Auckland Park Theological Seminary is the oldest Pentecostal tertiary training institution in Africa, and as of end of October 2025, we are still the only accredited Pentecostal training institution.
We are committed to presenting Christ-centered, Bible-based, Spirit-filled Theology.
What does this mean, you may ask?
We hold that the Bible is indeed a book that presents God’s word in human language. God, in His mercy, made sure that His revelation to man and His acts in history were put on record for us.
It is, however, not true that God has given us the Bible in order that we may read it on our own to cognitively learn the truths about God and His will and apply it for our salvation. If that is true, Christianity would boil down to a relationship between man and the Bible.
The word of God is in the hands of the Lord alone, and biblical truths can only become the revelation and active power of God through the work of the Holy Spirit. The word of God is not an instrument in the hands of man, but is exclusively the sword of the Spirit.
A very basic principle in our theology is that no one is able to know God except through God’s Self-revelation. If God does not reveal Himself to someone, that person cannot know Him.
To know God in the Biblical sense means to know God by His Self-revelation in your life. In other words, it is knowledge through a spiritual encounter with God where He becomes visible in your life. No one can say that he/she knows God in the Biblical sense of the word if nothing of God’s love, goodness, righteousness, power, attitude, etc., is reflected in his/her life. The more you know God, the more you become like Him.
A person in whom God can be seen knows God better than the best theologian who can tell you everything about God but has never had a spiritual encounter with Him. Conceptual knowledge is not enough; it should be integrated with spiritual and experiential knowledge of God that change your life.
If you understand the above, you will understand that for ATS, the outcome of studying theology is to build your relationship with God and to help you, by the work of the Holy Spirit in you, to know Him better through a personal and spiritual experience. If this is not achieved by studying theology, it has little meaning for you.
Lastly, what is a Christ-centered - Pneumatological Perspective (“pneuma” (spirit) and “-logy” (study of), meaning “pertaining to the study of the Spirit”)?
This biblical-dogmatic perspective places Jesus Christ at the centre of God’s self-revelation to mankind, as the incarnate Word (John 1:1-14), Life-giver (John 10:10, 1 Cor 15:45), and Spirit-Baptiser (John 1:33; Luke 24:49), whose life, death, resurrection, and glorification form the foundation of salvation and spiritual transformation.
The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son (John 14:26; 16:7-8) to enable the believer to partake in Christ’s salvation (1 Cor 6:11, Rom 8:9-11, Eph 3:16-17), be clothed in Christ (Gal 3:27), and empower believers with the resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead (Rom 8:11, Eph 1:19-21), initiating a progressive transformation into the image of Christ, bearing the fruit of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:17-18, Ezek 36:26-27; Gal. 5:22).
It affirms the divinity of the Holy Spirit and His vital role in actualising Christ’s salvation through a unified process of conversion, water baptism, and Holy Spirit baptism. Rooted in the Trinitarian unity, the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ (John 16:14, Luke 24:49) and facilitates and enables a profound, relational knowing of God, the Father (Eph 1:17, 1 Cor 12:3).
