Review: "The Whole Gospel in that Cry" by Stefan Tobler

Abstract

The book Tutto il vangelo in quel grido (The Whole Gospel in that Cry), the Italian translation of the habilitation thesis written by Stefan Tobler, a Swiss Reformed pastor, at the Evangelical Faculty of Theology in Tübingen, is an essential academic tool for exploring the spirituality of Chiara Lubich from the point of view of systematic theology. The study focuses upon Jesus’ cry of dereliction found in the gospels of Mark (15:34) and Matthew (27:46). While ‘the inadequacy of language is the fuel of every hermeneutic’ (p. 13), the centrality given by Chiara Lubich to the cry of Jesus is approached by Tobler from a typically evangelical perspective, one that is particularly attentive to the soteriological dimension of the paschal mystery. Jesus Forsaken was ‘the key to understanding the whole of reality and giving it a new interpretation’ (p.103) for Lubich and her first companions. Its effect was that both the normal manner of speaking and traditional Christian vocabulary were understood in a new way: suffering, evil, sin, God’s will, love for God and neighbour, unity, revelation, divinization, all became categories that, on the basis of Jesus Forsaken, indicate a meeting with God in the very midst of being abandoned by God. In our recognizing and loving his face in every circumstance, salvation breaks into the present moment of human experience and, at the same time, the reality of the world is lifted into the reality of God. It is this that makes possible the fulfilment of Jesus’ prayer to the Father, found in John’s gospel, ‘may they all be one’ (Jn 17:21).