Top Five Christian Thinkers/Theologians/Philosophers?

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Just for fun - who are your personal top five Christian (Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox) thinkers? They don’t have to necessarily be strictly theologians, just famous thinkers/saints/philosophers/apologists or what have you that you enjoy the most. 👍
Mine are:
  1. St. Thomas Aquinas
  2. Origen
  3. St. Bonaventure
  4. The collected sayings of the Desert Fathers (cheating a little here):rolleyes:
  5. St. Francis of Assisi
 
I can’t argue much with your choices, but you could possibly add Pope Benedict XVI, Kreeft, Hahn, and Chesterton. Non-catholics worth reading include Lewis and Plantinga.
 
Yeah, I’ve been reading some of Pope Benedict the XVI’s writings and find that I am entirely inadequate to understanding some of it. He has an amazingly deep understanding of the faith (which is only befitting as the Pope!) I also find Scott Hahn to have a way of helping me grasp things that before I have difficulty seeing.
 
In modern days?
  1. Etienne Gilson (Catholic)
  2. Hans Urs von Balthasar (Catholic)
  3. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (Catholic)
  4. William Lane Craig (Protestant)
  5. Alvin Plantinga (Protestant)
  6. Karl Barth (Protestant) - I don’t agree with him, but his mangum opus, Church Dogmatics, has had more influence on Christianity than any non-Calvinist wants to admit.
Honorable mentions: JP Moreland (Protestant), Edward Feser (Catholic), David Oderberg (Catholic, I think? for providing the foundation for the revival of Thomism), CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, Peter Kreeft. I’m forgetting one Protestant philosopher, which would also be an honorable mention.

I was going to split this in to three lists (modern, contemporary history, all time) but I’ll do two:

In all time?
  1. St Thomas Aquinas (Catholic)
  2. St Augustine (Catholic)
  3. St John Chrysostom (Catholic)
  4. St Anselm of Canterbury (Catholic)
  5. Origen (Catholic/Heretic?)
Honorable mentions: Duns Scotus, St Bonaventure, Pope St Leo the Great, St Athanasius, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Gregory Nazianzen, St Albertus Magnus, Aristotle (Pagan, kind of), Plato (Pagan, kind of), and I’m probably forgetting a few.
 
My 0personal top five

Hans Urs von Balthasar
John Henry Newman
Chesterton
St. Francis
St. Bonaventure
 
Khalid said:
In modern days?
  1. Etienne Gilson (Catholic)
  2. Hans Urs von Balthasar (Catholic)
  3. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (Catholic)
  4. William Lane Craig (Protestant)
  5. Alvin Plantinga (Protestant)
  6. Karl Barth (Protestant) - I don’t agree with him, but his mangum opus, Church Dogmatics, has had more influence on Christianity than any non-Calvinist wants to admit.
Honorable mentions: JP Moreland (Protestant), Edward Feser (Catholic), David Oderberg (Catholic, I think? for providing the foundation for the revival of Thomism), CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, Peter Kreeft. I’m forgetting one Protestant philosopher, which would also be an honorable mention.

I was going to split this in to three lists (modern, contemporary history, all time) but I’ll do two:

In all time?
  1. St Thomas Aquinas (Catholic)
  2. St Augustine (Catholic)
  3. St John Chrysostom (Catholic)
  4. St Anselm of Canterbury (Catholic)
  5. Origen (Catholic/Heretic?)
Honorable mentions: Duns Scotus, St Bonaventure, Pope St Leo the Great, St Athanasius, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Gregory Nazianzen, St Albertus Magnus, Aristotle (Pagan, kind of), Plato (Pagan, kind of), and I’m probably forgetting a few.
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It’s tough to pick just five, isn’t it?😉 And just because I love Origen so much, I’ve got to add that he is not technically considered a heretic, but that’s a whole different ball of wax.😃
 
WinterLight said:
I can’t argue much with your choices, but you could possibly add Pope Benedict XVI, Kreeft, Hahn, and Chesterton. Non-catholics worth reading include Lewis and Plantinga.
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Darn it…I knew I forgot someone (C.S. Lewis). I’ll have to fix that.👍
 
Mine edited list is: (forgot two very important ones!)
  1. St. Thomas Aquinas
  2. Origen
  3. St. Francis of Assisi
  4. C.S. Lewis
  5. St. Francis de Sales
Honorable Mention: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers
 
  1. Acquinas - master of masters
  2. Ausgustine - he got some things wrong, but he got most of it right in a primitive time
  3. Pope Leo XIII - he condemned communism before there were communist countries, and predicted the twentieth century would be a century of huge wars and massive slaughter
  4. Tertullian - he wrote great treatises on theology way back in 200 A.D., with one of the earliest if not the earliest versions of the Apostles Creed
  5. Joan of Arc - she couldn’t read her own name, but she was a genius of the first rank. Historians still wonder how she did what she did.
    “In the history of the human intellect… nothing approaches this. Joan of Arc stands alone.” – Mark Twain
    “Joan is a being so uplifted from the ordinary run of mankind, that she finds no equal in a thousand years.” – Winston Churchill
 
empther said:
  1. Acquinas - master of masters
  2. Ausgustine - he got some things wrong, but he got most of it right in a primitive time
  3. Pope Leo XIII - he condemned communism before there were communist countries, and predicted the twentieth century would be a century of huge wars and massive slaughter
  4. Tertullian - he wrote great treatises on theology way back in 200 A.D., with one of the earliest if not the earliest versions of the Apostles Creed
  5. Joan of Arc - she couldn’t read her own name, but she was a genius of the first rank. Historians still wonder how she did what she did.
    “In the history of the human intellect… nothing approaches this. Joan of Arc stands alone.” – Mark Twain
    “Joan is a being so uplifted from the ordinary run of mankind, that she finds no equal in a thousand years.” – Winston Churchill
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Nice list! I was wondering when someone would bring up Tertullian:)
 
If we’re including modern philosophers, I think we ought to include Bernard Lonergan and Jacques Maritain in the list
 
Although they might not be in the top five, we might remember Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Geach, and Barry Miller.
 
My top five choices, though nither better than the other but just a group I prefer on the subject of the Church’s philosophical/theologial thinkers.

St. Aquinas
St. Augustine
St. Paul
St. Boethius
Bl. John Duns Scotus
 
I don’t think Boethius is a saint. Did he write anything other than De consolatione philosophiae?
 
Khalid said:
I don’t think Boethius is a saint. Did he write anything other than De consolatione philosophiae?
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Canonized under the name St. Severinus, full name is Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius. Feast day is Oct 23rd.

Other works in philosophy, In Ciceronis Topica, De topicis differentiis, De Categoricis Syllogismis, Introductio ad Syllogismos Categoricos. Did writing on arithmetic and music as well. Did a lot of translation works too, such as topics of quadrivium from greek, Aristotle, Porphyry, Euclid, Ptolemy. Also wrote Christian theological treatises, De Trinitate, De Fide Catholica, and a Liber contra Eutychen et Nestorium.

I cannot express how eager I am to fully learn Latin to read the texts not translated into English from him and the others I mentioned. Started already, only thing in my way is time 😦
 
All Time:
St. Paul – not a philosopher or theologian in a formal sense, but who could argue that he was not one of the most influential thinkers/writers in the history of all religions

St. Augustine – one of the most original minds in the human history; he wrote prolifically on many topics with clarity and deep reason. Arguably he was the first psychologist. He taught us much about our nature and our relationship to God. Also commending him for this forum listing is the fact that his works are still read by more people than most of the other people mentioned on this forum, his Confessions in particular.

Modern:

CS Lewis – He has got to be one of the most read and cited Christian thinkers in the last 100 years.

Karl Rahner – While his works are controversial, he is clearly a major power in 20th century Catholic thought. I am enamored by his works on grace, particularly his concept of the “anonymous Christian.”

Benedict XVI – While misunderstood by non-Christian detractors as a reflexive conservative, his mind runs very deep in philosophy and fresh theological insights. His two works on Jesus are both masterpieces appreciated by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

William Craig Lane – You have got to admire the power he brings to bear against atheistic philosophers/writers as one of the foremost living apologists for Christianity.
 
In no particular order…

Søren Kierkegaard
Alvin Plantinga
G.K Chesterton
St. Thomas Aquinas
and Blaise Pascal
 
theidler said:
Just for fun - who are your personal top five Christian (Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox) thinkers? They don’t have to necessarily be strictly theologians, just famous thinkers/saints/philosophers/apologists or what have you that you enjoy the most. 👍
Mine are:
  1. St. Thomas Aquinas
  2. Origen
  3. St. Bonaventure
  4. The collected sayings of the Desert Fathers (cheating a little here):rolleyes:
  5. St. Francis of Assisi
Click to expand...
Very hard choice. All your choices are good ones. Just off the bat I would say
  1. Gregory of Nyssa
  2. Dante
  3. C. S. Lewis
  4. St. Thomas Aquinas
  5. Dostoyevsky
Five runners-up might be:
6. Athanasius
7. Bach
8. Chesterton
9. Pope Benedict
10. Maximus the Confessor

But ask me again in five minutes, and I might give you a rather different list (though some of the same names would no doubt be on it).
 
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