Writers
Paul the apostle
Apostle Paul by Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn
Paul the Apostle was largely responsible for the initial spread of Christianity. His most prominent works include 13 epistles in the Christian Scriptures. A Hellenistic Jew, St Paul is known worldwide as one of the earliest Christian missionaries, along with Saint Peter and James the Just. He was also known as Paul the Apostle, the Apostle Paul and the Paul of Tarsus. However, he preferred to call himself 'Apostle to the Gentiles'. Paul had a broad outlook and was perhaps endowed as the most brilliant person to carry Christianity to varied lands, such as Cyprus, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), mainland Greece, Crete and Rome. St Paul's efforts to accept gentile converts and make Torah unnecessary for salvation was a successful task.
Augustine of Hippo
Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne
Accepted by most scholars as the most important figure in the ancient Western church, St. Augustine of Hippo was born in North Africa. His mother was a Christian, but his father remained a pagan until late in life. After a rather unremarkable childhood, marred only by a case of stealing pears, Augustine drifted through several philosophical systems before converting to Christianity at the age of thirty-one. During his youth, Augustine had studied rhetoric at Carthage, a discipline that he used to gain employment teaching in Carthage and then in Rome and Milan, where he met Ambrose who is credited with effecting Augustine's conversion and who baptized Augustine in 387. Returning to his homeland soon after his conversion, he was ordained a presbyter in 391, taking the position as bishop of Hippo in 396, a position which he held until his death. Augustine's most celebrated work is his De Civitate Dei (On the City of God), a study of the relationship between Christianity and secular society. Among his other works, many are polemical attacks on various heresies. He stands as a powerful advocate for orthodoxy and of the episcopacy as the sole means for the dispensing of saving grace.
Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas was born in Aquino, a town in southern. In his masterwork, Summa Theologica, he represents the pinnacle of scholasticism, the philosophical and theological school that flourished between 1100 and 1500 and attempted to reconcile faith with reason and the works of Aristotle with the scriptures. During his early education, Thomas exhibited great acumen in the medieval trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Because of his high birth, Thomas' entry into the Dominican order in the early 1240s was very surprising. His family employed various means to dissuade him from his vocation, including imprisoning him for two years. After his ordination, he was assigned to teach at Paris, where he also worked toward his degree of Doctor of Theology with his friend St. Bonaventure. The remainder of his life was spent in prayer, study, and writing his great Summa Theologica. In his later years, he was given to periods of mystical ecstasy, after one of which he abandoned his major work.
Source: Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
John Calvin
John Calvin is the author of the most famous theological book ever published, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. He is considered, along with Martin Luther, to be among the most significant of figures in the Protestant Reformation. His doctrines of the sovereignty of God in predestining the fate of all believers, referred to today as “Calvinism”, are among the most hotly debated in Christianity. He is also the primary person behind the printing of the famous Geneva Bible.
Charles Williams
From A Pilgrim in Narnia blog
Charles Williams, author and scholar, was born in London, and educated at St. Alban's School and at University College. He joined the Oxford University Press as a reader, and remained a member of the staff until his death. In 1912 he published his first book of verse, The Silver Stair, and, for the next 33 years, wrote, lectured and conversed with a tireless and brilliant energy. Williams was an unswerving and devoted member of the Church of England, with a refreshing tolerance of the skepticism of others, and a firm belief in the necessity of a "doubting Thomas" in any apostolic body. He devoted himself to the propagation and elaboration of two main doctrines—romantic love and the coinherence of all human creatures. Many of Williams's contemporaries found him difficult and obscure. Williams’ view was that the romantic approach could reveal objective truth, and this conviction led to much misunderstanding and doubt. The art of conversation and the craft of lecturing were his two most brilliant, provocative and fruitful methods of communication.
Karl Barth
. . . was born in Germany and exposed to theological enquiry from an early age. At 16, Barth decided to become a theologian. He studied at some of Germany’s finest institutions, spending time at Berlin, Tübingen and Marburg, in addition to Berne. Barth became an apprentice pastor in Geneva and then pastor of the Swiss village Safenwil. He spent many of his years preaching in accordance with von Harnack’s teachings. However, he came to reject the reformed and liberal tendencies, finding them unsuited to the problems of his parish and to his own personal journey. Barth was more famous for his Church Dogmatics, a fourteen-volume work which he continued to develop throughout his life and which remained incomplete at his death. In 1930 Barth had taken up a chair at the University of Bonn. His outspokenness against the Nazi party in 1934 meant that he was forced to leave Germany, and he returned to Basel where he taught theology until his retirement in 1962.
Walter Wink
. . .was professor emeritus at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. His faculty discipline is Biblical interpretation. He is known for his work on power structures, with a progressive Christianity view on current political and cultural matters. He coined the phrase “the myth of redemptive violence”, and has contributed to discourse on homosexuality and religion, pacifism, psychology and Biblical Studies, and Jesus as a historical figure. Neal Stephenson likens some of Wink’s ideas to “an epidemiology of power disorders” phenomenology of oppression. One of Wink’s major avenues for teaching has been his leadership of workshops to church and other groups, based on his method of Bible study and incorporating meditation, artwork, and movement.
Verna J. Dozier
. . . was a retired D.C. public school teacher and administrator who became a leading theologian and lay preacher in the Episcopal Church, at the time of her death. She was a biblical scholar and a leader of Bible study seminars, a church consultant and an advocate and spokeswoman for the authority and ministry of the laity in religious communities. She led classes and workshops throughout the United States and overseas, made audio- and videotape recordings and was author or co-author of dozens of books, articles and pamphlets on spiritual concerns and issues. She was chairman of the committee on ministry and director of the diocesan training project for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and the Washington diocesan representative for the training series of the national Episcopal Church. She also clung to her identity as a black woman in the mostly white church.