Soong-Chan Rah: The Gospel Is "Truth Pursued," Not "Truth Possessed"
Soong-Chan Rah
4.38
17 May 2023
4 April 2026
Rev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, Professor of Evangelism at Fuller Theological Seminary, says the western world has not correctly defined the word "gospel" in this Q-and-A after a speech at Seattle Pacific University in January 2023.
—TRANSCRIPT HIGHLIGHTS—
As an evangelism professor, I spend my time lamenting and agonizing over this of how much of our evangelistic methods are so steeped in western culture, including the word "gospel." And one of the exercises that I have my students do is: "I want you to define what that word means." And the answers are all over the board.
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Sadly, like you're pointing out, in the history, the narrative of white supremacy has been fueling the way we understand the gospel, right?
I've literally been told by by white members of my denomination [the Evangelical Covenant Church] and those who had authority over me, around my curriculum. Crazy. But that what I was preaching was not the gospel. I said, "Well, whose version of the gospel are you talking?" "Well, this is what our version of the gospel is," and it was this hyper-individualistic, four spiritual laws. It's like, no, I'm not saying that's not the gospel but, that's very culturally inflected.
So that's where I would say, okay, the counter-narrative is the gospel. In fact that's the whole gospel story. There is a broken narrative in our world, and Christ came to demonstrate and live the counter-narrative of the gospel.
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So the way I've explained it in my class is the difference between truth possessed and truth pursued. The gospel is truth pursued, it is not truth possessed. And truth possessed is a western mentality. I own the truth, and therefore in my ownership of the truth, my job to share the gospel is to have you agree to my principles of the gospel.
I first learned this concept in college when I was taking a political theory class. And the political theory was talking about the differentiation between truth pursued and truth possessed and that in, especially in 20th-century political history, those who had a truth possessed mentality were the Hitlers and the Stalins. They owned the truth and their job was to get that truth, that good-news gospel, out there.
Compare that to those who had a truth pursued mentality. That would be Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. They believed there is a truth, but our job is not to own that truth but to pursue that truth.
And that, by the way, is clearly biblical. Because when Jesus says: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." I think it's pretty clear it means that I can't own the truth if Jesus is the truth. Any claim from me to own and possess the truth would be heresy, I can do what he said, which is to follow him, which is the pursuit of truth.
And so that's where the gospel message of "do I own the truth or am I pursuing the truth?" Is the gospel a set of propositions that I own, and my job is to pass that on for you, and once you check the list of my propositions, now you're a Christian? Then, no, that's not the narrative I want to be a part of. But is there a truth of who Jesus is, and the pursuit of that truth that feels different than the ownership of that truth?