Andrew R Guffey | Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (original) (raw)
Papers by Andrew R Guffey
![Research paper thumbnail of On the Existence of 'the Encratites' [PROOFS]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/95181077/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Studia Patristica, 2021
This article establishes a starting point for understanding early Christian Encratites. Did 'the ... more This article establishes a starting point for understanding early Christian Encratites. Did 'the Encratites', as a defined social group in early Christianity, exist, or were they merely an invention of the early Christian heresiologists? Skepticism is warranted, since the works of the early Christian heresiologists who advert to the existence of the Encratites are crafted to their own socio-rhetorical aims. This article sets out the evidence for the existence of a group or network within early Christianity who were identified and/or identified themselves as 'Encratites'. Instead of beginning with Irenaeus, whose report leaves us with little coherent tradition to trace in later centuries, this article builds a case beginning in the fourth century with evidence from Basil and contemporary epigraphy. The evidence for Encratite practices and discourse is then traced backward toward Irenaeus. The rationale of this procedure does not entail an identification between the findings of the fourth century and the second, but rather encourages a new procedure in inquiry into the Encratites: tracing the tradition from the clearer and more distinctive evidence of the fourth century back toward the more suspect evidence of the second, with references to the Refutation of All Heresies, the account of Irenaeus, and that of Epiphanius. The article concludes that a group of ascetical rigorist Christians who called themselves Encratites did exist by the fourth century, and that they were building on a tradition of ascetical rigorism that favored the name Encratite, a tradition that first comes into evidence in the second century.
Biblical Research , 2018
The images of the book of Revelation have always presented interpreters with challenges. How are ... more The images of the book of Revelation have always presented interpreters with challenges. How are we to understand these images? What models or comparanda might produce valuable insights into their use? What is accomplished by such strange language? This paper argues that a central aspect of the images has been frequently overlooked in interpretations of the book of Revelation: their visuality. While visual realia and ancient rhetoric have been employed in the service of interpreting Revelation^ they have not frequently been used specifically to unravel the riddle of the imagistic language of the book. By interrogating visual comparanda and drawing on ancient discourse on ekphrasis (vivid description); we can begin to grasp the power of John s images; which was to "present" his audience(s) with a virtual visual reality that subtly countered the imagination of the divine inscribed in the visual culture of the cities of Asia Minor.
Pedagogy in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, 2017
In this paper from the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I consider rela... more In this paper from the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I consider relationship between the letter of James and Paul's letters, with a special focus on the question of James's supposed orientation toward wisdom, and Paul's toward apocalypticism. In questioning the dichotomy between wisdom and apocalypticism, I bring the theologies of James and Paul closer together so that we might better comprehend the actual differences between them.
The Journal of Theological Studies, 2014
The most prominent accounts of encratism identify it as an early Christian ascetica! sect that re... more The most prominent accounts of encratism identify it as an early Christian ascetica! sect that refrained from sex, and possibly also wine and meat. Scholars usually give protological speculation as the reason for these prohibitions: the prohibition of marriage and sex is linked with speculation on the state of humanity and/or the world from the beginning of creation. This article questions that assumption, and, through a close examination of the evidence of early Christian heresiologists, possible cultural contexts, and certain apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, instead argues that encratism was marked by several motivations, of which the protological was perhaps one. The evidence from the ancient heresiologists and apocryphal Acts points to at least four potential motivations for encratite prohibitions: Hellenistic moral. philosophy, demonology, social demarcation, and Pythagorean ethics. 1 My thanks to Harry Gamble for his careful reading and comments on earlier version of this paper. Unless otherwise noted, quotations of sources taken from the following translations: biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Translation; the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles from Ed Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha , vol. 2
Debates about the religious experience behind John’s visions in the book of Revelation continue a... more Debates about the religious experience behind John’s visions in the book of Revelation continue apace. Meanwhile, “the image” seems to have replaced “the gaze” in contemporary theory, and the field of visual studies has grown considerably. Hans Belting’s recent work on Bildanthropologie, for instance, examines three loci of iconology: image, medium, and body. Approaching Revelation’s images from this perspective moves us past the question of the religious experience behind the John’s images to the question of the religious experience created by the book’s images. In this paper, I attempt just such an interpretation. The religious images of ancient Asia Minor evoked an invisible religious world, and put the imagery of that world into various media, which in turn invited certain (religious) practices of viewing. In Belting’s analysis the body (i.e. the mind) can, and at some point must, become the medium for the image. When the image is a divine image, I would add, we can speak of a vision with a religious quality, the combination of such images forming an embodied religious visual culture. In this paper I argue John is up to something quite similar. John presents his language not just as a coded political message, but indeed as a religious visual culture to inhabit. John does not merely invite his audience into “the world of the text,” nor does he simply use the imagery on the level of pathos to persuade his audience of his message. He rather constructs an envisioned world and invites his audience to enter it—that is, enter the heavens, the divine realm—with him. In this endeavor John does with words what the artists, whose works filled the cities of ancient Asia Minor, did with marble, paint, and mosaic: he makes the divine realm present, granting his audience an experience of the divine.
Problems of theodicy mark both the book of Job and the Testament of Job (T. Job). While Job has t... more Problems of theodicy mark both the book of Job and the Testament of Job (T. Job). While Job has traditionally been hailed as “Job the patient,” biblical scholars have often found reason to doubt the validity of the epithet with respect to the book of Job. Whereas in the book of Job the exemplary character of Job’s response to his suffering is ambiguous, T. Job does portray Job as a moral exemplar to be imitated. This paper argues that T. Job describes a path of paideia as Job learns patience and dispassion through his suffering. Drawing on themes current in Hellenistic popular philosophy—particularly the theme of renunciation and athletic metaphor—T. Job narrates the process by which Job gradually learns apatheia and loses his attachment to the sources of his suffering. Job’s path has both horizontal and vertical trajectories. Where Hellenistic philosophy is teleologically oriented, Job’s patience is ultimately eschatologically oriented. At the same time, he is given the means of participating in the heavenly or angelic life while on earth, which may mirror philosophical ascent or assimilation to God. Through his philosophical detachment, eschatological hope, and mystical transformation, Job’s paideia through suffering itself functions as a pedagogical model for other righteous sufferers.
In this theological paper, delivered at a graduate theological conference in 2008, I explored a t... more In this theological paper, delivered at a graduate theological conference in 2008, I explored a theological ontology of death.
In this paper, delivered in 2009 at a graduate student theological conference, I explore the theo... more In this paper, delivered in 2009 at a graduate student theological conference, I explore the theological aesthetics of the book of Revelation, drawing heavily on the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the work of Austin Farrer.
Book Reviews by Andrew R Guffey
Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2021
Review of Biblical Literature, 2020
Review of Biblical Literature, 2018
This review was published by RBL 2018 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information... more This review was published by RBL 2018 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2017
This review was published by RBL ã2017 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more informatio... more This review was published by RBL ã2017 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2017
As befitting a volume in the new commentary series he and Mary Healy are editing, Peter Williamso... more As befitting a volume in the new commentary series he and Mary Healy are editing, Peter Williamson's commentary on the book of Revelation looks to "offer an interpretation … that is faithful to the text, enlightened by both contemporary scholarship and traditional interpretation, in harmony with the whole of Scripture and Christian doctrine, and relevant for the Church today" (17). This is a commentary for Christian students or other interested Christian readers, particularly Roman Catholic readers. It is not a commentary for scholars, nor for those who expect a rigorous historical treatment of the book. Its primary strength is theological and pastoral, in a tradition marked by magisterial Roman Catholic teaching and evangelical biblical theology.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2017
This review was published by RBL 2017 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information... more This review was published by RBL 2017 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2017
Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary. By C. L. Seow. Illuminations. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Willi... more Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary. By C. L. Seow. Illuminations. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013. Pp. xxviii + 971. $95.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2016
For the last fifteen years, Greg Beale's expansive New International Greek Testament commentary o... more For the last fifteen years, Greg Beale's expansive New International Greek Testament commentary on the book of Revelation (The Book of Revelation [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) has served students and scholars well, especially as an alternative to the likewise capacious treatment of the book by David Aune in the Word Biblical Commentary series (Revelation [Waco, TX/Nashville: Word/Nelson, 1997-1998]). This shorter commentary (at a slim 562 pages!) is a curtailed edition of the longer commentary with the goal of making Beale's interpretation available to a broader audience.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2015
Review of Biblical Literature, 2014
This volume consists of an introduction plus ten papers collected from the work of the Religious ... more This volume consists of an introduction plus ten papers collected from the work of the Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity Section in the Society of Biblical Literature. As with the first volume of collected essays from the Experientia Group, 1 this volume offers a sampling of theoretical soundings toward the rehabilitation of the analytic category "religious experience." The work of the Experientia Group, as Colleen Shantz notes in the introduction, explores religious experience-"both what it is and how we might access it in ancient texts" (1). If the first Experientia volume placed the emphasis on what religious experience might be, this second volume emphasizes more how it might be accessed in ancient texts. Colleen Shantz's introduction ("Opening the Black Box: New Prospects for Analyzing Religious Experience," 1-15) lays out the main methodological difficulties that attend the category "religious experience." Acknowledging the tendentious uses of the category to insulate religious phenomena from critical scrutiny or to assert the uniqueness of supposed unmediated experiences, Shantz admits that the category has been used in problematic ways. But all hope of prying open the "black box" of religious experience is
Studia Patristica, 2021
This article establishes a starting point for understanding early Christian Encratites. Did 'the ... more This article establishes a starting point for understanding early Christian Encratites. Did 'the Encratites', as a defined social group in early Christianity, exist, or were they merely an invention of the early Christian heresiologists? Skepticism is warranted, since the works of the early Christian heresiologists who advert to the existence of the Encratites are crafted to their own socio-rhetorical aims. This article sets out the evidence for the existence of a group or network within early Christianity who were identified and/or identified themselves as 'Encratites'. Instead of beginning with Irenaeus, whose report leaves us with little coherent tradition to trace in later centuries, this article builds a case beginning in the fourth century with evidence from Basil and contemporary epigraphy. The evidence for Encratite practices and discourse is then traced backward toward Irenaeus. The rationale of this procedure does not entail an identification between the findings of the fourth century and the second, but rather encourages a new procedure in inquiry into the Encratites: tracing the tradition from the clearer and more distinctive evidence of the fourth century back toward the more suspect evidence of the second, with references to the Refutation of All Heresies, the account of Irenaeus, and that of Epiphanius. The article concludes that a group of ascetical rigorist Christians who called themselves Encratites did exist by the fourth century, and that they were building on a tradition of ascetical rigorism that favored the name Encratite, a tradition that first comes into evidence in the second century.
Biblical Research , 2018
The images of the book of Revelation have always presented interpreters with challenges. How are ... more The images of the book of Revelation have always presented interpreters with challenges. How are we to understand these images? What models or comparanda might produce valuable insights into their use? What is accomplished by such strange language? This paper argues that a central aspect of the images has been frequently overlooked in interpretations of the book of Revelation: their visuality. While visual realia and ancient rhetoric have been employed in the service of interpreting Revelation^ they have not frequently been used specifically to unravel the riddle of the imagistic language of the book. By interrogating visual comparanda and drawing on ancient discourse on ekphrasis (vivid description); we can begin to grasp the power of John s images; which was to "present" his audience(s) with a virtual visual reality that subtly countered the imagination of the divine inscribed in the visual culture of the cities of Asia Minor.
Pedagogy in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, 2017
In this paper from the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I consider rela... more In this paper from the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, I consider relationship between the letter of James and Paul's letters, with a special focus on the question of James's supposed orientation toward wisdom, and Paul's toward apocalypticism. In questioning the dichotomy between wisdom and apocalypticism, I bring the theologies of James and Paul closer together so that we might better comprehend the actual differences between them.
The Journal of Theological Studies, 2014
The most prominent accounts of encratism identify it as an early Christian ascetica! sect that re... more The most prominent accounts of encratism identify it as an early Christian ascetica! sect that refrained from sex, and possibly also wine and meat. Scholars usually give protological speculation as the reason for these prohibitions: the prohibition of marriage and sex is linked with speculation on the state of humanity and/or the world from the beginning of creation. This article questions that assumption, and, through a close examination of the evidence of early Christian heresiologists, possible cultural contexts, and certain apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, instead argues that encratism was marked by several motivations, of which the protological was perhaps one. The evidence from the ancient heresiologists and apocryphal Acts points to at least four potential motivations for encratite prohibitions: Hellenistic moral. philosophy, demonology, social demarcation, and Pythagorean ethics. 1 My thanks to Harry Gamble for his careful reading and comments on earlier version of this paper. Unless otherwise noted, quotations of sources taken from the following translations: biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Translation; the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles from Ed Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha , vol. 2
Debates about the religious experience behind John’s visions in the book of Revelation continue a... more Debates about the religious experience behind John’s visions in the book of Revelation continue apace. Meanwhile, “the image” seems to have replaced “the gaze” in contemporary theory, and the field of visual studies has grown considerably. Hans Belting’s recent work on Bildanthropologie, for instance, examines three loci of iconology: image, medium, and body. Approaching Revelation’s images from this perspective moves us past the question of the religious experience behind the John’s images to the question of the religious experience created by the book’s images. In this paper, I attempt just such an interpretation. The religious images of ancient Asia Minor evoked an invisible religious world, and put the imagery of that world into various media, which in turn invited certain (religious) practices of viewing. In Belting’s analysis the body (i.e. the mind) can, and at some point must, become the medium for the image. When the image is a divine image, I would add, we can speak of a vision with a religious quality, the combination of such images forming an embodied religious visual culture. In this paper I argue John is up to something quite similar. John presents his language not just as a coded political message, but indeed as a religious visual culture to inhabit. John does not merely invite his audience into “the world of the text,” nor does he simply use the imagery on the level of pathos to persuade his audience of his message. He rather constructs an envisioned world and invites his audience to enter it—that is, enter the heavens, the divine realm—with him. In this endeavor John does with words what the artists, whose works filled the cities of ancient Asia Minor, did with marble, paint, and mosaic: he makes the divine realm present, granting his audience an experience of the divine.
Problems of theodicy mark both the book of Job and the Testament of Job (T. Job). While Job has t... more Problems of theodicy mark both the book of Job and the Testament of Job (T. Job). While Job has traditionally been hailed as “Job the patient,” biblical scholars have often found reason to doubt the validity of the epithet with respect to the book of Job. Whereas in the book of Job the exemplary character of Job’s response to his suffering is ambiguous, T. Job does portray Job as a moral exemplar to be imitated. This paper argues that T. Job describes a path of paideia as Job learns patience and dispassion through his suffering. Drawing on themes current in Hellenistic popular philosophy—particularly the theme of renunciation and athletic metaphor—T. Job narrates the process by which Job gradually learns apatheia and loses his attachment to the sources of his suffering. Job’s path has both horizontal and vertical trajectories. Where Hellenistic philosophy is teleologically oriented, Job’s patience is ultimately eschatologically oriented. At the same time, he is given the means of participating in the heavenly or angelic life while on earth, which may mirror philosophical ascent or assimilation to God. Through his philosophical detachment, eschatological hope, and mystical transformation, Job’s paideia through suffering itself functions as a pedagogical model for other righteous sufferers.
In this theological paper, delivered at a graduate theological conference in 2008, I explored a t... more In this theological paper, delivered at a graduate theological conference in 2008, I explored a theological ontology of death.
In this paper, delivered in 2009 at a graduate student theological conference, I explore the theo... more In this paper, delivered in 2009 at a graduate student theological conference, I explore the theological aesthetics of the book of Revelation, drawing heavily on the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the work of Austin Farrer.
Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2021
Review of Biblical Literature, 2020
Review of Biblical Literature, 2018
This review was published by RBL 2018 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information... more This review was published by RBL 2018 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2017
This review was published by RBL ã2017 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more informatio... more This review was published by RBL ã2017 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2017
As befitting a volume in the new commentary series he and Mary Healy are editing, Peter Williamso... more As befitting a volume in the new commentary series he and Mary Healy are editing, Peter Williamson's commentary on the book of Revelation looks to "offer an interpretation … that is faithful to the text, enlightened by both contemporary scholarship and traditional interpretation, in harmony with the whole of Scripture and Christian doctrine, and relevant for the Church today" (17). This is a commentary for Christian students or other interested Christian readers, particularly Roman Catholic readers. It is not a commentary for scholars, nor for those who expect a rigorous historical treatment of the book. Its primary strength is theological and pastoral, in a tradition marked by magisterial Roman Catholic teaching and evangelical biblical theology.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2017
This review was published by RBL 2017 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information... more This review was published by RBL 2017 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 2017
Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary. By C. L. Seow. Illuminations. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Willi... more Job 1–21: Interpretation and Commentary. By C. L. Seow. Illuminations. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013. Pp. xxviii + 971. $95.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2016
For the last fifteen years, Greg Beale's expansive New International Greek Testament commentary o... more For the last fifteen years, Greg Beale's expansive New International Greek Testament commentary on the book of Revelation (The Book of Revelation [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) has served students and scholars well, especially as an alternative to the likewise capacious treatment of the book by David Aune in the Word Biblical Commentary series (Revelation [Waco, TX/Nashville: Word/Nelson, 1997-1998]). This shorter commentary (at a slim 562 pages!) is a curtailed edition of the longer commentary with the goal of making Beale's interpretation available to a broader audience.
Review of Biblical Literature, 2015
Review of Biblical Literature, 2014
This volume consists of an introduction plus ten papers collected from the work of the Religious ... more This volume consists of an introduction plus ten papers collected from the work of the Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity Section in the Society of Biblical Literature. As with the first volume of collected essays from the Experientia Group, 1 this volume offers a sampling of theoretical soundings toward the rehabilitation of the analytic category "religious experience." The work of the Experientia Group, as Colleen Shantz notes in the introduction, explores religious experience-"both what it is and how we might access it in ancient texts" (1). If the first Experientia volume placed the emphasis on what religious experience might be, this second volume emphasizes more how it might be accessed in ancient texts. Colleen Shantz's introduction ("Opening the Black Box: New Prospects for Analyzing Religious Experience," 1-15) lays out the main methodological difficulties that attend the category "religious experience." Acknowledging the tendentious uses of the category to insulate religious phenomena from critical scrutiny or to assert the uniqueness of supposed unmediated experiences, Shantz admits that the category has been used in problematic ways. But all hope of prying open the "black box" of religious experience is