Fr. Matthew Penney, Ph.D.
SAINT KOSMAS CONFERENCE
CALIFORNIA
NOVEMBER 2018
Thank you, everyone. I’m glad to be here with you. I’m Fr. Matthew Penney, and I have had the great blessing over the last few years to do my doctoral research on one of the greatest saints of our Church, a great saint and theologian, Saint Gregory Palamas.
What I want to do today is to try to take this great learning and the great life of Saint Gregory and try to pull out some principles for you, some guidelines, in order to think about our topic today. I am a very strong believer, strong advocate, that the theology of our church, even in the most complicated ways, is actually really, really practical, if we can make those connections and if we can understand the repercussions of these theological principles, which is why they’re so important, which is why one Greek letter, an iota, can mean the difference between Christ being God and Christ being a creature.
So, hopefully, today, I’ll be able to give you some principles from the wisdom of Saint Gregory that will help you in how you approach choosing your curricula and how you approach teaching it.