Having contributed to the madness of this discourse, I should probably also mention what Hauerwas said about this kind of thing after being named "America's Best Theologian" - "Best isn't a theological category!" I'm sure this can be extrapolated to "Greatest" as well. https://twitter.com/RyanTurnbull20/status/1249768250608623617

It should also be said that there are plenty of really excellent theologians who faithfully teach and research and maybe only publish one thing that they are remembered for (or nothing!) but nevertheless, are great theologians.

One of the greatest theologians I know is an NT prof named Ed Neufeld who has published barely anything, yet I've never met a student of his who wasn't profoundly changed by having him as a teacher.

One of the other things that this kind of thing necessarily excludes are all of the theologians who have been categorized by the guild as doing some sort of hyphenated theology.

Liberation, eco, queer, black, indigenous, feminist, womanist, etc. theologians rarely get onto these lists because they're doing "niche" work rather than whatever normative theology is supposed to be. And some of these are doing so in ecclesial positions, so don't publish much.

I think of Archbishop Mark Macdonald, Canada's national Indigenous bishop, or Terry Leblanc, Cheryl Bear and others who are founding members of NAITTS. Or Emmanuel Katongole in Africa, or the many, many others who do "great" work but would never make this list.

And yes, this could just be read as a flimsy attempt at looking woke, but the reality is, the theologians who have personally had the most influence on me have mostly been pastors, or taught in small schools.

They have few by-lines, but they opened up theology to me in ways that allowed me to remain Christian. No reading list of "greats" will ever accomplish what hundreds of largely anonymous men and women do for the project of theology in the life of the church every day.

@danremps I beat you to it.