Five most important Christian theologians

[historia]

Question for debate:

Aside from Jesus, who are the five most important / influential / consequential theologians in the history of Christianity? And why?

Rank them from one to five, with one being most important.

[historia]

So it's really meaningless to even ask who the most important theologians are with respect to "Christianity" without specifying which Christian theology we're talking about.

I disagree completely. The OP is not asking folks to rank their favorite theologians or those they agree with most. Rather, it's asking who are the most important, influential, or consequential theologians in the history of Christianity.

If I asked you to rank the most important, influential, or consequential presidents in American history, I think you could easily come up with a list that included presidents of various political parties, including those you might personally disagree with.

Anyone -- Christian, atheist, or otherwise -- can do the same here regarding Christian theologians.

[bjs]

I grant that this is a little subjective. I am going to take all the NT writers off the list, and then say:

Augustine, Aquinas, John Chrysostom, Francis, and Athanasius, in that order.

[Divine Insight]

So it's really meaningless to even ask who the most important theologians are with respect to "Christianity" without specifying which Christian theology we're talking about.

I disagree completely. The OP is not asking folks to rank their favorite theologians or those they agree with most. Rather, it's asking who are the most important, influential, or consequential theologians in the history of Christianity.

If I asked you to rank the most important, influential, or consequential presidents in American history, I think you could easily come up with a list that included presidents of various political parties, including those you might personally disagree with.

Anyone -- Christian, atheist, or otherwise -- can do the same here regarding Christian theologians.

But that analogy doesn't work. American history is pretty well-known and agreed upon. Although, as we see today, even Americans are in extreme division over who were the most important contributors since America is extremely divided in terms of what Americans think America should be.

But with Christianity things are far more divisive. No two Christians can even agree on what Christianity should be. There are numerous official denominations that are extremely divided over what they believe Christianity should be. The most obvious Great Divide, is between Christian Catholicism versus Christian Protestantism. But there are even huge disagreements within those two camps.

And of course Protestantism is the epitome of internal division with too many disagreeing demoninations to even try to keep track of. All of which believe different things about the theology.

So Christian theology is a meaningless term until you specify which Christian theology you're talking about. To even specify something as seemingly unified as Catholicism is actually ill-defined. Even Catholicism is internally divided concerning its followers. As an example, some Catholics approve of Pope Francis as reflecting the ideals of Catholicism, while others do not.

So the theologians that will be offered up in answer to your question are going to reflect the personal opinions of people who view Christian Theology in their own personal subjective way.

For example, Jehovah's Witnesses aren't going to support theologians who contributed to and support Catholic theology. They don't agree with Catholic theology.

So until you define which Christian Theology you are referring to, it's really impossible to answer the question because Christian theology in general is meaningless.

Unfortunately, America is on its way to becoming meaningless as well since Americans have also become divisive against each other. As an example some Americans will point to Roe vs. Wade as being a great milestone in the improvement of American freedom and civil liberties, while others will point to the same history and decree it as having been one of the greatest mistakes ever made.

So even American history is up for grabs in terms of which parts of American history were of the most importance and which parts were the least important.