Dear students,

I welcome you to our School of Theology and congratulate you from the bottom of my heart on your admission to higher education. The struggle you have made, during the course of your secondary education, has been justified by the success of the goal you set, as you have utilized the dynamics that distinguish you and feed your youthful heart.

We welcome you to the School of Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with joy and hope, to share the new goal setting of your academic search and course, offering with science and above all with love, the experience of scientific research and the experiential content of the sacred science of Theology that we serve with zeal and dedication. We transmit Theology to our students with principles and methods that correspond to and are mutually inclusive of the content of the Patristic Tradition and the modern terminology/concept that can be understood and perceived by the man of our time.

Our times are “unprecedented” and require all of us to develop Theology “in word and deed” before God and our fellow men, following the model that He Himself offered for the salvation of the world. Above all, to offer inspiration, healing and hope to the trapped and constrained man of today who is seeking a way out of the impasses that secularization has created for him, as a result of modernity, and has decisively affected the balance of his social life.

The ontology of the – without closed doors – Church of the Risen Christ calls us to apostolic alliance so that the world can continue to live. Our extroversion, fueled and guided by the “emptiness of the Cross”, needs to become an act of daily example to every person in the individualization of their needs. Democracy, freedom, human rights, social institutions, respect for the culture of each people with its principles and values, the humanitarian acceptance and smooth integration of diversity in all its modern forms in the coexistence of peoples, are the stakes of contemporary theological discourse in the re-evangelization of people and the secularization of God, as a response to our secularized everyday life.

Our School, with its Undergraduate Studies Programs and the directions they include, as well as its Postgraduate Studies Programs and the specializations they provide, fully respond to the current needs of education and society and therefore promise a completeness of theological training and knowledge in order to ensure you a dignified future as tomorrow’s citizens.

The certified high level of studies of our Theological School, based on the latest evaluation, reflects the quality of the academic services offered by the teachers and those who serve the adequacy of its operation.

With these thoughts and with sincere feelings of academic responsibility, I wish you good studies within the framework of your vision and good progress towards the success of your noble goals.

The Dean

of the School of Theology

Protopresbyter Athanasios Ghikas, Professor

of the Department of Social Theology and Christian Culture