Rate My Professor Paul Griffiths

Paul Griffiths is a professor in the Department of Catholic Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he held the inaugural Arthur J. Schmitt Chair in Catholic Studies from 2001 until January 2008. His academic career spans several leading institutions, including the University of Notre Dame, the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Duke Divinity School, where he served as Warren Professor of Catholic Thought until 2017. Griffiths specializes in Catholic theology and philosophical theology, with earlier expertise in Buddhist philosophy. The Catholic Studies Program at UIC was established in 2001 through collaboration between the university, the Catholic Chaplaincy, the Archdiocese of Chicago, and the Arthur J. Schmitt Foundation, which endowed the chair that Griffiths occupied. He earned his Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. Griffiths co-founded the Lumen Christi Institute for Catholic Scholarship, contributing to the intellectual life of Catholic studies at UIC and beyond.

Griffiths is a prolific author whose works address pressing issues in theology, religious diversity, ethics, and scriptural interpretation. Key publications include Problems of Religious Diversity (Blackwell, 2001), which examines the implications of religious pluralism for Christian doctrine; Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity (Brazos Press, 2004), a study of deception informed by Augustinian thought; Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar (Catholic University of America Press, 2009); Song of Songs (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, 2011); The Practice of Catholic Theology: A Modest Proposal (Catholic University of America Press, 2016); Christian Flesh (Stanford University Press, 2018); Regret: A Theology (University of Notre Dame Press, 2021); and Israel: A Christian Grammar (Fortress Press, 2023). Earlier books on Buddhism include On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (SUNY Press, 1994) and Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion (Oxford University Press, 1999). His scholarship has influenced debates on interreligious dialogue, the nature of theological inquiry, and Christian responses to modernity, establishing him as a significant voice in contemporary Catholic thought.