Guy, Fritz (1930–2023)

Fritz Guy was a Seventh-day Adventist theologian, philosopher, educator, academic administrator, and pastor.¹ He was noted for his scholarship related to topics including Sabbath, salvation, creation, sexuality and gender, and theological method; for his contribution to the formulation of the Adventist church’s 1980 Statement of Fundamental Beliefs; for his teaching and mentoring of Adventist scholars and pastors; and for his role as La Sierra University’s founding president. In a 1985 survey of North American Adventist religion academics, Guy was identified as one of the Adventist authors who had most influenced them.²

Early Years

Guy was born on April 19, 1930, in St. Cloud, Minnesota. His forebears were among the first Seventh-day Adventists in Europe—members of the watchmaking community in the Swiss mountain villages above Lake Neuchatel, Switzerland.³ His grandfather—an earlier, Swiss-born, Fritz Guy—was working as a jeweler, watchmaker, optician, and musical-instrument retailer in St. Cloud as early as 1892.⁴

A fourth-generation Adventist,⁵ Guy graduated in 1948 from Cedar Lake Academy, qualifying as valedictorian and having served as yearbook and student newspaper editor.⁶ He took a bus to California, following his older brother, Richard, to La Sierra College. After initially planning to focus on English or physics, he opted to study theology under the influence of Professor Edward Heppenstall. He had become acquainted with Heppenstall while attending youth camps in Michigan when Heppenstall was serving as Michigan Conference youth director. Heppenstall would later also be among Guy’s seminary teachers.⁷

Guy was engaged in campus life. He tried his hand at choir directing,⁸ reported for the student newspaper, the Criterion (serving as a freshman under editor Frank Jobe, future creator of the Tommy John surgery), and played violin as a soloist, in a classical violin quartet,⁹ in a vocal-violin ensemble,¹⁰ and in the university orchestra as well as in a country-and-western group called “the Rusket Ramblers.”¹¹ His work was selected for inclusion in a campus poetry anthology,¹² and he and his friend Glenn Foster co-authored a limerick cycle.¹³ And he made clear his willingness to take a stand on important issues: “The worst vice on this campus is the social pressure which compels rich and poor alike to buy corsages for every little event that comes along.”¹⁴

Richard Guy had been chosen as editor of the Criterion and had completed planned work on a summer issue when he died in an automobile accident on July 18, 1949.¹⁵ The traumatic loss of his brother profoundly affected Guy,¹⁶ but it did not prevent him from remaining involved in college life. An editorial team was organized to guide the Criterion through the 1949-50 academic year, and Guy, elected an associate editor, was among its members.¹⁷

At La Sierra, Guy served as program director for Mountain Meditations, a student-led devotional program broadcast on Riverside radio station KPRO.¹⁸ He worked as a student assistant for the English Department. He was the master of ceremonies for the 1951 Christmas banquet and for an event hosting prospective students.¹⁹ And, selected by the Board of Trustees following a student poll,²⁰ he was La Sierra’s delegate to the first European Youth Congress, held in Paris in July 1951.²¹ His involvement meant not only international travel (including a still-rare airplane trip to Paris and a return voyage by ocean liner) but also a television appearance.²²

Graduating in 1952 with a B.A. in religion and a minor in English, he served as a pastor and evangelist in the Southeastern California Conference (working in San Diego and Indio,²³ as a solo pastor in the latter case²⁴). He remained sufficiently connected to La Sierra, even as a young pastor, to continue writing for the Criterion.²⁵ In December 1954, he married Marcia Janice Specht.²⁶

Marcia Guy had deep La Sierra roots. She was the niece of popular La Sierra religion professor Walter Specht²⁷ and the grand-niece of J. J. Nethery, the Southeastern California Conference president who had negotiated the purchase of the La Sierra property. Over time, the Guys would welcome three children—Linda, Richard, and Susan—as well as six grandchildren and one great-grandchild into their family.

Fritz Guy was ordained to the Seventh-day Adventist ministry on July 9, 1956. He earned an M.A. in systematic theology (1955) and a B.D. in systematic theology and Christian philosophy (1961) from the SDA Theological Seminary, which had moved from Washington, D.C. to Andrews University by the time of his B.D. graduation. Both degrees were awarded magna cum laude.²⁸ While in Washington, he served as assistant editor of the Youth’s Instructor for three years and worked on the team preparing the SDA Bible Commentary. He was appointed to the La Sierra faculty beginning in the 1960-61 academic year, during which he completed his B.D..²⁹ He arrived in Riverside as Instructor in Theology and Christian Philosophy after a summer studying French and Latin at Harvard Divinity School.³⁰ The director of the Harvard program in which he participated wrote to La Sierra College not only to confirm Guy’s completion of the program but also to describe him as “one of the most apt pupils I have ever encountered in many years of teaching.”³¹

As a young teacher, Guy began to develop friendships and mentoring relationships with students at La Sierra. They included budding Adventist academics—among them Jonathan Butler, Richard Rice, Edwin Zackrison, Bailey Gillespie, Ron Graybill, and Guy’s first student assistant, John Brunt—as well as others, including Ron Walden, Donna Carlson, Jim Hooper, and Robert Reeves. He served as first vice president of the college’s Alumni Association.³² Still involved in pastoral ministry, he spoke for a Week of Prayer at Newbury Park Academy.³³

Growing As a Scholar and Administrator

Guy had begun to engage in academic research and writing at least as early as his time as a seminary student. While teaching at La Sierra, he completed an article that appeared in Andrews University Seminary Studies in 1964.³⁴ He also contributed articles to the Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia’s first edition. (His orthodox observation that the identity of Jesus of Nazareth as God incarnate was not itself a function of Jesus’s having been virginally conceived was omitted by the editor.) A study leave from 1964 to 1968, supported in part by a Danforth Foundation Teacher Grant³⁵ and an Entering Fellows Scholarship from his soon-to-be doctoral alma mater,³⁶ provided him with the opportunity to enroll in the University of Chicago Divinity School’s top-ranked Ph.D. program in Christian theology. (He also benefited from a Rockefeller Fellowship for doctoral study in 1967–68.)

In Chicago, the Guys worshipped with a predominantly African American Adventist congregation at the Shiloh Seventh-day Adventist Church, pastored by Benjamin Reaves, who would later become president of what is now Oakwood University.³⁷ Guy found time to turn seminar papers into more articles for Seminary Studies.³⁸ And he remained connected with friends: a single-sentence theological question from a former La Sierra student could elicit a ten-page memo in response.³⁹

Church historian Martin E. Marty later characterized Guy as the most capable graduate of the Divinity School’s doctoral program in a decade.⁴⁰ Guy’s dissertation examined issues related to time and temporal experience in theology and philosophy. His dissertation director was theologian Langdon Gilkey, best known as the author of Maker of Heaven and Earth and Shantung Compound. Marty recalled Gilkey as believing that Guy possessed “as good a theological mind as he’d met at Chicago.”⁴¹ These assessments signaled Guy’s potential to bridge the divide between the broader academy and the Adventist theological project.

In 1968, Guy began teaching again at La Sierra, now the La Sierra campus of Loma Linda University and home to the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. He completed his dissertation in 1971.⁴² At La Sierra, he helped create the university’s Program in Interdisciplinary Studies, an undergraduate general education curriculum in which he also taught and of which he served as coordinator.⁴³ He co-sponsored a peace demonstration in connection with the national Vietnam Moratorium Day⁴⁴ and crafted a public prayer calling for peace.⁴⁵ With his history colleague Gary Ross, he organized and coordinated a network of campus Sabbath Schools intended to enrich students’ Sabbath options and help them meet Sabbath School attendance requirements. Guy and Ross led their own Sabbath School class. In addition, they conducted multiple early-morning worship programs at southern California Adventist academies.⁴⁶

Concerned with the development of Adventist thinking and the establishment of supportive ties among Adventist graduate students and professionals, Guy was involved in the Association of Adventist Forums from its very early days. When the first issue of its journal, Spectrum, appeared in 1969, the journal’s masthead identified him as a member of its editorial team.⁴⁷ That masthead continued to feature his name until his death in 2023.

By 1972, Guy had been named College of Arts and Sciences associate dean for curriculum;⁴⁸ he became dean in 1974. Before the creation of additional schools at La Sierra, he thus served as chief academic officer of the campus as a whole. He was part of an informal group of administrators that effectively oversaw the operations of a campus some twenty miles from the university’s administration center in Loma Linda. While serving as dean, he chose to teach a class per quarter; he also completed an introductory chemistry course in order to gain insight into the experiences of current students.⁴⁹

To Berrien Springs—and Back Again

Guy welcomed the chance to focus on teaching and scholarship and to participate in the teaching of post-baccalaureate pastors and advanced graduate students provided by an invitation to join the faculty of the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He was appointed Professor of Theology there in 1977.⁵⁰

At Andrews, Guy taught theology and philosophy, helping to train Adventist theologians, including Fernando Canale, Roy Adams, and John Webster.⁵¹ He served as secretary of the university committee that drafted a new Statement of Fundamental Beliefs for the Adventist Church, which was subsequently adopted, with revisions, at the church’s 1980 General Conference session in Dallas, Texas.⁵² And he remained involved in administration, soon becoming associate dean of the Seminary.

During his time at Andrews, Guy joined colleagues Lawrence T. Geraty and James J. C. Cox as invited church representatives at the first SDA Kinship Kampmeeting. After the Adventist religion academics formed the Andrews Society of Religious Studies as a formal affiliate of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, his colleagues elected him its second president in 1980.

Edward Heppenstall regarded Guy and Australian biblical scholar Desmond Ford as his two best students.⁵³ When Ford gave an October 1979 St. Helena Adventist Forum presentation about the future of Adventist sanctuary theology, it prompted discussion throughout the Adventist community. A committee was assigned to engage with Ford regarding the manuscript he had been asked to prepare during a leave following the presentation. Guy was a member of the committee.⁵⁴ Guy also joined colleagues at the August 1980 meeting of the Sanctuary Review Committee at Glacier View Ranch in Colorado to discuss the issues raised by the manuscript (see Glacier View Sanctuary Review Conference). During the conference, Guy presented a careful analysis of the contemporary theological significance of language about Jesus’s sanctuary ministry.⁵⁵ He also worked with William G. Johnsson on the “Consensus Statement” meant to serve as a basis for unity and further discussion.⁵⁶ Like other attendees, he was disappointed by the cancellation of Ford’s Adventist ministerial credentials that followed the meeting and the conflict that ensued within the church; he considered returning his own credentials in light of how he judged Ford to have been treated.

Conflict brewed at Andrews University in the mid-1980s.⁵⁷ In the wake of the controversy surrounding the 1980 Sanctuary Review Committee, the university administration faced increasing pressure to ensure consistency with established denominational views. A number of the Seminary faculty’s members left in response to this growing pressure. Changes in administrative style and an apparent intent to minimize diversity led Guy to answer a call in 1984 from the Loma Linda University Church, initiated by his La Sierra contemporary and nearly lifelong friend Louis Venden, the church’s senior pastor. He joined the LLUC team as pastor for university faculty and staff relations, effectively serving as the church’s theologian-in-residence. While on the LLUC pastoral staff, he led the Sabbath School class previously taught by Jack Provonsha.

Convinced that it was crucial for Adventists to respond in a manner expressive of God’s love to the exploding HIV/AIDS epidemic,⁵⁸ Guy began to work as a volunteer for the Inland AIDS Project, delivering food and providing moral support to people dealing with the consequences of HIV infections, subsequently serving on its board.⁵⁹ He continued to write, publishing articles about topics including the sanctuary, creation, eschatology, salvation, Sabbath, and the future of Adventist theology. With Humberto Rasi, he also co-edited the book Meeting the Secular Mind.⁶⁰

Returning to Administration

What had been Loma Linda University’s La Sierra campus became independent for the first time in twenty-three years in 1990. A search committee had already picked Guy as its “overwhelming favorite” from a group of five finalists for the position of La Sierra CEO.⁶¹ He was initially tapped to serve as chancellor of an autonomous Riverside campus. However, in June, after a brief interim period during which he carried the title “vice chancellor for administration,” he became president of what it had been decided would be a new institution. For the moment, it bore the name “Loma Linda University Riverside.”

The uncertainty created by the La Sierra-Loma Linda split led to an enrollment level that was troublingly low for a tuition-dependent institution. La Sierra’s identity was ill-defined. A campus culture needed to be developed, morale revived, and operational structures and procedures put in place.

Guy sought to formulate and defend a distinctive Adventist vision for La Sierra. “Adventist higher education needs to be in touch with the world but no less authentically Adventist,” he affirmed. “We need to enable students to live in the modern world and make a positive Adventist difference.”⁶² And he emphasized the centrality of the university faculty. “You (the faculty) are the university. You do what the university is here to do—teaching, research, service. Everything else—business office, records, maintenance, administration—is here for the purpose of nurturing, facilitating your work.”⁶³

He sought at first to conserve resources not only by serving as president but also by performing the duties of a vice president for academic affairs, rather than appointing someone else to this role. (Garland Dulan was named provost during the latter part of Guy’s second year in office.) And he devoted himself to helping La Sierra thrive.

This meant finding a name—“La Sierra University” was selected with the recognition that La Sierra intended not only to call itself a university but also to be an authentic university. Guy led out in the adoption of a simple, clear mission statement: “to enlarge human understanding in a contemporary Seventh-day Adventist context.” (This became “Seventh-day Adventist Christian context” at the suggestion of trustee Jerry Wiley during an early La Sierra Board of Trustees meeting.) And he supported the affirmation of scholarship as an integral part of the university’s mission.

Guy helped to bring multiple trustees to the new board, including several who would go on to play important roles in the university’s life.⁶⁴ He also selected new College of Arts and Sciences dean Adeny Schmidt, the first woman to serve as a school dean at La Sierra and a long-term contributor to the university’s development.

Guy sparked some controversy on and off campus by stating that the new La Sierra University was not for everyone.⁶⁵ He supported the consolidation of a robust system of faculty governance on campus as well as efforts to convert the University Policy Handbook La Sierra University had inherited from Loma Linda University into a true faculty handbook, shaped by the university’s faculty and approved not only by its Board of Trustees but also by its active Faculty Senate.⁶⁶ He also oversaw the university’s response to its probationary status, imposed by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) on the two-campus university before the split and applicable afterward to each of its single-campus successors. While WASC would delay reaffirmation of the university’s accreditation until a 1995 site visit, La Sierra’s probation ended in 1992.⁶⁷

Guy initially planned to teach during his time as president, as he had done while dean of Arts and Sciences. One experience with a summer course in 1991, however, led him to conclude that teaching while serving as president was not a realistic option. He did, however, engage with students in other ways, showing up regularly at student events and inviting students to share concerns with him via comments written on the backs of chapel attendance cards.⁶⁸

His formal inauguration as president took place at the beginning of his second full year in office, on November 8, 1991.⁶⁹ “There’s definitely been more fun than frustration,” he said in 1992 about being president. “It’s an even harder job than I imagined it would be. But because I’m working on a campus I care about, with people I care about, for a cause I care about, I’m having a great time.”⁷⁰ However, strains related to administrative style and substance led to his departure from the presidency at the end of the 1992-93 academic year.⁷¹ Among the perceived reasons for Board concern were what was seen as Guy’s over-concern with operational details, a dispute related to his dismissal of a vice president, continuing university financial challenges, and his lack of fundraising success. At the same time, Jerry Wiley, an influential trustee who was involved in conveying the Board’s concerns to Guy described him as “a very bright and able man, who is much respected for his academic contributions to the university.”⁷²

While his administrative term was relatively brief, it set the stage for the subsequent presidency of Larry Geraty, a transition that stabilized the university's trajectory following the fractures of the early 1990s.

Return to the Faculty

In an unusual move in relation to a senior administrator with an academic track record who had already held tenure at La Sierra,⁷³ Guy was recommended for a tenure-track appointment in what was then La Sierra’s School of Religion during his service as President.⁷⁴ But his academic status was evidently uncertain when he left the presidency. When his term ended, an arrangement brokered by Faculty Senate chair Vernon Howe led to his receiving a tenured faculty appointment as University Professor of Theology and Philosophy.⁷⁵ He remains the only La Sierra faculty member to have been designated “University Professor.”

Not long after rejoining the faculty, Guy took responsibility for continuing an effort he had initiated as president⁷⁶—to develop an interdisciplinary general education program designed to place a distinctive stamp on La Sierra graduates.⁷⁷ In subsequent years, he also accepted the role of coordinator of the Program in Philosophical Studies. He chaired the Faculty Senate’s Faculty Affairs Committee. He helped to orient new faculty members with presentations focused on the institution’s heritage and identity. And he provided political and philosophical insights requested by successors in the president’s office.

He continued to focus his energies especially on teaching—for the Honors Program (for which he taught a seminar about time), for the university’s regular general education program, for the Program in Philosophical Studies, and for what is now the H. M. S. Richards Divinity School. “The part of my professional life I find the most satisfying,” he maintained in the 1992 interview, “is the success of my students.” In addition to those noted above, others who have studied with him include two editors of the Adventist Review, an editor of the Signs of the Times, an editor of Ministry magazine, a sometime president of Southern Adventist University, a La Sierra campus chaplain, and a senior editor of Christianity Today.

While he was proud of professionally accomplished students, he was clear that he was serious about touching the life of everyone he encountered in class. “I recall once,” he reflected, “when a man came up to me and said, ‘You probably don’t remember me, but I sat in the back of your Life and Teachings of Jesus class, and it changed my life.’ And I’m convinced that that is what really counts: if a teacher can make a difference in the educational experience of a student, no matter what the student goes on to do, that teacher’s time has been well-spent.”⁷⁸

Even as he engaged in teaching and service, Guy went to work rewriting and supplementing previously written work related to theological method and writing new material. The result was the book Thinking Theologically.⁷⁹ He produced articles, chapters, and pamphlets on a wide range of themes. And he co-edited (with Brian Bull and Ervin Taylor) Understanding Genesis: Contemporary Adventist Perspectives and (with David Ferguson and David Larson) Christianity and Homosexuality: Some Seventh-day Adventist Perspectives.⁸⁰ In the final years of his life, he focused particular attention on jointly authoring with physician and scientist Brian Bull, a longtime friend, a trilogy regarding the interpretation of Genesis: God, Sky and Land; God, Land, and the Great Flood; and God, Genesis, and Good News.⁸¹ The books were designed to help readers understand key narratives in Genesis from the perspective of those for whom they were originally written.

Recognition

In 1994, a series of lectures marking the 150th anniversary of the Great Disappointment took place on the La Sierra University and Loma Linda University campuses. Guy delivered the concluding lecture in the series, unaware that it had been designed to serve as the basis for a Festschrift for him. Publication of the planned volume was delayed. But versions of most of the principal lectures, along with one that had not been part of the original series, were ultimately published as the 2015 book The Future of Adventism,⁸² dedicated to Guy (as well as to the late La Sierra church historian Paul Landa, who had played a key role in managing the logistics of the series).

Guy was Andrews University’s honored alumnus in 1985 and the Loma Linda University College of Arts and Sciences alumnus of the year in 1988. La Sierra awarded him a Doctor of Divinity degree, honoris causa, in 2002 and named him alumnus of the year in 2012. In 2019, the university began a fundraising campaign intended to lead to the naming of the university’s library in his honor;⁸³ a fall 2023 vote by the Board of Trustees confirmed the library’s new name.

He sought to nurture the professional careers of women in ministry, whose work he supported through personal engagement, through his scholarship, and as a participant in the organization of the first service of ordination for women in the territory of the Southeastern California Conference, which took place at the La Sierra University Church in 1994. He went on to receive the Association of Adventist Women’s Champion of Justice award in 2016.

Personal Qualities

Though he was an introvert, Fritz Guy nourished many friendships across generations. He believed that the experience of an authentic good was richest when that good was shared. He cherished his friends and welcomed opportunities to involve them in his life.⁸⁴ He exhibited a droll sense of humor and a persistent curiosity. He used language carefully and precisely, declining to speak casually and sometimes correcting himself mid-course. He sought and exhibited self-knowledge; he was clear about who he was.⁸⁵

Guy loved ideas, exploring questions, and resolving puzzles; but his intellectual work was marked by a consistent pastoral motivation, as he attempted, directly and indirectly through what he wrote, to help people live richer, more consistent, and more confident Christian lives. In later decades, he offered provocative theological proposals regarding a variety of topics in Adventist thought designed to encourage the rethinking of some official positions. These topics included the relationship between science and religion, the interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis, gender equality in ordained ministry, the moral appropriateness of same-sex erotic relationships, and the possibility of universal salvation. But he did so in an irenic tone and never sought to foster turmoil. And he continued to publish work in official Adventist venues. He also persistently highlighted the value of Ellen White, the subject of his M.A. thesis,⁸⁶ to the church and to him personally; he was writing appreciatively about her work as recently as 2014.⁸⁷

While he confidently identified as a “progressive” Adventist, his progressivism was at the same time conservative, rooted as it was in his reading of Ellen White’s calls to openness to truth and growth in understanding and intended to be in the service of the church. He loved the Seventh-day Adventist church and remained in “good and regular standing,” actively engaged with his community of faith not only as an academic but also as a participant in congregational life. Thus, he helped to create a distinctive Adventist experiment in liturgical worship at the La Sierra University Church, regularly speaking and writing liturgies for the service over the first quarter-century of its existence. In addition, he played a crucial role in what is now the Fritz Guy and Friends Sabbath School Class.

In his post-presidential years, Guy’s public theological positions increasingly diverged from the consensus of the General Conference. He became a defining voice for the church's progressive wing, and a frequent target of traditionalist critique. He advocated the ordination of women, arguing that the restriction of ordination to men was theologically indefensible.⁸⁸ Similarly, his later writings on Christian sexual ethics challenged traditional Adventist formulations regarding homosexuality, emphasizing a relational ethic.⁸⁹ And he called for a theological understanding of Genesis intended to make room for belief in a lengthy time-scale for the existence of life on earth as well as in evolution.⁹⁰ These positions placed him in tension with conservative church leaders and theologians in the early twenty-first century.

In later years, he regularly repeated a set of affirmations that went something like this: “The best way of being human is being Christian. The best way of being Christian is being Seventh-day Adventist. The best way of being Adventist is being a progressive Adventist. And the best place to be a progressive Adventist is La Sierra University.” “I am a happy, La Sierra, progressive Adventist Protestant Christian,” he often said, before frequently adding “And I am totally comfortable with who I am.”⁹¹

After retiring in 2002, Guy returned to the classroom in the fall of that year as Research Professor of Philosophical Theology. Marcia died in 2006; he continued to live near the university campus in the house they had shared even after his teaching concluded in 2018. Viewing La Sierra as a beacon of hope in the Adventist world, he was delighted to see it reach its 100^th anniversary in 2022, also the year in which he was named Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology.⁹² He relocated soon after to Longview, Washington, where he died at the age of 93 on July 25, 2023.

Fritz Guy invested his life in service to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, particularly at La Sierra University. His scholarship, teaching, pastoral ministry, and leadership flowed from what he said in 2018 was the most important thing for anyone to remember: “You are profoundly loved by God, and nothing you do will change that.”⁹³

Sources

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Bull, Brian, and Fritz Guy. God, Sky and Land: Genesis 1 as the Ancient Hebrews Heard It. Roseville, CA: Adventist Forum, 2011.

Bull, Brian, and Fritz Guy. God, Land, and the Great Flood: Hearing the Story with Twenty-First Century Christian Ears. Roseville, CA: Adventist Forum, 2017.

Bull, Brian, and Fritz Guy. God, Genesis, and Good News: God, the Misreading of Genesis, and the Surprising Good News. Roseville, CA: Adventist Forum, 2019.

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Trenchard, Warren C. “Becoming La Sierra University (1990–2022).” In Higher Ground: A Centennial History of La Sierra University 1922–2022, edited by Andrew Howe, 123–129. Riverside, CA: La Sierra University, 2022.

Zackrison, Jill. “Fritz Guy Speaks[]on LSU.” Criterion 63.2 (Oct. 3, 1991).

Zosel, Harold. St. Cloud. Postcard History Series. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010.

Notes

1. I am pleased to thank D. Alexander Pendleton, David Gordon, David Larson, Donna Carlson, Edwin Karlow, Gary L. Bradley, Gary Ross, Gilbert Valentine, John Brunt, Jonathan Butler, Kathleen Dunn, Lawrence T. Geraty, Maury D. Jackson, Patricia M. Cabrera, Richard G. Guy II, Roderick T. Long, Vernon Howe, and Winona Howe for their willingness to offer comments and suggestions and in some cases for proposing language employed here at more than one point.↩

2. Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, “The Intellectual World of Adventist Theologians,” Spectrum 18.1 (Oct. 1987): 34. (Ranked ahead of Guy were Edward Heppenstall, Ellen G. White, and Earle Hilgert.)↩

3. There are references to the Guy family among Sabbath keeping watchmaking families in the famous watchmaking city of Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, in Jean Vuilleumier’s diary, June 21, 23 and 26, 1880, Archives Historiques de l’Adventisme Francophone, Campus Adventiste du Salève, Collonges sous Salève, France. Thanks to Gilbert Valentine for this useful background information and reference. According to family tree research by Richard G. Guy II, the family name seems to have been Gygi or Gigi in the fourteenth century, when the first records of it appear.↩

4. See, e.g., “Chicago,” Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review 24.14 (May 4, 1892): 28; Harold Zosel, St. Cloud, Postcard History Series (Charleston, SC: Arcadia 2010) 51; S. A. Ruskjer, obituary for Fritz Aurele Guy, Review and Herald, May 26, 1921: 22. Fritz Aurele Guy died at the Hinsdale Sanitarium on April 2, 1921. (Thanks to Gilbert Valentine for the obituary reference.)↩

5. Gary French, “Guy Acclimates Readily to Familiar Surroundings,” College Criterion 33.16 (March 28, 1962): 4.↩

6. Mary Donna Ball, “Local Lore,” College Criterion 20.11 (Dec. 8, 1948): 2.↩

7. “Eleven LSC Graduates Go to Andrews University,” College Criterion 32.8 (Dec. 15, 1960): 1.↩

8. “Sigma Phi Kappa Gives Special MV Program,” College Criterion 20.16 (Feb. 16, 1949): 2.↩

9. “Band, Orchestra to Play in HMA Next Wednesday,” College Criterion 20.12 (Dec. 15, 1948): 4.↩

10. “New Musical Ensemble Makes Debut on Campus,” College Criterion 22.1 (June 19, 1950): 1.↩

11. See, e.g., “‘Meteor’ Benefit Features Student Talent; Record Crowd Expected to Jam HMA,” College Criterion 20.16 (Feb. 16, 1949): 1;↩

12. “Campus Poets Publish Anthology,” College Criterion 21.23 (May 3, 1950): 4.↩

13. “Poetry Workshop Plans 1951 Poetry Anthology,” College Criterion 22.10 (Dec. 13, 1950): 1.↩

14. Qtd. Jim Halley, “Halley’s Comment—On Flowers,” College Criterion 20.20 (March 16, 1949): 2.↩

15. Untitled and unnumbered insert attached to College Criterion 21.2 (July 20, 1949) (the newspaper’s “Second Summer Edition”).↩

16. Patricia M. Cabrera, personal communication, Aug. 15, 2023.↩

17. “Joe Verska Presides over ASB Election,” College Criterion 21.4 (Sep. 28, 1949): 1.↩

18. See, e.g., “Mountain Meditations Feature Elicks: Elicks Sailing for Peru Tomorrow,” College Criterion 22.15 (Feb. 28, 1951): 2; “Meditations Staff Goes to San Diego,” College Criterion 22.17 (March 14, 1951): 5.↩

19. “Halstead Speaks at Banquet; Program Has Christmas Theme,” College Criterion 23.13 (Dec. 19, 1951): 1; “Visiting Students Viewing Life Here,” College Criterion 23.16 (March 5, 1952): 1.↩

20. “Paris Delegates to Report Oct. 6,” College Criterion 23.3 (Sep. 26, 1951): 1.↩

21. See “Fritz Guy Chosen as Paris Delegate,” College Criterion 22.14 (Feb. 14, 1951): 1; Fritz Guy, “La Sierra Delegate Reports Paris Youth Congress,” College Criterion 23.2 (Aug. 15, 1951): 1.↩

22. “Fritz Guy to Appear on TV Sunday July 1,” College Criterion 23.1 (June 27, 1951): 1, 3.↩

23. “Global LSC,” College Criterion 25.1 (July 15, 1953): 4.↩

24. French 4.↩

25. Fritz Guy, “Alumni News—Fritz Guy Reporting,” College Criterion 24.13 (Jan. 13, 1953): 4; Fritz Guy, “Seven thirty two / or / to enunciation,” College Criterion 24.22 (May 1, 1953): 4.↩

26. French 4.↩

27. Walter Specht notes a visit with Fritz and Marcia in “Specht Recounts Whirl on Extensive Summer Jaunt,” College Criterion 29.1 (Sep. 20, 1957): 3.↩

28. “Faculty Adds Qualified Members,” College Criterion 33.1 (July 12, 1961): 1.↩

29. See “Elder Guy to Rejoin LSC Faculty,” College Criterion 32.10 (Jan. 20, 1961): 1.↩

30. Elizabeth Nilsen, “Operation Brain Cell: Bible Prof Reaps Reward,” College Criterion 35.10 (1964): 2.↩

31. Ralph Lazzaro, letter to La Sierra College presidential secretary Gwen Case, Jan. 23, 1962.↩

32. “Alumni News,” College Criterion 34.14 (March 7, 1962): 3.↩

33. “Guy to Present Week of Prayer at Newbury,” College Criterion 35.4 (Oct. 25, 1963): 4.↩

34. “‘The Lord’s Day’ in the Letter of Ignatius to the Magnesians,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 2 (1964): 1-17.↩

35. “LSC Prof Awarded $4800 Danforth Grant,” College Criterion 35.10 (Feb. 14, 1964): 1; “Fritz Guy Awarded Extension of Danforth Teacher Grant,” College Criterion 36.19 (April 23, 1965): 1.↩

36. “$3000 Scholarship Awarded to Fritz Guy,” College Criterion 35.14 (March 20, 1964): 4.↩

37. Thanks to Maury Jackson for providing the name of the congregation and identifying its pastor.↩

38. Fritz Guy, “Comments on a Recent Whiteheadian Doctrine of God,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 4 (1966): 107-34; Fritz Guy, “Divine Forgiveness as Experienced Event,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 5 (1967): 87-100.↩

39. Jonathan M. Butler, personal communication, Aug. 8, 2023.↩

40. Jonathan M. Butler, personal communication, July 25, 2023.↩

41. Martin E. Marty, letter to Fritz Guy, included in a collection of tributes presented at a celebration of Guy’s sixty-fifth birthday in April 1995.↩

42. Fritz Guy, “Man and His Time: Three Contemporary Theological Interpretations” (PhD diss., U of Chicago 1971).↩

43. See, e.g., Sandra Arct, “Interdip Gives Option,” Criterion 45.20 (May 17, 1974): [3].↩

44. Juli Ling, “Peace Demonstration to Be Staged Oct. 15,” Criterion 41.3 (Oct. 10, 1969): 1.↩

45. Fritz Guy, “A Prayer for Peace,” Criterion 41.4 (Oct. 24, 1969): 3.↩

46. Gary M. Ross, personal communication, Aug. 10, 2023.↩

47. See David Neff, “Strengths Overshadow Weaknesses: ‘Spectrum’ Splashes onto the Journalistic Scene,” Criterion 40.15 (March 14, 1969): 4. Future Christianity Today editor Neff describes Guy as “campus philosopher and local Barth-buff.”↩

48. Don Ashley, “Associate Deans Recently Appointed By Dr. Olsen,” Criterion 43.14 (May 23, 1972): 1.↩

49. Gary M. Ross, personal communication, Aug. 8, 2023.↩

50. [Michael D. Ooley,] “Fritz Quits,” Criterion 48.17 (May 13, 1977): 2; “Officially . . . : Guy Plans Move to Andrews,” Criterion 48.18 (May 20, 1977): 1.↩

51. John W. Webster, personal communication, Aug. 14, 2023. Webster did not complete the doctoral program he had begun at Andrews but instead chose to study at Princeton Theological Seminary.↩

52. For background, see Fritz Guy, “Uncovering the Origins of the Statement of Twenty-Seven Fundamental Beliefs,” Spectrum 32.3 (Sum. 2004): 19-29.↩

53. Jonathan Butler, personal communication, Aug. 8, 2023.↩

54. Milton R. Hook, Desmond Ford: Reformist Theologian, Gospel Revivalist, 2d ed. (Caloundra, Queensland: Ford 2022) 264.↩

55. See “Confidence in Salvation: The Meaning of the Sanctuary,” Spectrum 11.2 (Nov. 1980): 44-52.↩

56. See Raymond F. Cottrell, “The Sanctuary Review Committee and Its New Consensus,” Spectrum 11.2 (Nov. 1980): 2-25.↩

57. See Gilbert M. Valentine, Ostriches and Canaries: Coping with Change in Adventism, 1966-1979 (Westlake Village, CA: Oak 2022).↩

58. Fritz Guy, “Theological Reflections Regarding AIDS,” Update [Loma Linda University Center for Christian Bioethics] 3.2 (May 1987): 2, 8; Fritz Guy, “For Adventists: An Imperative to Do Something,” Spectrum 18.1 (Oct. 1987): 20-25.↩

59. Karen Capobres, “AIDSWALK 1994,” Criterion 66.3 (Oct. 25, 1994): 8.↩

60. Humberto M. Rasi and Fritz Guy, eds., Meeting the Secular Mind: Some Adventist Perspectives (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews UP 1987).↩

61. See Jack Robinson, “LLU Panel Reveals Choice for Chancellor,” Riverside Press-Enterprise, Feb. 1, 1990: B1. Cp. Norman J. Woods, letter to members of the Riverside campus faculty and staff, Loma Linda University, Dec. 7, 1989, identifying the (effective) finalists as Niels-Erik Andreasen, Roy Benton, Richard Emmerson, Fritz Guy, and Elissa Kido.↩

62. Qtd. Gary Chartier, “Fritz Guy: A Dedicated Teacher Comes Home to Lead LSU,” Criterion 63.20 (July 5, 1992): 5.↩

63. Fritz Guy, “A Personal Statement: Four Convictions,” Advance Notice, March 13, 1990[: 1].↩

64. See Heather Miller, “New By-Laws and Board for LLUR,” Criterion 62.4 (Nov. 29, 1990): 9.↩

65. See, e.g., Fritz Guy, “New Name, New Reality,” Criterion 62.9 (April 22, 1991): 1-2 (esp. 2).↩

66. Warren C. Trenchard, “Becoming La Sierra University (1990-2022),” Higher Ground: A Centennial History of La Sierra University 1922-2022, ed. Andrew Howe ([Riverside, CA:] La Sierra U 2022) 123.↩

67. Trenchard 128-9.↩

68. Jill Zackrison, “Fritz Guy Speaks[]on LSU,” Criterion 63.2 (Oct. 3, 1991): 4.↩

69. See Greg Cushman, “First LSU President Inaugurated,” Criterion 63.8 (Nov. 14, 1991): 3.↩

70. Qtd. Chartier, “Guy” 5.↩

71. See Carlyle Renaud, “Criterion Exclusive: Interview with Fritz Guy,” Criterion 64.1 (Sep. 30, 1992): 2.↩

72. See Jack Robinson, “Criticized President of La Sierra University to Resign,” Riverside Press-Enterprise, Sep. 15, 1992: B-2a↩

73. The tenured nature of Guy’s previous status at La Sierra is confirmed in an April 20, 1970, letter from Loma Linda University President David Bieber to Guy regarding his promotion to the rank of associate professor.↩

74. Letter from School of Religion Dean John R. Jones to Guy, March 28, 1991.↩

75. Cp. memo from Vernon Howe to Garland Dulan, with subject “University Professorship,” Jan. 14, 1993. See letter to provost Garland Dulan from College of Arts and Sciences dean Adeny Schmidt and School of Religion dean John Jones, Jan. 13, 1993 (proposing appointment as University Professor with tenure).↩

76. W. Kent Rogers, “General Education Receives an Overhaul,” Criterion 66.2 (Oct. 11, 1994): 3.↩

77. See Fritz Guy and Rennie Schoepflin, “Revisioning General Education: The La Sierra Experience,” Journal of Adventist Education, April-May 1996: 4-7.↩

78. Qtd. Chartier, “Guy” 5.↩

79. Thinking Theologically: Adventist Christianity and the Interpretation of Faith (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews UP 1998).↩

80. Brian Bull, Fritz Guy, and Ervin Taylor, eds., Understanding Genesis: Contemporary Adventist Perspectives (Riverside, CA: Adventist Today 2006); David Ferguson, Fritz Guy, and David Larson, eds., Christianity and Homosexuality: Seventh-day Adventist Perspectives (Roseville, CA: Adventist Forum 2008).↩

81. Brian Bull and Fritz Guy, God, Sky and Land: Genesis 1 as the Ancient Hebrews Heard It (Roseville, CA: Adventist Forum 2011); God, Land, and the Great Flood: Hearing the Story with Twenty-First Century Christian Ears (Roseville, CA: Adventist Forum 2017); God, Genesis, and Good News: God, the Misreading of Genesis, and the Surprising Good News (Roseville, CA: Adventist Forum 2019).↩

82. “Acknowledgments,” The Future of Adventism: Theology, Society, Experience, ed. Gary Chartier (Ann Arbor, MI: Griffin 2015), x.↩

83. “Naming the Heart of the University,” La Sierra University Magazine, Sum. 2019, https://magazine.lasierra.edu/summer-2019/naming-the-heart-of-the-university/.↩

84. Thanks to Gary M. Ross for discussion related to this topic.↩

85. Gary M. Ross, personal communication, Aug. 9, 2023.↩

86. See Fritz Guy, “An Interpretation of the Concept of Conversion in the Published Writings of Ellen G. White” (M.A. thesis, Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary 1955).↩

87. Fritz Guy, “Theology,” Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, ed. Terrie Dopp Aamodt, Gary Land, and Ronald L. Numbers (New York: OUP 2014) 144-59.↩

88. See, e.g., “Why Should the La Sierra University Church Ordain Women?,” pamphlet (Riverside, CA: La Sierra University Church 1995).↩

89. See, e.g., Fritz Guy, “Same-Sex Love,” Ferguson, Guy, and Larson 43-62.↩

90. See, e.g., Fritz Guy, “The Purpose and Function of Scripture: Preface to a Theology of Creation,” Bull, Guy, and Taylor 86-101.↩

91. Gary M. Ross, personal communication, July 26, 2023.↩

92. See La Sierra University 2022-23 Graduate Bulletin ([Riverside, CA: La Sierra U 2022]) 190.↩

93. Qtd. Nerida Taylor Bates, “Sitting Across the Table from Fritz Guy,” post, Association of Adventist Women page, Facebook, July 26, 2023.↩