Paul Matthews van Buren (1924-1998) was a Christian theologian and author. An ordained Episcopalian priest he was a Professor of religion at Temple University, Philadelphia for 22 years.He was Director of the Center of Ethics and Religious Pluralism at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
He was born and raised in Norfolk, Va. During World War Two, he had served in the United States Coast Guard.
He attended Harvard College, from which he graduated with a bachelor's degree in government, in 1948. He then attended the Episcopal Theological School, and received a bachelor's of sacred theology in 1951. It was after this that he was ordained as an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Massachusetts. He received a PhD in theology in 1957, from the University of Basel in Switzerland studying under Karl Barth. A professor at Temple University, he was considered a leader of the "Death of God" school or movement, although he himself rejected that name for the movement as a journalistic invention, and an exponent of "Secular Christianity".