On despairing of ourselves, and boundless trust in God.
The Eighty-sixth Letter.
On despairing of ourselves, and boundless trust in God.
Dear sister!
May my soul greet you in the name of the God who makes poor and makes rich! Amen.
It is always dear to me to receive even a single greeting from you, because we have come into a fellowship in the Spirit — which fellowship will be so much the more essential and fruitful, the more God empties us and makes us simple within ourselves. The lower our empty vessel sinks, the better it can catch the effluences from above.
I look on with pleasure at how the faithful guidance and providence of Love seeks ever more to make the creature, and your own self, distasteful to you. All faithfulness must be nothing but a secret consent to the ways of the Lord, who best knows how to redeem and to sanctify us, and into whose hand we have given our whole salvation, and to whom we must let ourselves go yet deeper. We must wholly despair of ourselves; there is here a must, else we would never do it. Ah, that in this despairing of ourselves we might keep only a boundless trust in God, above all conception and feeling! For God is certainly pure Love; He proves Himself precisely then as Love, when He most opposes our self-love.
Certainly His love toward us is unspeakably great. He has given us a longing to be wholly His; a longing for completion in true sanctification. This longing shall surely come to fulfillment — but after His way, not after ours; self-love shall have no part in it. We seek holiness in ourselves, and find precisely the opposite, when we find ourselves; and God give patience and faith to the one who truly finds himself! All holiness and blessedness is in God alone; therefore God makes us so poor, wretched, and naked, that we may at last learn really — and not in fantasy — to let ourselves go, and to enter into Him who is our whole holiness. May the Lord Himself work this blessed going-out and going-in in you and me, that He may have joy and glory in us eternally.
So we come then at last to the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer, and say after the children: For thine is the kingdom, thine is the power, thine is the glory in eternity, Amen! If God gives it to you, remember me too in prayer; I hope, too, not to forget you. Greet N. and all the rest who gladly want to walk the children's-way. I greet and kiss you all in the spirit of love, and remain,
Your
Mülheim, November 1735. — bound fellow-member.
German
Der 86te Brief.
Vom Verzagen an uns selbst und unendlichem Vertrauen zu GOtt.
Liebe Schwester!
Es grüsse dich meine Seele im Namen des GOttes, der da arm machet, und reich machet! Amen.
— 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 short, dense letter on the great paradox of Tersteegen's inner path — that the way up is down. Its two poles are named in the title: despair of yourself, trust God without limit. He greets the sister "in the name of the God who makes poor and makes rich," and immediately reads her painful providences as kindness: God is making "the creature, and your own self, distasteful to you," because "the lower our empty vessel sinks, the better it can catch the effluences from above." Self-despair, for Tersteegen, is not morbid but liberating — and not optional: "there is here a must, else we would never do it." Yet — and this is the whole balance — it must never be despair alone: "that in this despairing of ourselves we might keep only a boundless trust in God." The ground of that trust is who God is: "God is certainly pure Love; He proves Himself precisely then as Love, when He most opposes our self-love." The soul keeps trying to manufacture holiness in itself "and finds precisely the opposite, when it finds itself"; the truth is that "all holiness and blessedness is in God alone," and so God strips us "poor, wretched, and naked" until we finally stop pretending and "enter into Him who is our whole holiness." He closes by praying the end of the Our Father with her, "like the children" — and (in the fuller manuscript) sending greetings to the little circle who "gladly want to walk the children's-way."
A few words and echoes.
- "The God who makes poor and makes rich." 1 Samuel 2:7, Hannah's song — "The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up." The God who impoverishes in order to enrich sets the whole theme.
- "The lower our empty vessel sinks, the better it can catch the effluences from above." The emptier and lowlier the soul, the more grace it holds — cf. Luke 1:52–53 (He "hath filled the hungry with good things"), and the widow's empty vessels filled with oil (2 Kings 4:1–6). Fullness of self blocks the inflow of God.
- "We must wholly despair of ourselves… boundless trust in God." The double movement Tersteegen never separates: distrust of self and trust of God are one act, not two moods.
- "God is pure Love; He proves Himself as Love when He most opposes our self-love." The amor purus (pure love) of the mystics; the very strokes that feel least like love — the crossing of self-love — are its truest proof (cf. Hebrews 12:6, "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth").
- "We seek holiness in ourselves, and find the opposite." Sanctification is not a possession the soul builds but a Person it receives; Christ is "made unto us… sanctification" (1 Corinthians 1:30).
- "Poor, wretched, and naked." Revelation 3:17 — the laodicean self-image reversed into a mercy: God shows us our nakedness so we will stop clothing ourselves.
- "Thine is the kingdom, thine is the power, thine is the glory in eternity." The doxology of the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6:13 — prayed "after the children," the surrender of the whole self into God's sole sovereignty.
- "The children's-way" (Kinder-Bahn). The path of spiritual childhood (Matthew 18:3) — the little company of the "born-again" who walk it together.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-086 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.