A PhD in Christian apologetics

I only found out a few years ago that there were PhD programs in Christian apologetics. I knew there were MA programs. I figured those MA programs existed either for personal edification (Christians just want to have a deeper grasp of Christian apologetics so they can be better apologists in their ordinary lives) or to prepare people to go into an apologetics ministry. Nothing about that struck me as weird.

But when I found out that there were PhD programs, it did strike me as being weird. There are two reasons.

First, when I think of a PhD in some field, I think of somebody who is an expert in some specific subject, like physics, history, philosophy, or whatever. But apologetics is an interdisciplinary field that borrows from physics, history, and philosophy. If, hypothetically, a PhD program were divided evenly between those three fields, then a PhD in apologetics would have about 1/3 of the exertise in any of those fields as somebody who had a PhD in one of those fields. So, if a PhD in apologetics were to try to do research in one of those fields so as to publish a paper and contribute to the scholarly conversation, they would be severely handicapped. It just strikes me as being weird that there would be a PhD program for such a generalized field when PhD programs are usually very focused on a narrow field of interest.

Second, in just about every other field of inquiry where you could get a PhD, the purpose is to contribute to answering questions in that field. In Physics, you want to know the laws of nature--how the universe operates. In Philosophy, you want to answer the big questions and maybe gain a deeper understanding of past thinkers. In History, you want to find out what actually happened in the past and why. But in Christian apologetics, you already have the answer to the big question--Christianity is true and competing worldviews are not. The only question is how to prove it. So, in what sense is it really a field of inquiry? Maybe you could think of it as an inquiry into the history of apologetics literature and the authors and arguments involved, but in that case, why not call it a PhD in Christian rhetoric? If it were Christian rhetoric, you wouldn't have to be committed to the conclusion that Christinaity is true, and anybody could get a PhD in it whether they were Christians or not. But to have a PhD in an academic field that only exists because of already having an answer to the major question in that field strikes me as being weird.

Why would anybody even want a PhD in Christian apologetics? Who is qualified to awared somebody with a PhD in Christian apologetics? What kind of scholarship does having a PhD in Christian apologetics allow you to produce that you couldn't produce better by having a PhD in some other field, like physics, biology, philosophy, or New Testament history?

The only person I know of who has a PhD in Christian apologetics is Sean McDowell, although I'm sure there are others. He did his dissertation on the question of whether the disciples of Jesus died as martyrs. That strikes me as being an historical question, and somebody who got a PhD either in New Testament or early Christian history or something along those lines would be far more equipped to do that kind of research. I wonder if Sean's PhD even involved him having to learn ancient languages like Greek and Latin in order to delve into the primary sources like a scholar in ancient history ordinarily would.

I'm curious if Sean has published any scholarship in any professional journal. I was just looking at his CV, and it shows a lot of books he either wrote or contributed to. With the possible exception of The Fate of the Apostles they look to all be popular level books. The Fate of the Apostles is published by Rutledge, which does publish some academic books, but has Sean's book been peer reviewed? Does any PhD in Christian apologetics contribute to professional journals? If so, what kind? I have a hard time imagining somebody with a PhD in Christian apologetics doing original research in physics, cosmology, biology, etc.

I don't mean this post to be a criticism of a PhD program in Christian apologetics. I don't even know what's entailed in the program. I am just expressing my own impression that it seems weird. It isn't like a PhD program in any other field that I know of.