Gelassenheit: Your definitions? Your praxis?

[MaxPC]

Serenity is a modern (20th century) meaning. I’m not sure what the meaning was back in the 1500s, outside of Anabaptist usage. It has become an Anabaptist religious term.

Very true. Yet it seems in the traditional understandings of the word among today's Anabaptists, there is a great deal of similarity in their definitions. Would it be fair or logical to extrapolate from that or would I be barking up the wrong tree?

[Josh]

Serenity is a modern (20th century) meaning. I’m not sure what the meaning was back in the 1500s, outside of Anabaptist usage. It has become an Anabaptist religious term.

Very true. Yet it seems in the traditional understandings of the word among today's Anabaptists, there is a great deal of similarity in their definitions. Would it be fair or logical to extrapolate from that or would I be barking up the wrong tree?

It seems that that word didn't even mean that in other literature in the 1500s, so I'm guessing they just tried to find the closest word they could to communicate the concept.

[Gelassenheit]

The first time I heard this term was from Bro. Denny Kenaston. I found it very helpful. Here is a link:
http://charitychristianfellowship.org/s ... s/4044.mp3

His message was not the first time I was introduced to the word- but his message really helped me understand it in a deeper way- more applicable way-

Thanks for sharing what I was about to share too! It is worth a listen.

I typed up these quotes from Bro. Kenastion's sermon regarding how Gelassenheit was understood by the early Anabaptist. I am not familiar with the spelling of two of their names, so I hope I didn't butcher them too badly.

Hans Dink
"We have but one Lord and master of our conscious Jesus Christ is his name, whose word, will, commandment, and ordinance we obey as willing disciples, even as the bride is ready to obey her bride grooms voice."

Michael Sattler
"They threatened us with bonds, then with fire and a sword, but in all this I surrendered myself completely into the will of the Lord, together with all my brothers, and my wife and prepared myself to die for His testimony."

Peter Friedmann
"Sin is the forsaking of obedience to God. For as through obedience all the righteousness of God cometh though Christ, so also cometh all sin and unrighteousness from disobedience to and the forsaking of God’s commands. Hence the disciple has to learn one thing above all: the art of self-abandonment (in German called Gelassenehit, yeildedness or resignation). The man who through yeldedness seeks to follow Christ along the narrow path has to overcome all self-centeredness and has to open his heart to a loving and subsequently, usually suffering-atitude.”

Hans Hoffer
"Now let us hear what true surrender is: It is to let go of all things for God’s sake, and to turn to God so that He may lead us. Jesus Christ called it hatred. He who does not hate his father and mother and renounce everything that he has, is not worthy of me. True surrender is to put to death the flesh and to be born another time. The whole world wants to have Christ, but they pass him by. They do not find him because they want to have him only as a gift. Only as a giver of grace, only as a mediator, which he certainly is, but they do not want to have him in a suffering way.
The same Christ who says: “All who are heavy laden come to me and I will refresh you,” also says: “those who will not forsake father and mother cannot be my disciple.” Whoever loves truth must accept the one as well as the other. Whoever wants to have Christ must have him also in the way of suffering. It is foolish to say that Christ has redeemed us, but we do not want to live like He lived."

[Hats Off]

The word Gelassenheit appears to have originated in the writings and sermons of Meister Eckhart almost 800 years ago: see the following dissertation:

The Union of Self-Surrender and Radical Obedience
Deborah Funk
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Theological Studies
- at Canadian Mennonite University
April 14, 2012

When researching Gelassenheit, I came to the same conclusion as Deborah did. When the Serenity prayer was written in German, the word Gelassenheit was used, where the English version uses serenity.

I have explained the difference between Gelassenheit and serenity this way:
You are sitting quietly beside a body of water, under a shade tree; the sun is shining brightly, the only sound breaking the stillness is an occasional fish jumping out of the water to catch a fly. This is serenity. Gelassenheit is the all the same ingredients but with the added fact that your wife has just been buried; Gelassenheit is serenity with a spiritual element added.

[Neoanabaptist]

From a German point of view I'd like to add two points:

1. the word is related to German "loslassen": to let go, leave go, leave hold of sth.

2. I would prefer the translation: "detachedness", "aloofness"
It s correct that "aloofness" is seen more negatively in the United States, whereas "Gelassenheit" is positively valued in Germany. But this not so much an argument against my translation, it is rather an indication of a traditional cultural difference between Germans and Americans. (The same cultural difference has been researched w.r.t. "Einsamkeit" which is - or has been -positively valued in Germany whereas "loneliness" in America is more negatively connotated.) But if we ignore the different cultural evaluations, "being detached" or "being aloof" would be the most precise representation of the factual content.

[MaxPC]

This all is excellent information. The involvement of Meister Eckhart surprises me.

[cmbl]

Peter Friedmann (sic)
"Sin is the forsaking of obedience to God. For as through obedience all the righteousness of God cometh though Christ, so also cometh all sin and unrighteousness from disobedience to and the forsaking of God’s commands. Hence the disciple has to learn one thing above all: the art of self-abandonment (in German called Gelassenehit, yeildedness or resignation). The man who through yeldedness seeks to follow Christ along the narrow path has to overcome all self-centeredness and has to open his heart to a loving and subsequently, usually suffering-atitude.”

A correction on the attribution of this quote - This comes from Robert Friedmann's The Theology of Anabaptism, where Friedmann quotes Peter Riedemann. The portion of the quote in bold comes from Riedemann, the rest is Friedmann's text. Riedemann was a sixteenth-century Anabaptist, Friedmann was a 20th-century convert to Anabaptism.

[Bootstrap]

Gelassenheit has two very different definitions in the German Christian tradition. GAMEO discussses this well.

The first, and older, definition is about our relationship to the God who is beyond our understanding and whose ways are beyond our understanding.

Gelassenheit, self-surrender, resignation in God's will (Gottergebenheit), yieldedness to God's will, self-abandonment, the (passive) opening to God's willing, including the readiness to suffer for the sake of God, also peace and calmness of mind, in Dutch devotional literature leijdzaamheid (Mennonite Quarterly Review, 1950, 22, note 17, suggests about 15 possible translations, none perfectly fitting). Only if man relinquishes his self-will may he become an instrument of God. The main Biblical locus seems to be Revelation 13:10, "Here is the patience [RSV has `endurance'] and faith of the saints," even though Gelassenheit goes further than patience and endurance.

The mystical literature of the Middle Ages abounds in the description of this quality, deemed necessary for the contemplative life. Occasionally the mystics speak here also of the "mystical death" of the self. However, mystics understand this term primarily in a passive sense, for without such passive self-abandonment the craved union with God could not be attained.

Among the "Spiritual Reformers" of the 16th century (Spiritualists) the term Gelassenheit appears again, but now with a more active connotation, closer to the divine principle of love. Rufus M. Jones recognizes here rightly a kinship to the ideas of the Quakers. It was above all Hans Denck who became a telling witness to this more positive interpretation of Gelassenheit. "If I run in the truth, that is if I run sufferingly (leidenderweis), then my running will not be in vain" (Was geredt sey, Schwindt, 34). "If man shall become one with God, he has to suffer what God intends to work in him" (Ordnung Gottes, Schwindt, 46). "There is no other way to blessedness than to lose one's selfwill" (Was geredt sey, Jones, 23).

It was most likely Denck who made this idea popular among the Anabaptists. They had good reasons to accept it: their own teaching of obedience and discipleship almost required this attitude as the precondition of a reborn soul to walk the narrow path. The idea of martyrdom becomes bearable only on such a basis of self-surrender and joyous acceptance of God's willing. Only through Gelassenheit may suffering become the royal road to God. A beautiful example for this idea may be found in Michael Sattler's wellknown letter to the brotherhood at Horb, sent out of his prison in May 1527. "In this peril I completely surrendered myself unto the will of the Lord, and ... prepared myself even for death for His testimony. [Yet] I deemed it necessary to stir you up to follow after us in the divine warfare" (quoted from Martyrs' Mirror).

Perhaps the most outspoken representatives of Gelassenheit among early Anabaptists were the Philipite Brethren in Moravia, the rival group to the Hutterites, in the 1530's. It might even be claimed that Gelassenheit in a more passive connotation of quiet acceptance of suffering for the Lord's sake was the distinguishing doctrine of this group. Their strongest leader was most likely Michael Schneider, of whom Wolkan has this to say: "[In his hymns] he is more profound [than the other brethren] ; doctrinal questions do not concern him much, the idea of discipleship, however, seems to have influenced him most. Gelassenheit fills his mind: he is ready to suffer calmly, and even in the last hour he remembers his enemies, and he prays to God for them, for the highest virtue to him is brotherly love" (Wolkan, Lieder, 36). Gelassenheit and martyrdom belong then closely together.

Out of this Philipite group came the remarkable tract Concerning the True Soldier of Christ by Hans Haffner of about 1534. Its major idea is Gelassenheit, the victory over "world, flesh and the Devil." "The world truly accepts Christ as a gift, but does not know him at all from the point of view of suffering" (leidenderweis, the same term which Denck used a few years earlier). "When we truly realize the love of God, we will be ready to give up for love's sake even what God has given us." It is by this Gelassenheit that a true disciple is first recognized. Only by overcoming all selfishness will a community of love become possible.

[Bootstrap]

The second meaning of Gelassenheit came from the Hutterites, under whom the meaning changed significantly, taking on the meaning of giving all you have to the community and living in absolute personal poverty. This is significantly different from the older meaning.

In continuation of such thoughts, the Hutterites made the term Gelassenheit their own in a more earthly sense: the relinquishing of one's worldly possessions, in other words "absolute personal poverty," and subsequently the sharing of all earthly goods by the entire group. In fact, thus interpreted Gelassenheit becomes a central teaching of the Hutterite brethren. The great Article Book of about 1547 and its abbreviated version, the Five Articles . , are very outspoken in this regard; e.g., the third article is entitled, Von der wahren Gelassenheit and christlichen Gemeinschaft der Güter (Geschicht-Buch, 219). The idea is repeated in numberless tracts. Here hardly any mysticism is left; Gelassenheit is rather brought into close proximity to brotherly love which, the teaching goes, requires complete communal life. That Gelassenheit as preparedness to martyrdom was not forgotten, either, can likewise be proved from Hutterite literature. The Klein-Geschichtsbuch der Hutterischen Brüder mentions Gelassenheit at seven different places, from 1529 to 1792 (see Index). On page 16, for instance, we read, "We should expect the Lord's work and Cross daily, as we have surrendered unto His discipline (Zucht) and have agreed (verwilligt) to accept whatever He may send upon us with thanksgiving, and to bear it with patience" (1529).

[Bootstrap]

From a German point of view I'd like to add two points:

1. the word is related to German "loslassen": to let go, leave go, leave hold of sth.

It is related to English concepts like "let go and let God", or "you have to let him go" (spoken to a widow who is trying to hang on to her deceased husband).

But in Eckhardt, Suesse, and Tauler, it is letting go of your own will and your own desires, which brings serenity in God. And for them, it is also a form of prayer, letting go of your own self so that you can be caught up in God. This is related to what the Orthodox mean by kenosis and theosis. This is how Eckhardt understands death to self in the Erfurter Reden (I generally prefer Tauler and Suesse to Eckhardt, but I think Hats Off is right - the concept seems to have started with Eckhardt.)

If you speak German, you can find relevant quotes in this Middle High German Dictionary, with links to the original texts.

2. I would prefer the translation: "detachedness", "aloofness"
It s correct that "aloofness" is seen more negatively in the United States, whereas "Gelassenheit" is positively valued in Germany. But this not so much an argument against my translation, it is rather an indication of a traditional cultural difference between Germans and Americans. (The same cultural difference has been researched w.r.t. "Einsamkeit" which is - or has been -positively valued in Germany whereas "loneliness" in America is more negatively connotated.) But if we ignore the different cultural evaluations, "being detached" or "being aloof" would be the most precise representation of the factual content.

Aloof implies a higher position, being "above it all", this is more like letting go, like humility and death to self. Detachedness to your own will and desires is close to this, but not in the way that depression can lead to detachedness, it is more like getting all that self out of the way in order to be one with God.

For the Friends of God, this was true also in prayer, where you should get your own desires and self out of the way so that you can come to God in prayer.