The Bible? Who needs a stinkin' Bible?

Perry Robinson, convert to the One True Church (not to be confused with the other One True Church), has a wish list:

Michael Dauphinaius, Aquinas the Augustinian, ISBN 978-0813214924

Leo J. Elders, The Metaphysics of Being of St. Thomas Aquinas, ISBN 978-9004096455

Carol Muessing, Envisaging Heaven In The Middle Ages, ISBN 978-0415383837

Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, ISBN 978-0198270324

Daniel Deme, The Christology of Anselm of Canterbury, ISBN 978-0754637790

Thomas P. Scheck, Origen and the History of Justification: The Legacy of Origen’s Commentary on Romans, ISBN 978-0268041281

Tom Greggs, Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation: Restoring Particularity, ISBN 978-0199560486

Philip Dixon, Nice Hot Disputes: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century, ISBN 9780567042217

Thomas G. Weinandy, In the Likeness of the Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ, ISBN 978-0567042132

Dag Oistein Endsj, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity, ISBN 978-0230617292

Bissera V. Pentcheva,Icons And Power: The Mother of God in Byzantium, ISBN 978-0271025513

Christopher Livanos, Greek Tradition and Latin Influence in the Work of George Scholarios, ISBN 978-1593333447

Katherine Rogers, Anselm on Freedom ISBN 978-0199231676

Marc Cortez, Embodied Souls, Ensouled Bodies: An Exercise in Christological Anthropology and Its Significance for the Mind/Body Debate, ISBN 978-0567033680

Sarah Klitenic Wear, John Dillon, Dionysius the Areopagite and the Neoplatonist Tradition, ISBN 978-0754603856

Andrew Louth, Patrology, ISBN 978-0227172643

Ludmilla Charipova, Latin Books and the Eastern Orthodox Clerical Elite in Kiev, 1632-1780, ISBN 978-0719072963

Pauline Allen, Sophronius of Jerusalem and Seventh-Century Heresy: The Synodical Letter and Other Documents, ISBN 978-0199546930

Richard Sorabji, Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Influence, ISBN 978-0801424328

Hester Goodenough Gelber, It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300-1350, ISBN 978-9004139077

Richard Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution, ISBN 978-0198146780

Thomas C. Ferguson, The Past is Prologue: The Revolution of Nicene Historiography ISBN 978-9004144576

Carl Beckwith, Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity: From De Fide to De Trinitate, ISBN 978-0199551644

Bernard Green, The Soteriology of Leo the Great, ISBN 978-0199534951

P. T. Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451-553), ISBN 978-9004059283

Michael Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering ISBN 978-0199237272

Walter H Principe, The theology of the hypostatic union in the early thirteenth century

Ewert H. Cousins, Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites: The Theology of Bonaventure, ISBN 978-0819905802

Juan Carlos Flores, Henry of Ghent: Metaphysics and the Trinity. With a critical edition of question six of article fifty-five of the Summa Quaestionum Ordinariarum, ISBN 978-9058675378

Lindsey Hall, Swinburne’s Hell and Hick’s Universalism: Are We Free to Reject God?, ISBN 978-0754634003

Nancy J. Hudson, Becoming God: The Doctrine of Theosis in Nicholas of Cusa, ISBN 978-0813214726

http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/support-your-local-sherriff/

Anything wrong with this picture? Anything amiss?

Not a single work in the field of exegetical theology. Not one. It’s all about historical theology and philosophical theology.

This corroborates my oft-stated observation that Orthodox theology and revealed theology occupy separate, airtight compartments.

For Perry, the Christian faith is about the history of ideas, not the history of events. A genealogy of pure ideas.

Smooth, shiny ideas bouncing off each other, like billiard balls. What one thinker thought in relation to what another thinker thought. Who thought what, when, and where.

In that respect it’s like Buddhism. In Buddhism, it doesn’t really matter if Buddha ever existed or taught the Four Noble Truths or the Noble Eightfold Path.

For these take on a life of their own. They are separable from the founder–if there was one.

For Perry, the Bible is like a ladder which his adoptive forebears used once upon a time to climb from one place to another. Once you’ve used the ladder to get to the next stage in your journey, you can kick it aside and continue your journey without it.

Even if there was a time, long ago, when his adoptive forebears needed a ladder, Perry comes on the scene long after they made that transition.

That’s Orthodoxy for you.