Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

The will-less form of soul must be given by God, and evil rooted out through His grace.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 87 · Der siebenundachtzigste Brief

Addressee — A "vielgeliebte Schwester" (a sister) — not named in the 1773; she had written to Tersteegen "vom 11ten Sept."
Date — Not given in the print. Replies to her letter "vom 11ten Sept."; plausibly autumn 1760, but inferred, not attested.
Provenance — Translated from the public-domain 1773 first edition (Theil I, pp. 234–236), in GS 1845 orthography, collated against the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften and Hartman's 1819 reprint. All public-domain.

The Eighty-seventh Letter.

The will-less form of soul must be given by God, and evil rooted out through His grace.

In Jesus, our sweet Saviour, dearly beloved sister!

Your last letter of the 11th of September I have duly received. The disposition of mind and the conduct you express, in part, therein, I approve. Nothing is more beautiful than to give place to God and to His love image-lessly, will-lessly, and form-lessly, and to let oneself be pervaded — in outward and inward detachment — by this His love, especially when the Lord inclines our ground thereto and one would otherwise strain after the imaged and the active. If one has particular things to pray for, one looks at them, at the beginning of prayer, with a childlike glance that says everything; and then one forgets them, and sinks into the all-embracing whole, wherein one prays — without thinking of them — for everything and for all.

But let this disposition rather be given to you than that you should want to bring it along or make it yourselves; for in that way you would not be truly image-less and will-less. You must claim nothing, except that you would please God through surrender to His movements or workings; and the more grace God gives you to let your own self rest and be silent, the more you will find the Divine.

Nothing suffices to put to death the harsh forces of your nature and every other love within you, save only the power of the love and grace of Jesus Christ — received in the prayer of the heart, though not always felt. Earnestness and exertion are indeed of service in their season, to suppress the outbreaks of evil; but the power of the grace and love of Jesus alone can root out the evil and change nature; and this power is obtained through prayer. Occasions and trials do not make the evil, but only uncover it; and because our self-love sometimes hates not so much the evil itself as its uncovering, God lets trials and occasions come. And those which He lets come — that is, occasions to which obedience, necessity, and love engage us — we neither can nor may evade; but weak children, as we are, should not seek such things either.

To bear the uncovered evil with self-annihilation is no less needful to its rooting-out than the inflowing of love in prayer; yea, this bearing of one's misery disposes us, beyond belief, for the grace and love of God to flow into us — for God gives only to the humble His heart and all grace.

❦

German

Der siebenundachtzigste Brief.

Die willenlose Seelengestalt muß GOtt geben, und durch Seine Gnade das Böse ausrotten.

In JEsu, unserm süßen Heilande, vielgeliebte Schwester!

Euer letzteres vom 11ten Sept. habe wohl erhalten.

— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.

German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).

Translator’s notes

What this letter is. A letter of direction to a sister on the "will-less form of soul" — the image-less, will-less, form-less openness in which a person simply gives God room. Tersteegen approves the state of mind she had described, then guards it against its own subtlest trap: the moment you reach for this openness — try to bring it about or manufacture it — you are no longer will-less. It has to be received, not produced. From there he turns to the rooting-out of evil: earnest effort can hold down evil's outbreaks, but only the power of Christ's love, received in the prayer of the heart, can actually change our nature. And the "trials and occasions" God allows do not create the evil in us — they merely uncover it, which is why our self-love so dislikes them; the whole point is to humble us, "for God gives only to the humble His heart and all grace."

A few words and echoes.

Image-less, will-less, form-less. Tersteegen's contemplative shorthand — a prayer stripped of self-made images, self-will, and form, so that God and His love can take their place. It is the old German mystical vocabulary turned into pastoral counsel.
Detachment. Inward and outward Abgeschiedenheit — the soul's release from everything that is not God; a keyword of the Rhineland contemplative tradition Tersteegen inherited.
The ground. "When the Lord inclines our ground" — the Grund, the innermost floor of the soul where God works, the term Tersteegen keeps from Tauler and Eckhart.
The prayer of the heart. Prayer received inwardly rather than performed — real "though not always felt."
He lets trials come to uncover, not to make, the evil. The refiner's pattern of Scripture — God proving the heart to bring to light what is hidden in it (as in Deuteronomy and the Psalms).
God gives only to the humble. The closing note sounds the promise of James and Peter: God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 87 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-087.html.

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