Ph.D. Program

The Ph.D. program is intended for junior members (students) whose principal vocation is the life of scholarship and teaching. Graduates of the doctoral program are well-equipped to enter research or teaching positions. Admission requirements include a master's degree with a thesis component, a background in philosophy, and prior work in a related area of study.

Institute for Christian Studies is authorized to grant Ph.D. degrees by the Province of Ontario and also offers a conjoint Ph.D. degree with the Free University of Amsterdam. In the conjoint degree, course work and exams are completed at Institute for Christian Studies while the dissertation defense and degree-granting take place in Amsterdam.

The Institute for Christian Studies is an interdisciplinary graduate school where:

• the gospel's message of renewal shapes our pursuit of wisdom.

• scholars focus on the intersection of Reformational philosophy and contemporary scholarship and society.

The following Educational Creed is part of the Basis Statement created by the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship in the late 1950's. As such, it is part of ICS' bylaws and serves as a confessional statement for ICS.

Believing that Scripture reveals certain basic principles intensely relevant to education, we confess:

• Life: that human life in its entirety is religion. Consequently, scholarly study unfolds itself as service either of the one true God or of an idol.

• Scripture: that Scripture, the Word of God written, in instructing us of God, ourselves and the structure of creation, is that integral and active divine Word or Power by which God, through his Spirit, attaches us to and enlightens us in the Truth, which is Christ.

• Christ: that the Christ of the Scriptures, the Word of God incarnate, is the Redeemer and Renewer of our life in its entirety and therefore also of our theoretical thought.

• Reality: that the essence or heart of all created reality is the covenantal communion of human beings with God in Christ.

• Knowledge: that true knowledge is made possible by true religion and arises from the knowing activity of the human heart enlightened through the Word of God by the Holy Spirit. Thus religion plays its decisive ordering role in the understanding of our everyday experience and our theoretical pursuits.