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Who are the most influential thinkers in world?

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Note: These rankings change dynamically as our artificial intelligence system learns new things and incorporates new publications and citations. Academics are constantly doing research and publishing new insights, with the result that our measure of influence is subject to continual adjustments. For quality assurance reasons, however, we forgo real-time changes, with most public updates happening only quarterly. In any case, don’t be surprised to see our rankings change over time.

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List of the most influential people in Theology, for the years 1990 – 2020

Alister E. McGrath was born on January 23, 1953 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. After studying at Methodist College Belfast, McGrath earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1975. He pursued graduate research in science while also studying theology, and earned a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics in 1977. He was later ordained as an Anglican priest and awarded a B.D. from Oxford in 1983 and a doctorate in divinity in 2001. He also later earned a third doctorate from Oxford, a D.Litt., in 2013 for his work on science and religion.

Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, a position he held from December 2002 to December 2012. Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, Williams was the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England.

Wayne A. Grudem is an American evangelical theologian, seminary professor, and author. He co-founded the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and served as the general editor of the ESV Study Bible.

Robert Charles Sproul was an American Reformed theologian and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. He was the founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries and could be heard daily on the Renewing Your Mind radio broadcast in the United States and internationally. Under Sproul's direction, Ligonier Ministries produced the Ligonier Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which would eventually grow into the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, of which Sproul, alongside Norman Geisler, was one of the chief architects. Sproul has been described as "the greatest and most influ...

William Lane Craig was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1949. He earned a B.A. from Wheaton College, and pursued graduate work at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the philosophy of religion. His earned his doctorate in 1977 at the University of Birmingham, England, with work on the cosmological argument for God’s existence under the supervision of John Hick. He pursued postdoctoral work under the direction of Wolfhart Pannenberg at the Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München in Germany, where he earned a doctorate in theology in 1984.

John Boswell Cobb, Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Cobb is the author of more than fifty books. In 2014, Cobb was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Alvin Plantinga currently holds the title of the William Harry Jellema Chair in Philosophy at Calvin University. Previously, Plantinga has taught at Wayne State University and the University of Notre Dame. Additionally, Plantinga was the president of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division from 1981 to 1982. As an undergraduate, Plantinga studied at Jamestown College, Calvin College, and Harvard University. Plantinga went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of Michigan, before transferring to Yale University in 1955 and earning his PhD there in 1958.

James Hal Cone was an American theologian, best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church. His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of Jesus.

Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and multidisciplinary scholar who directs a doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary and the Center for Open and Relational Theology. He formerly taught for sixteen years as a tenured professor at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho. He is the author or editor of more than twenty-five books and hundreds of articles. Oord is known for his contributions to research on love, open theism, postmodernism, the relationship between religion and science, Wesleyan, holiness, Nazarene theology.

David Ray Griffin is an American retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Along with John B. Cobb, Jr., he founded the Center for Process Studies in 1973, a research center of Claremont School of Theology that seeks to promote the common good by means of the relational approach found in process thought.

Rosemary Radford Ruether is an American feminist scholar and Catholic theologian known for her significant contributions to the field of feminist theology.She has been referred to as one of the major Christian feminist theologians of our time. Her field of knowledge and writing is vast, with subjects ranging from feminist theology and ecofeminist theology, to topics such as antisemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Charles Peter Wagner was a missionary, writer, teacher and founder of several organizations. In his earlier years Wagner was known as a key leader of the Church Growth Movement and later for his writings on spiritual warfare.

James Innell Packer was an English-born Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, known for his best-selling book, Knowing God, written in 1973, as well as his work as an editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He was one of the high-profile signers on the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a member on the advisory board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and also was involved in the ecumenical book Evangelicals and

Richard Swinburne was born in 1934 in Smethwick, Staffordshire, England. He graduated in 1957 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Exeter College, the fourth oldest college at the University of Oxford. He pursued a graduate degree in philosophy (1957-59) from the university and then entered St. Stephen’s House, where he earned the Oxford Diploma in Theology (1959-60). From 1985 until his retirement in 2002, Swinburne held the position of Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford.

Stanley Hauerwas was born in 1940 in Dallas, Texas. He attended Southwestern University, where he earned a B.A., and then studied at Yale University, where he earned a bachelor’s of divinity, master’s of arts, master’s of philosophy, and doctorate in philosophy.

David Bentley Hart is an American philosopher and Eastern Orthodox theologian whose work encompasses a wide range of subjects and genres. A prolific essayist, he has written on topics as diverse as art, literature, religion, philosophy, film, baseball, and politics. He is also an author of fiction. As a religious scholar, his work engages heavily with classical, medieval and continental European philosophy, philosophical and systematic theology, patristic texts, and South and East Asian culture, religion, literature, philosophy and metaphysics. His translation of the New Testament was publish...

John Stephen PiperMinneapolis, Minnesota. Piper taught biblical studies at Bethel University for six years , before serving as pastor for preaching and vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis for 33 years .

William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him "among the most influential Christian leaders" of the 20th century.

Nicholas Paul Wolterstorff is an American philosopher and theologian. He is currently Noah Porter Professor Emeritus Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer with wide-ranging philosophical and theological interests, he has written books on aesthetics, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and philosophy of education. In Faith and Rationality, Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and William Alston developed and expanded upon a view of religious epistemology that has come to be known as Reformed epistemology. He also helped to establish the jou...

John David Caputo is an American philosopher who is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University. Caputo is a major figure associated with postmodern Christianity and continental philosophy of religion, as well as the founder of the theological movement known as weak theology. Much of Caputo's work focuses on hermeneutics, phenomenology, deconstruction and theology.

Nicholas Thomas Wright , known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is an English New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian and Anglican bishop. He was the bishop of Durham from 2003 to 2010. He then became research professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St Mary's College in the University of St Andrews in Scotland until 2019, when he became a senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall at the University of Oxford.

Jean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and Roman Catholic theologian. Marion is a former student of Jacques Derrida whose work is informed by patristic and mystical theology, phenomenology, and modern philosophy. Much of his academic work has dealt with Descartes and phenomenologists like Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, but also religion. God Without Being, for example, is concerned predominantly with an analysis of idolatry, a theme strongly linked in Marion's work with love and the gift, which is a concept also explored at length by Derrida.

Kallistos Ware is an English bishop and theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Since 1982, he has held the titular bishopric of Diokleia in Phrygia , later made a titular metropolitan bishopric in 2007, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. He is one of the best-known contemporary Eastern Orthodox hierarchs and theologians. From 1966 to 2001, he was Spalding Lecturer of Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford.

Norman Leo Geisler was an American Christian systematic theologian and philosopher. He was the co-founder of two non-denominational evangelical seminaries .He held a Ph.D. in philosophy from Loyola University and made scholarly contributions to the subjects of classical Christian apologetics, systematic theology, the history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Biblical inerrancy, Bible difficulties, ethics, and more. He was the author, coauthor, or editor of over 90 books and hundreds of articles.

Wolfhart Pannenberg was a German Lutheran theologian. He made a number of significant contributions to modern theology, including his concept of history as a form of revelation centered on the resurrection of Christ, which has been widely debated in both Protestant and Catholic theology, as well as by non-Christian thinkers.

John Harwood Hick was a philosopher of religion and theologian born in England who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious pluralism.

Richard Albert Mohler Jr. is an American evangelical theologian, the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and host of the podcast The Briefing, where he daily analyzes the news and recent events from a Evangelical perspective. He has been described as "one of America's most influential evangelicals".

Russell D. Moore is an American theologian, ethicist, and preacher. In June 2021 he became the director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today. Moore previously served as president of the , the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention , and at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, as dean of the School of Theology, senior vice president for academic administration, and as professor of theology and ethics.

Marcus Joel Borg was an American New Testament scholar and theologian. He was among the most widely known and influential voices in progressive Christianity. As a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, Borg was a major figure in historical Jesus scholarship. He retired as Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University in 2007. He died eight years later at the age of 72, of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at his home in Powell Butte, Oregon.

Don Cupitt is an English philosopher of religion and scholar of Christian theology. He has been an Anglican priest and a professor of the University of Cambridge, though is better known as a popular writer, broadcaster and commentator. He has been described as a "radical theologian", noted for his ideas about "non-realist" philosophy of religion.

John Fullerton MacArthur Jr. is an American pastor and author known for his internationally syndicated Christian teaching radio and television program Grace to You. He has been the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, since February 9, 1969. He is currently Chancellor Emeritus of The Master's University in Santa Clarita, California, and The Master's Seminary in Sun Valley, California.

William T. Cavanaugh is an American Roman Catholic theologian, known for his work in political theology and Christian ethics.Biography Cavanaugh received his Bachelor of Arts degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 1984, and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge in 1987. He later attended Duke University, where he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in religion in 1996. His areas of specialization are in political theology, economic ethics, and ecclesiology.

Walter Brueggemann is an American Protestant Old Testament scholar and theologian who is widely considered one of the most influential Old Testament scholars of the last several decades. He is an important figure in modern progressive Christianity whose work often focuses on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argues that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism.

John Zizioulas is a Greek Orthodox prelate. He is the current titular Metropolitan bishop of Pergamon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. He is one of the most influential Orthodox Christian theologians today.

Keith Ward is an English Anglican priest, philosopher, and theologian. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a priest of the Church of England. He was a canon of Christ Church, Oxford, until 2003. Comparative theology and the relationship between science and religion are two of his main topics of interest. He was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 1991 to 2004.

Jürgen Moltmann was born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany. In 1944, Moltmann was drafted into the German army to fight in World War II. He served for six months before surrendering to the British, after which he was confined to prisoner of war camps for three years in Belgium, England, and Scotland. After his release, he studied at the University of Gottïngen, earning a doctorate in 1952. Moltmann is emeritus professor of theology at Tübingen University, where he taught from 1967 to 1994.

Leonardo Boff , born as Genézio Darci Boff , is a Brazilian theologian, philosopher writer, and former Catholic priest known for his active support for Latin American liberation theology. He currently serves as Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the Rio de Janeiro State University. In 2001, he received the Right Livelihood Award for "his inspiring insights and practical work to help people realise the links between human spirituality, social justice and environmental stewardship."

George Weigel is a Catholic conservative American author, political analyst, and social activist. He currently serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Weigel was the Founding President of the James Madison Foundation. He is the author of a best-selling biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope, and Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace.

L. Paige Patterson served as the fifth president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., from 1992 to 2003, as president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1998 to 2000, and as the eighth president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, from 2003 until his firing in 2018. He played a major role in the Southern Baptist "conservative resurgence", called "Fundamentalist Takeover" by opponents. He has been alternately described as a fundamentalist and a conservative evangelical.

Thomas Clark Oden was an American Methodist theologian and religious author. He is often regarded as the father of the paleo-orthodox theological movement and is considered to be one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. He was Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics at Drew University in New Jersey from 1980 until his retirement in 2004. He remained faculty emeritus until his death.

Justin Portal Welby is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior bishop in the Church of England. He has served in that role since 2013. Welby was the vicar of Southam, Warwickshire, and most recently was the Bishop of Durham, serving for just over a year. Ex officio, he is the Primate of All England and the head primus inter pares in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Alasdair John Milbank was born October 23, 1952 in Kings Langley, England. He studied modern history at The Queen’s College, Oxford and earned a postgraduate certificate in theology from Westcott House, Cambridge, where he studied under Rowan Williams. His Ph.D. is from the University of Birmingham. He was also awarded a senior Doctor of Divinity from the University of Cambridge in 1998 in recognition of his published scholarship.

Teresa Forcades i Vila is a Catalan physician, Benedictine nun and social activist. Forcades i Vila is known for her outspoken and sometimes controversial views on the church, public health and Catalan independence, and for her vaccine skepticism.

Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 2013. Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope from outside Europe since Gregory III, a Syrian who reigned in the 8th century.

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, a researcher at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Arts and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London. He is also Global Eminent Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, and a Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University. He works in subjects including continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, political theory, cultural studies, art criticism, film criticism, Marxism, Hegelianism and theology.

Candida R. Moss is an English New Testament scholar and historian of Christianity, who is the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. A graduate of Oxford and Yale universities, Moss specialises in the study of the New Testament and martyrdom in early Christianity.

Charles Hartshorne was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and produced a modal proof of the existence of God that was a development of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological argument. Hartshorne is also noted for developing Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy into process theology.

Ed Parish Sanders is an American New Testament scholar and a principal proponent of the "New Perspective on Paul". He is a major scholar in the scholarship on the historical Jesus and contributed to the view that Jesus was part of a renewal movement within Judaism. He has been Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion at Duke University, North Carolina, since 1990. He retired in 2005.

Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino is a Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, regarded as one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology. He currently holds the John Cardinal O'Hara Professorship of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and has previously been a visiting professor at many major universities in North America and Europe.

R. William Hasker is an American philosopher and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Huntington University. For many years he was editor of the prestigious journal Faith and Philosophy. He has published many journal articles and books dealing with issues such as the mind–body problem, theodicy, and divine omniscience. He has argued for "open theism" and a view known as "emergentism" regarding the nature of the human person. Hasker regards the soul as an "emergent" substance, dependent upon the body for its existence.