Paul J. Griffiths was born in England in 1955, and lived and was educated there until 1980, when he moved to the USA to complete his studies. Since 1980 he has lived mostly in the USA, becoming a US citizen in 1994. He was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1996, having previously been Anglican. He has held academic positions at the University of Notre Dame (1986-1990), the University of Chicago (1984-1986, 1990-2000), the University of Illinois at Chicago (2000-2007), and Duke University (2007-2018).

He is now retired from academic life and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where he reads, writes, and hikes, in approximately equal proportions. He has published thirteen books as sole author, seven more as co-author or editor, and hundreds of essays, articles, translations, and so on. His two most recent books are: The Practice of Catholic Theology (Catholic University of America Press, 2016); and Christian Flesh (Stanford University Press, 2018). His current projects include a book on regret as a virtue, called Otherwise; and a book on Blaise Pascal, commissioned for the Catholic University of America Press. Both of these should be complete by early in 2020.