Franz Jozef Van Beeck and sometimes spelled as Frans Jozef Van Beeck, also known as Joop Van Beeck (born 1930), is a Dutch author and Christian theologian who is also a prominent priest of the Society of Jesus. Born in Helmond, Netherlands, he entered the Jesuit religious order in 1948 and was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1963. From 1968 to 1985, Van Beeck taught theology at Boston College in Boston, Massachusetts. He was then transferred to Loyola University Chicago in Chicago, Illinois where he became John Cardinal Cody Professor of Theology until retirement in 2002.

During his life, Van Beeck had written hundreds of thousands of pages of letters, treatises and books used today in Christian colleges and universities throughout the world. His most famous literary works were a series of four books called God Encountered: A Contemporary Catholic Systematic Theology. Some of his most controversial works considered the issues arising from World War II. Critics challenged Van Beeck's attempt to define a single universal theme in the overall tragedy of the Holocaust. They believed that such an attempt to explain the Holocaust as a metaphor or symbol was dangerous and could lead to a minimalization of the horrors of the mass murder.