I recently asked myself what I thought was a fairly straightforward question: How large is the PhD program at Christ School of Theology (CST) when compared with doctoral programs at the institutions that have traditionally trained systematic, philosophical, and historical theologians?
The question arose because CST has 42 PhD students enrolled in 2026–27. They are concentrated in three areas: Philosophical Theology, Systematic Theology, and Historical Theology. Forty seemed to me like a substantial number, but substantial compared with what?
When I entered academic theology, the geography was familiar. Yale, Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Notre Dame, and the Hyde Park consortium immediately came to mind. If one wanted to become a systematic theologian, historian of theology, or philosopher of religion, these were among the places one considered. They possessed distinguished faculties and large communities of doctoral students. Their graduates populated university and seminary faculties throughout North America.
I assumed that CST's 42 students would still constitute a relatively small program measured against these older centers. That assumption appears to be wrong.
Comparing the Same Thing
One has to be careful with the numbers. A PhD in Religion is not necessarily a PhD in theology.
Consider Duke. Duke currently reports 45 students in its entire PhD program in Religion. Those students are distributed among Asian Religions, Christian Theological Studies, Early Christianity, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, History of Judaism, Islamic Studies, New Testament, Religion, Aesthetics & Society, and World Christianity. CST has approximately forty students in three areas of theology alone.
Harvard supplies another revealing comparison. Harvard Divinity School currently reports 63 students in the PhD program. Yet this is the Harvard Graduate School doctorate administered through the Committee on the Study of Religion, encompassing the broader academic study of religion rather than sixty-three students doing Christian theology.
Yale has undergone a similar development. Its Religious Studies doctorate now contains ten fields of study. Theology remains one of them, and Philosophy of Religion remains another. Indeed, Yale's Philosophy of Religion program explicitly includes philosophical theology and requires engagement with both analytic and continental philosophical traditions.
These remain extraordinary doctoral programs. The point concerns what they are programs in. Much of what was once concentrated in theology has become part of the broader academic study of religion. That changes the comparison.
Notre Dame Is Particularly Interesting
Notre Dame provides a cleaner case because its doctorate remains explicitly a PhD in Theology. Its current public roster lists 77 PhD students. I counted the students according to Notre Dame's own classifications. Twenty-two are in Systematic Theology and twelve are in History of Christianity. That gives 34 students in the two fields most directly comparable with CST's Systematic and Historical Theology programs. CST currently has forty across Systematic Theology, Historical Theology, and Philosophical Theology.
This does not tell us that CST has somehow overtaken Notre Dame. It tells us something much more precise and, to my mind, more interesting. The concentration of doctoral students at CST in these traditional theological disciplines is already on the same numerical order as the corresponding concentration at one of North America's premier departments of theology. I did not expect that.
Princeton and Chicago
Princeton Theological Seminary remains another important comparison because its doctorate still bears a recognizably theological shape. Its current students work in Theology, Ethics, and Politics; History and Ecumenics; Biblical Studies; Practical Theology; and Religion and Society. Current profiles confirm active doctoral work in systematic and constructive theology as well as the several historical fields.
Our preliminary count of Princeton's current public profiles produced roughly eighteen students across Theology, Ethics, and Politics and the broadest possible construction of History and Ecumenics. Even that comparison is generous, since Religion in the Americas and World Christianity do not always constitute historical theology in the sense in which CST uses the term.
Chicago may display the historical shift still more dramatically.
The University of Chicago Divinity School remains one of the world's distinguished places for the study of religion. Its current PhD describes itself as interdisciplinary research into the “human phenomenon of religion,” encompassing constructive, historical, social-scientific, literary, and other approaches. Its current directory shows students across a wide range of areas. Theology and Philosophy of Religions continue, but they now occupy places within a much broader conception of the discipline.
Anyone who remembers Hyde Park several decades ago will recognize how significant the change is. The Chicago theological ecosystem once concentrated an extraordinary number of theologians within a few blocks. The institutions remain, but the distribution of doctoral work has changed.
So What Has Happened?
I think at least two developments are visible.
First, many of the strongest university programs have moved toward the academic study of religion conceived very broadly. That move has intellectual justification. Religion is a global human phenomenon, and serious scholarship cannot simply identify the study of religion with the study of Christianity.
Yet there is an institutional consequence. Forty or sixty doctoral students distributed among Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Asian religions, biblical studies, anthropology, ethics, history, philosophy, and other fields do not constitute forty or sixty systematic, philosophical, and historical theologians.
Second, seminary contraction has reduced the number of institutions maintaining large research doctorates in the classical theological disciplines. Programs have closed, contracted, consolidated, or broadened their purposes.
The result is a curious situation. There may now be fewer places in North America where a substantial number of doctoral students gather specifically to do theology. However, CST has moved in precisely the opposite direction.
What CST Has Accidentally—or Deliberately—Become
Our forty PhD students are concentrated in three neighboring disciplines. A student working in philosophical theology regularly encounters systematic theologians. A systematician encounters historians of doctrine. Historical work raises constructive questions; constructive work encounters philosophical ones. That density matters.
There is a considerable difference between enrolling forty people pursuing doctorates and possessing a community of forty doctoral theologians. The latter can become an intellectual environment. But what follows from the numbers?
Certainly not that CST is now “better than” Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, Duke, or Notre Dame. Such a claim would be silly. These institutions possess resources accumulated over generations: great libraries, endowed faculties, enormous universities, selective admissions, funding structures, placement networks, and reputations generated through thousands of graduates. Reputation is real, and so is institutional capital. But another fact is real as well:
Christ School of Theology has achieved doctoral scale before it has achieved commensurate reputation. That is what surprised me in looking at the numbers.
I think we can now say, with reasonable caution, that CST has developed one of the larger concentrated communities of PhD students in North America working specifically in systematic, philosophical, and historical theology.
Perhaps further research will reveal several programs we have overlooked. I would welcome the correction. This is an empirical question. One must count the students, identify their fields, and compare like with like.
But Duke has forty-five doctoral students in its entire Religion program. Harvard has sixty-three. Notre Dame has thirty-four in Systematic Theology and History of Christianity combined. Yale organizes its doctorate across ten fields. Once those facts are placed beside forty students concentrated in CST's three theological fields, something worth noticing has happened.
Scale Is Only the Beginning
Numbers do not produce scholarship, because forty disconnected students are simply forty students. The next question for CST is therefore more important than the enrollment question: What must happen for these students to become a genuine community of theological scholarship?
They must read one another's work. They must present dissertation chapters and defend arguments before colleagues. Philosophical theologians must learn enough historical theology to know when a supposedly new problem is an old one. Historical theologians must be pressed about what follows from the texts they study. Systematic theologians must learn to state clearly what they claim, what makes the claim true, and what follows if it is.
They should meet major scholars. They should publish. They should participate in conferences. Their dissertations should matter. Their graduates should eventually teach the next generation. At this point enrollment begins to generate intellectual capital.
This also suggests why CST should be cautious about proliferating doctoral concentrations. There is nothing inherently wrong with PhDs in practical theology, leadership studies, biblical studies, missiology, or other fields. But institutional identity comes partly from decisions about what one will not do. CST presently possesses something unusual: a large doctoral program centered quite deliberately upon theology. We ought to know what we have.
A Changed Map
The most interesting conclusion therefore concerns neither CST nor enrollment statistics by themselves. The map has clearly changed.
The great institutions remain great. Yale is still Yale. Harvard is still Harvard. Notre Dame, Princeton, Duke, and Chicago remain institutions with extraordinary scholars and enormous intellectual resources. Yet the concentration of doctoral students within the classical theological disciplines is no longer distributed as it once was.
New centers can consequently emerge. Whether CST becomes one of them will not be settled by enrollment numbers. It will be settled by the quality of the scholarship produced by its faculty and students, by the rigor of its dissertations, by publications, by intellectual exchange, and ultimately by the scholars its PhD program sends into the church and academy.
But one necessary condition is already present. There are enough theologians in the room, and that is something I had not fully realized until I counted them.
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