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Application Accepted

// July 18th, 2010 // Greek, Life Stuff, Pastoral, Theology

For the last 7 months I have been in the process of applying into the D.Th. program in the department of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at the University of South Africa.

After applying and submitting my application materials, I was asked by the department chair, Dr. Pieter Craffert, to submit a collection of original writings ranging from personal essays to book reviews. One of the essays was a preliminary research proposal. This was submitted in total on July 2, 2010.

On the AM of July 14, 2010, Prof. Craffert sent me an email letting me know that my application, which involved a collection of original writings, had been accepted and I could contact my supervisor, Dr. Dirk van der Merwe, to begin work. While the College of Human Sciences and the Deptartment of Postgraduate Studies still have to approve the departmental recommendation, Dr. Craffert said those should be no problem.

This is an exciting and monumental beginning of a new chapter. May God use it for his glory and honour!

2 Responses to “Application Accepted”

  1. Mark says:
    August 4, 2010 at 8:38 pm

    Very nice! What degrees does U of SA accept to allow one to enter their Th.D. program?

  2. Markus says:
    August 5, 2010 at 6:27 pm

    Thanks Mark. The Th.D. (they appendage it as a D.Th.) requires a Th.M. (or equivalent in New Testament). I applied with an M.A. in New Testament from Criswell. The South African educational system follows a hybrid between Dutch and British standards. The Th.M. (they appendage it a M.Th.) is one year on top of an Honours B.Th.which itself is one year on top of a B.Th.

    The application itself takes some time, in part due to postal issues and is several stages. The first stage is applying in general to the University. The second stage is applying into the department by means of registering. Once that was received, I was asked to submit a diagnostic screening packet. This involved a series of original writings including a book review, a brief discussion on my topic of interest, a research report (with technically correct citations) and more. Mine amounted to around 38 pages. The most difficult part was keeping them within the word maximums. Each department has its own requirements.

    You can go to http://brochure.unisa.ac.za/brochure/showlist.aspx?d=l_2_8 for a list of doctoral degrees offered in the college of human sciences at UNISA and their requirements.

    Both Dr. Bruce Carlton at Boyce and Dr. Eitel at SWBTS have a D.Th. from UNISA. A certain infamous (in Reformed circles anyway) professor at a certain Christian university in Virginia has his D.Th. from UNISA.

    The program is research based–there are no formal courses. The promoter (supervisor) has the right to assign a course of reading before proceeding with the Thesis (dissertation) if he determines you need leveling work.

    My promoter, Dirk. G. van der Merwe, so far has been great. He is a devoted Christian and his relationship with Christ is the paradigm through which he approached theology. Although, the school tends to be quite theologically liberal, they are liberal in the classical sense of the spirit of free inquiry (this comes from Bruce Carlton). The aim is learning how to research and write, not spit back a faculty consensus. The NT faculty is quite well published (academically) and has co-coordinated a number of conferences with some of the European “power” schools.

    South Africa has a number of good options for the cash strapped or well entrenched (lifewise) seminary graduate including UNISA, South African Theological Seminary, U of Pretoria, and the University of the Free State (to name a few). UNISA and SATS are the only ones with no institutional residency requirements, but the others have very limited residency requirements. The European model of doctoral studies (non classroom based: the writing of a thesis) is quite amenable to distance study. University of Wales-Lampeter offers a non-residential distance Ph.D. as well.

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