The Faculty of Theology is under the guidance of Prof Risimati Hobyane as acting Dean of the Faculty. He welcomes you to our faculty in the message below.
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Prof Risimati Hobyane
Acting Executive Dean
Dear students and site visitors
A hearty welcome to you and thank you for visiting our website. Although the Faculty of Theology has its roots in the Reformed tradition and grounded in the authority of the Bible, our faculty acknowledges and embraces the rich diversity of theological and religious perspectives found in South Africa and across the globe.
Our faculty is located on all three NWU campuses (Potchefstroom, Mafikeng and Vanderbijlpark) where we offer a variety of undergraduate qualifications in the contact and distance modalities.
Students are equipped for church ministry, pastoral counselling, youth work, missionary work, as evangelists, Biblical archaeologists, journalists, educationists, authors, translators, and for other careers. On postgraduate level, we offer various master’s and doctoral degrees to students around the world in all theological fields of study, as well as ancient languages, cultures and text studies.
Our dedicated academic staff deliver excellent research outputs in the form of articles and books, and we engage actively with stakeholders and the communities where we live and work.
As management, academic and support staff, we strive for excellence in our teaching and learning, research and innovation, and community engagement.
Vision & Mission
The Faculty's vision
The Vision of the Faculty of Theology is to pursue the scholarship of Theology on a Reformational foundation; it maintains the conviction of unity between faith and science, and sees a close connection between Theology and Church, from the perspective of the Kingdom of God with a “glocal” focus on the different contexts that influence everyday life. Furthermore, the Faculty with its focus on Ancient Languages, is striving towards a scientific study of Ancient Texts in as much as it is concerned with the linguistic, synchronic, and diachronic reception of the texts.
The faculty envisions theological education that offer a life-creating process and experience. Theological education should carry a life-long effect in that it broadens and deepens the student’s life experience to work and live meaningfully and laudably in communities. This is the ultimate destination of all students enrolled for any qualification in Theology. This end journey should be clearly and measurably embodied in four generic evidence-based outcomes that are ethically and socially justifiable. As a set of skills and competencies it encompasses the following:
- Integrated and substantiated knowledge
- Effective communication
- Service leadership
- Inquiry-based problem solving.
The Faculty's Mission
Although the faculty has 6 goals in mind as part of its mission for Teaching & Learning success, it can all be captured in this one mission:
The Faculty’s mission is to build theological scholarship from a Reformational foundation and equip ministers, pastors, youth workers, missionaries and churches with both hard skills (knowledge and implementation thereof) as well as soft skills (ability to engage different worldviews and adapt to different and changing contexts) grounded in biblical truths to provide principled leadership within different contexts and communities. Furthermore, the Faculty of Theology, with its Ancient Languages niche, is striving towards a scientific study of Ancient Texts as much it is concerned with the linguistic, synchronic, diachronic and reception of these texts.