Letters · Zweiter Band · Theil III (1775)

What true detachment is, and how one attains to it.

Bd II · Th III · Brief 72 · Der zweiundsiebzigste Brief

Addressee, date, and source

Addressee — To Anna Maria Elisabeth Schmitz of Solingen. The print gives only the salutation “In JEsu hertzlich geliebte Schwester!”; the critical edition supplies the name.
Date — Mülheim, 9 March 1746
Provenance — Translated from the 1775 first edition (Theil III, pp. 228–231), collated against the 1798/99 second edition.

The Seventy-Second Letter.

What true detachment is, and how one attains to it.

In Jesus, dearly beloved sister!

You ask what true detachment is? And how you may soonest and best attain to it? An important, lofty question, which a saint would hardly answer in words — much less I, late in the evening and in haste.

Sometimes by detachment one understands nothing more than the separation of our love from created things; properly, however, it is the unconcernedness or untouchedness of the spirit with respect to joy and sadness, fear and hope, willing and not-willing, in regard to all things and happenings that are not essentially God — whether the things or happenings be good or evil, bodily or spiritual. This detachment makes the spirit receptive to God and to His immediate workings, so that God can do in it and with it whatever pleases Him; and it is at bottom the very thing that others call self-surrender, or surrender, or also poverty of spirit. I call it an unconcernedness of spirit; for only the spirit, or ground of the soul, can attain to it in this present time. The part that is of the soul and of the senses is more or less touched — indeed, in some respects it must be touched, and must take things upon itself, and this is even a virtue. For example: the angels rejoice over a sinner who repents; we may and must do so too. Jesus wept over sinners, without detriment to His detachment: we too may mourn over our own sins and those of other men. We may and must, with regard both to others and to ourselves, fear all that is evil and displeasing to God, and hope for all good and desire it from God. We must love God’s children and all men. Only, where true detachment is established, this loving, hoping, fearing, mourning, rejoicing, and the rest goes on only in the forecourt and in the part that is of the soul; it does not press into the spirit; the whole man is not so moved by it, as with others; it works no confusion within; it leaves no hindering image behind; the spirit remains in its freedom, cleaving wholly to God, and leaves the rest outside — unless it be that God would have it otherwise. So long as soul and spirit are not divided (Hebrews 4:12), a man cannot be so detached: it costs a death; and one man has harder work of it therein than another.

Now I have said something of the sort, dear sister — but truly, you understand it only by half. You are thinking of a forced, self-made thing: but that it is not. When God makes Himself known to the spirit, then this high and highest Good takes the spirit and its concern to Itself, so that one can no longer concern oneself so deeply with any other thing, save only in the divine order. And then one can be as the sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing.

Now to the second point: how then are you to attain to this detachment? Answer: Deny, pray, and let God do with you. Through denial your inclinations and your will are parted from whatever can touch and confuse you. Through prayer, or the turning inward, you escape the life of the senses, and accustom yourself to live in the spirit and to draw near to God, who alone must and will work detachment and all good in you. And when you let God do with you inwardly and outwardly, then He will wean you, exercise you, crucify you, put you to death, make you alive — and may even, through the suffering of concerns and all manner of weaknesses, lead you to unconcernedness or detachment, often without your so much as thinking of it yourself.

Be then in all things wholly of good courage and without care, my dear child! for the Lord loves you. Forget yourself and your own conditions entirely, so as to look only upon Him in whom all good conditions are — yea, who is all good essentially.

— — I greet you heartily in the love of Jesus; as my housemates and other children also do. With that same heart we greet your dear brother and sister, who are much on my mind. I must close, for it is very late, and I am weary.

Your devoted brother.

Mülheim, the 9th of March, 1746.

❦

German

Der zweiundsiebzigste Brief.

Was wahre Abgeschiedenheit sey, und wie man darzu gelange.

In JEsu herzlich geliebte Schwester!

Du fragest, was die wahre Abgeschiedenheit sey? Und, wie du am ersten und besten darzu gelangen könnest?

— 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. The fourth letter in this part to the same young sister, and the one where she asks the question the whole spirituality of these letters turns on: what is true detachment, and how does one come by it? He protests — a saint could hardly answer it in words, much less he, “late in the evening and in haste” — and then answers it more exactly than anywhere else in the collection. The lateness shows in the close: “I must close, for it is very late, and I am weary.” It does not show anywhere else.

A few words and echoes.

detachment. Abgeschiedenheit — the old mystics’ word (Eckhart’s abegescheidenheit), here defined afresh for a young laywoman in a single evening.
unconcernedness of spirit. Unannehmlichkeit des Geistes — his own term, built on sich einer Sache annehmen, “to take a thing upon oneself”; the spirit that no longer takes things to itself. Not to be read as “unpleasantness.”
surrender, poverty of spirit. The synonyms he allows — Gelassenheit, Armuth des Geistes — placing his coinage inside the tradition before departing from it.
the forecourt. Vorhof — the temple-image: feeling lives in the outer court; the spirit is the holy place; detachment is the difference between them.
the dividing of soul and spirit. Hebrews 4:12, the letter’s own citation — the two-edged word that divides asunder; “it costs a death.”
as the sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. 2 Corinthians 6:10 — the state of the detached, feeling everything in the forecourt and losing nothing in the spirit.
deny, pray, and let God do with you. The whole method; the third verb is the one she had not yet understood.
wean you. Abspehnen — the nursing image: detachment as God’s weaning, not the soul’s diet.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Zweiter Band, III. Theil, Brief 72 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-072.html.

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