The Doctrine of Theosis and the Reality of Purpose: Exploring the Convergence between Deification and Organismic Teleology
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Theosis is gaining significant attention in theological research. This article argues that the doctrine of theosis, as it is portrayed in Eastern Orthodox theology, mediates a profoundly teleological vision of both humanity and creation. The telos of human nature and the wider world only makes sense in the light of God’s sovereign plan. Yet, modern science is on the whole reluctant to entertain any broader teleology within or for nature. This situation seems to produce a tension between a central component of Orthodox theology and contemporary science, evolutionary biology in particular. This article seeks to resolve this tension by exploring non-reductionist accounts of evolution, as well as the possibility of grounding teleology in the nature and functions of biological organisms. Thus, it also explores the conceptual shift from “mechanism” to “organism” in biological research. Moreover, as theosis locates the nature of humanity in the light of God’s broader purpose for the world, I make the concluding argument that Eastern Orthodoxy brings with it a well-needed realism regarding the epistemic limitations of the natural sciences.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.082 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.012 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".