“Georgian Theologians Abroad” congratulates Nino Aptsiauri on obtaining her PhD in Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Theology of Heidelberg University (Ruprecht Karls University). In July 2026, she successfully defended her doctoral dissertation and was awarded the distinction Magna cum laude.
Her doctoral dissertation, entitled On the Way to God: The Journey of the Human Person from the Holy Mystery of the Incarnation to Becoming a Child of God / The Structure of Orthodox Theological Thought within the Orthodox Tradition in Light of Gregory Palamas’ Theology of Theosis (Unterwegs zu Gott: Der Weg des Menschen als Person vom Heiligen Mysterium der Inkarnation zur Kindschaft Gottes / Die Denkstruktur der Orthodoxen Tradition anhand der Θέωσις-Lehre bei Gregorios Palamas), was supported by a doctoral scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
Theosis, understood both as a state and as a dynamic process through which the human person advances on the path of salvation, brings about a profound transformation of human existence. The person undergoes transfiguration on three interrelated levels: the level of essence (ousia), hypostasis, and energy (energeia). Together, these dimensions constitute the human person as an integral existential reality and give rise to a renewed mode of being. Accordingly, the dissertation examines the semantic fields of the concepts of essence, energy, and hypostasis within their ontological, anthropological, and Christological dimensions through the theological thought of Gregory Palamas.
The concept of essence, for example, denotes the deepest ontological reality of a being. Within Orthodox theological anthropology, however, it is understood as the unity of soul and body. In Gregory Palamas’ theology, the human essence consists precisely in this inseparable unity. In this respect, Palamas follows the teaching of Maximus the Confessor while at the same time developing it further by arguing that the distinctive characteristic of human essence lies in its unique relation to life itself. At the level of theology proper, Orthodox doctrine consistently maintains that the divine essence is unknowable and transcendent. Nevertheless, God makes Himself known according to the spiritual receptivity of each human person. Thus, the unoriginate divine essence possesses its own unoriginate mode of manifestation—described by Maximus the Confessor as its mode (tropos) and by Gregory Palamas as its uncreated energy—through which God freely reveals Himself to creation and enables human beings to participate in the knowledge of God.
Following the same methodological pattern, the dissertation proceeds to examine the concepts of energy and hypostasis, beginning with their ontological foundations, which are grounded primarily in philosophical discourse. Gregory Palamas himself draws extensively upon this philosophical tradition, appropriating and citing it as he translates theological content into the conceptual language of Aristotelian categories.
The third and concluding part of the dissertation offers a synthesis of the study’s methodological approach, namely the reconstructive analysis of theological argumentation. Its opening chapter presents a comparative reconstruction of the theological reasoning of Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas. Rather than merely comparing their respective doctrines, this reconstruction seeks to recover theological insights that remained only partially developed within the patristic tradition because they did not constitute primary concerns within the historical contexts in which the Fathers wrote. A prominent example is the theological understanding of the human hypostasis.
The reconstructed concept of human hypostasis is subsequently brought into dialogue with the contemporary Orthodox anthropology of Christos Yannaras and John Zizioulas. The dissertation argues that the patristic concept of anthropological hypostasis should be recovered and developed on a more comprehensive theological foundation in order to complement and balance the influential concept of human ecstasy proposed by Yannaras and Zizioulas. While their theology of ecstasy possesses considerable theological as well as social significance, the dissertation maintains that a theology of ecstasy—understood as the person’s movement outside oneself—must remain intrinsically grounded in a theology of hypostasis.
Particular attention is given to the etymological relationship between the Greek terms ὑπόστασις (hypostasis) and ἔκστασις (ecstasy). The dissertation proposes that, whereas ekstasis denotes a movement “outside oneself,” hypostasis may be interpreted descriptively as a movement “into oneself.” On this basis, it introduces “self-deepening” as a hermeneutical rendering of hypostasis. One of the dissertation’s principal conclusions follows from this proposal: ecstasy, when detached from hypostasis, risks becoming a form of self-loss rather than authentic personal fulfilment.
The need for a more extensive exploration of the theology of hypostasis, together with its theological potential, represents one particular example of how the insights gained through the reconstructive analysis of theological argumentation can contribute to contemporary theology. Such reconstruction makes it possible to articulate, in contemporary language, theological responses to present-day challenges while remaining rooted in the conceptual structure of the Orthodox tradition. In this way, contemporary theology can preserve its engagement with current questions and continue to serve as a meaningful response to the concerns of the believing community.
The concluding chapter therefore seeks to demonstrate one possible way in which a theology addressing contemporary issues may remain grounded in the theological framework of the Orthodox thought. The model proposed in the dissertation is based on the reconstructed theological argumentation of Gregory Palamas and on the underlying structure of his theological reasoning, presented through an analysis of its continuity both with earlier patristic theology—particularly the thought of Maximus the Confessor—and with its continuing liturgical and spiritual relevance in contemporary Orthodox life.
The dissertation employs a hermeneutical framework in order to make the content of traditional Orthodox dogmatics—particularly its teaching concerning participation in divine knowledge and the vision of God—more accessible to the broader philosophical and theological community. The introduction and conclusion include excerpts from interviews that illuminate individual believers’ perspectives on the vision of God and the spiritual life. These interviews were conducted in 2022 as part of a research project funded by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation within the parish community of the Church of the Elevation of the Holy Cross in Tbilisi.
The dissertation is scheduled for publication in German in the coming months.