Paul Stuart Fiddes is a British Baptist theologian. He is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford and was formerly Principal of Regent’s Park College and Chairman of the Theology Faculty.

He has been described as “one of the leading contemporary Baptist theologians”, “one of the leading scholars of theology and literature writing today”, and “one of Christianity’s most distinguished scholars”. His book The Creative Suffering of God is “considered to be one of the major contributions to theology in the last decades of the 20th century”. Fiddes attended St Peter’s College, Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He quickly changed his course and ended up with a Double First in English Language and Literature and Theology. The relationship between these disciplines has formed a major part of his subsequent scholarship. He then embarked on a doctoral thesis entitled “The hiddenness of wisdom in the Old Testament and later Judaism”. He then undertook post-doctoral studies at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

Fiddes is a member of the Oxford Theology Faculty Board since 1989, serving as Chairman 1996-98. He was appointed Principal of Regent’s Park in 1989 and Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford in 2002. In 2007 he resigned the Principalship of Regent’s Park and was appointed Principal Emeritus, Professorial Research Fellow, and Director of Research. In 2004 Fiddes was elected an Honorary Fellow of St Peter’s, on which occasion he was described as being “recognized internationally as one of the leading scholars in the fields of theology and literature”. Later in that year, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity, the highest that the University confers. He is also a Trustee Fellow of Georgetown College.

Fiddes is a member of the editorial board of Ecclesiology: The Journal for Ministry, and has served as a member of ecumenical study commissions for the British Council of Churches and its successor Churches.