A Doctoral Program Serving the Worldwide Church
Calvin Theological Seminary began its PhD program in 1992 although the idea for offering such a program arose soon after World War II, when the seminary began attracting students from South Korea, Indonesia, and various countries in Africa. As churches around the world began to flourish, they wanted to build and strengthen colleges and seminaries in their own countries in order to train leaders to serve their growing congregation. To do that, they needed faculty members who were trained and ready to serve their educational institutions, which led to mounting requests to Calvin Theological Seminary to offer a PhD program.
Building the Program
Recognizing that a PhD program requires sufficient funding to support students and to provide faculty to meet the time-intensive needs of PhD studies, then-President James De Jong began a campaign to raise money for student scholarships, for endowed faculty chairs, and for the additional library resources needed in order to offer a PhD program. By the early 1990s, all the pieces were in place to begin the program, including approval from the Association for Theological Schools, the seminary's accrediting agency. Another two faculty members were hired to handle the load of teaching and supervising PhD students.
A Vision Beyond the CRCNA
As its history shows, the program always had a vision to serve a broader community of Christians and churches than the Christian Reformed Church in North America. In fact, relatively few PhD students over the years have come from the CRCNA. Most North American students have come from other denominations, and the program's international reach has coincided with the spread of Christianity in other continents in recent decades. Even as many Christian churches in Europe and North America have lost members, churches in Asia, Latin America, and Africa have witnessed explosive growth. Because some of those growing churches have connections to Reformed mission work or have been influenced by Reformed theology, Calvin Theological Seminary has become a popular destination for graduate theological study, including study in the PhD program.
Fruit Across the Nations
Throughout its history, God has blessed the PhD program with excellent students from Brazil, Canada, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Poland, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Uganda, and the United States. They have gone to serve as teachers, seminary presidents, pastors, and denominational leaders. God also has blessed the program through the years with strong financial support.
A Transition in Leadership
Since 1992, the PhD program has had two directors. Ronald Feenstra was the first director, followed by Lyle Bierma who served for eight years while Feenstra was Academic Dean. When Bierma retired, Feenstra resumed directing the program but he, too, will retire in the summer of 2026.
The next director will be Professor Yudha Thianto, who came from Indonesia to Calvin Theological Seminary and graduated from the program more than 20 years ago.
