Is Palamism a Form of Classical Theism, Theistic Personalism, Panentheism, or What? Some Conceptual Clarification for Analytic Philosophers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The precise understanding of “classical theism” varies somewhat within analytic philosophy of religion. Sometimes it is understood as something like a synonym for generic Christian theism (in contrast to deism or pantheism or the theisms of other world religions). Alternatively, the label is often understood by reference to a specific understanding of the doctrine of divine simplicity (namely that promulgated by such figures as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas) and the larger conception of God which flows from it. The latter usage of the label is quite common within the recent literature, such that classical theism in this sense is viewed as competing with other prominent ways of conceptualizing Christian theism, notably panentheism, theistic personalism, and open theism. Where does the Palamite understanding of God (normative within Eastern Orthodox theology) fall within a contemporary taxonomy of Christian theisms? I seek to answer this question. By way of a literature review consulting representative contemporary sources on the various alternative theisms plus Palamism, I clarify the distinctive commitments of each position and draw out their assorted conceptual relationships and interconnections. I then go on to suggest that Palamism is uniquely well-situated to function as a bridge-builder and corrective force within the current literature, capable of dialoguing productively with the aforementioned range of Christian theisms.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.031 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
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".