation in 1926. He was initially an evangelical Christian influenced by pietism and Søren Kierkegaard. Through the influence of phenomenology in Göttingen, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Hans Lipps, Theodor Haecker, Max Scheler, Carl Schmitt, Jacques Maritain and the Liturgical Movement, he opened up to the Catholic world.
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Ethelbert Stauffer
1902 - 1979 (77 years)
Ethelbert Stauffer was a German Protestant theologian and numismatist. Life Stauffer was the son of a Mennonite preacher born and raised in Worms. After attending the local grammar school, he studied Protestant theology at the universities of Halle, Berlin and Tübingen from 1921 to 1925. He then entered the service of the Mennonite churches in Hamburg and Altona. He converted to the Evangelical Church in 1928, and became assistant pastor of the Provincial-Saxon church. The New Testament scholar Ernst von Dobschütz appointed him the faculty assistant in Halle, where he graduated in 1929. He be...
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Leo Allatius
1586 - 1669 (83 years)
Leo Allatius was a Greek scholar, theologian, and keeper of the Vatican library. Biography Leo Allatius was a Greek, born on the island of Chios in 1586. His father was Niccolas Allatzes and his mother was Sebaste Neurides, both of Greek extraction . He was taken by his maternal uncle Michael Nauridis to Italy to be educated at the age of nine, first in Calabria and then in Rome where he was admitted into the Greek college. A graduate of the Pontifical Greek College of Saint Athanasius in Rome, he spent his career in Rome as teacher of Greek at the Greek college, devoting himself to the study of classics and theology.
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Philip Nye
1595 - 1672 (77 years)
Philip Nye was a leading English Independent theologian and a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He was the key adviser to Oliver Cromwell on matters of religion and regulation of the Church.
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Bruno Franz Leopold Liebermann
1759 - 1844 (85 years)
Bruno Franz Leopold Liebermann was a German Catholic theologian. Life Having finished his humanities in the college at Molsheim, he studied theology from 1776 to 1780 in the seminary at Strasbourg, after which, as he was too young for ordination, he was as subdeacon appointed teacher in the college at Molsheim. He became a deacon and a licentiate of theology in 1782, and was ordained priest on 14 June 1783.
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