{"id":90733,"date":"2025-04-07T01:45:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T05:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/?p=90733"},"modified":"2025-04-07T01:45:42","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T05:45:42","slug":"luthers-table-talk-how-historically-accurate-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/2025\/04\/luthers-table-talk-how-historically-accurate-is-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Luther’s “Table Talk”: How Historically Accurate Is It?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Photo credit<\/strong>: Frontispiece of the first English translation of Martin Luther\u2019s Table Talk<\/em>, edited by Captain Henry Bell and published in London in 1652 [public domain \/ Wikimedia Commons]<\/p>\n

Table Talk<\/em> <\/a>(in its many forms, of various levels of accuracy) purports to be transcriptions of utterances by Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism. It\u2019s not, technically, his own writing. All agree on that. I\u2019d like to cite at some length, the Introduction to volume 54 of the 55-volume edition of Luther\u2019s Works<\/em> in English, dedicated to excerpts from Table Talk<\/em>\u00a0deemed to be the most reliable and accurate (as best can be determined by meticulous research).<\/p>\n

The Introduction in Vol. 54 of Luther\u2019s Works<\/em> (Table Talk<\/em>) \u2014 I have all 55 volumes in hardcover in my living room \u2014 , which runs from pp. ix-xxvi, was written by the Lutheran Theodore G. Tappert<\/a> (1904-1973), who also edited and translated the entire volume. He was Schieren Professor of the History of Christianity at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and author, translator, or editor of many books<\/a>,\u00a0 including the Book of Concord<\/em><\/a>, which contains the binding Lutheran creeds and confessions. He was the key figure, along with Jaroslav Pelikan<\/a>, in the editing and compilation of Luther\u2019s Works<\/em>.\u00a0 Here are excerpts from Tappert\u2019s Introduction:<\/p>\n

Conrad Cordatus claimed to have been the first man to record Luther\u2019s conversation at table and asserted that Luther \u201cnever indicated by as much as a word that what I did displeased him.\u201d . . . In fact, he [Luther] sometimes challenged the notetakers to record especially outrageous statements by saying, \u201cMake a note of this!\u201d \u201cWrite it down!\u201d \u201cMark this well!\u201d When his wife jestingly complained that those who were taking notes ought to pay for this additional instruction, Luther in effect defended those who were recording the conversation. (pp. x-xi)<\/p>\n

Johann Georg Walch finally decided to incorporate the Table Talk in his edition, which was published in twenty-four volumes in Halle between 1739 and 1753. . . .\u00a0\u00a0Attempts were made to deny its genuineness, to claim that it was an unfriendly fabrication and forgery. (p. xi)<\/p>\n

During the last decades of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth century . . . manuscripts containing contemporary reports of Luther\u2019s conversations were discovered in remote archives or rediscovered in libraries where they had long been overlooked. Some were edited and published, and these contained the notes taken by Anthony Lauterbach, Conrad Cordatus, John Schlaginhaufen, and John Matheius. Still other manuscripts were found to contain notes by Veit Dietrich and collections of sayings recorded by various other writers. All together, more than thirty manuscripts were found. . . .<\/p>\n

There can be no doubt that these manuscripts take us much closer to the actual conversations at Luther\u2019s table than the text offered by Aurifaber. It was the achievement especially of Ernst Kroker, whose painstaking editorial work made the six volumes of the Table Talk in the Weimar edition a model of literary and historical reconstruction, to demonstrate this. (pp. xv-xvi)<\/p>\n

Questions have often been raised concerning the reliability of the reports of the Table Talk that have come down to us.\u00a0 . . . There is no doubt that the [newly discovered] manuscripts take us much closer to what was actually said that Aurifaber\u2019s text does. But it is too much to claim that even the manuscripts provide us with verbatim reports. (p. xxii)<\/p>\n

Although it cannot be said that available texts\u00a0 of the Table Talk reproduce word for word what was actually said at Luther\u2019s table, it must nevertheless be added that the texts are reasonably trustworthy in reporting the subject matter and the directions which the conversation took. In other words, the Table Talk is less reliable than writings which we have from Luther\u2019s own hand but not on this account to be dismissed as fiction. (pp. xxiii)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Preserved Smith<\/a> (1880-1941): an American historian of the Protestant \u201cReformation\u201d: whose doctoral dissertation at Columbia University (1907) was a critical study of the Table Talk<\/em>, and who also wrote a biography of Luther, provided further details about these new Table Talk<\/em> resources, alluded to by Dr. Tappert above:<\/p>\n

The aim of the present translation is not, however, so much to correct the faults of previous ones as to bring new and important material to the attention of the English-speaking public. Until the present generation practically all that was known of the table talk was the edition of Aurifaber, and as an editor this person treated his material with extreme freedom \u2014 suppressing, omitting, expanding, and altering, to suit his own pious, rather than scholarly, purposes. The publication of the original records in recent years has for the first time offered a really good text and has also brought to light much that was unknown to Aurifaber. The first of these new sources to be published was Lauterbach\u2019s \u201d Diary for 1538,\u201d printed in 1872. Thirteen years afterwards Cordatus\u2019s notes were given to the public, and three years later those of Schlaginhaufen. The records of Mathesius, Rabe and Heydenreich, with some of Lauterbach\u2019s and Weller\u2019s, were published by L\u00f6sche in 1892, and, from a much better manuscript, with additional notes of Besold and Plato, by Kroker in 1903. The important manuscripts of Dietrich and Medler did not issue from the press until 1912. As there are no more sources of importance as yet unpublished, the moment seems propitious for using this vast amount of new material. So voluminous is it that a selection only is practicable, but, though comparatively small, the present chrestomathy, it is hoped, will present to the reader of English most of the new material of first importance . . . (Conversations With Luther: Selections from Recently Published Sources of the Table Talk<\/em><\/a>, translated and edited by Preserved Smith and Herbert Percival Gallinger, New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1915,\u00a0Introduction, pp. xxv-xxvi)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amateur blogger and Calvinist apologist and polemicist James Swan is more skeptical of Table Talk<\/em> than the editors of Luther\u2019s Work<\/em>s (\u201cLW\u201d) and the magisterial German edition (from which the former were drawn), published in Weimar in 1883, and Preserved Smith. Swan opined, for example:<\/p>\n

It bears repeating that the\u00a0Table Talk<\/i>\u00a0is not actually something Luther wrote. It\u2019s a collection of second hand comments written down by Luther\u2019s friends and students published after his death.\u00a0It often\u00a0falls on deaf ears<\/i>\u00a0when I point out to detractors that Luther didn\u2019t write the\u00a0Table Talk<\/i>. Since the statements contained therein are purported to have been made by Luther, they should serve more as corroborating second-hand testimony to something Luther is certain to have written. The\u00a0Table Talk<\/i>, therefore, contains something Luther may have said, but not necessarily. (from his blog, Boors All<\/em>, \u201cLuther\u2019s High Regard for John Calvin?,\u201d<\/a> 6-13-19)<\/p>\n

Be careful with Luther\u2019s Table Talk. The Table Talk is a collection of comments from Luther written down by Luther\u2019s students and friends. It is not in actuality an official writing of Luther\u2019s and should not serve as the basis for interpreting his theology. (\u201cLuther: Christ was an Adulterer<\/a>,\u201d Boors All<\/em>, 2-5-16)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But if the choice comes down to the conflicting opinions of Swan or the editors of the most authoritative editions of Luther\u2019s writings in both German and English, who thought enough of the better versions of Table Talk<\/em> to include them in their collections of what they call Luther\u2019s \u201cwritings\u201d \u2014 or the collections of Preserved Smith, then I choose the scholarly opinions of any of these men rather than the unscholarly amateur opinion of polemicist James Swan (nothing personal).<\/p>\n

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Photo credit<\/strong>: Frontispiece of the first English translation of Martin Luther\u2019s Table Talk, edited by Captain Henry Bell and published in London in 1652<\/span> [public domain \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Summary<\/em>: I examine the historical trustworthiness of the various collections of Luther\u2019s sayings during social meals, called \u201cTable Talk\u201d Should we regard (some) as Luther\u2019s own words?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo credit: Frontispiece of the first English translation of Martin Luther\u2019s Table Talk, edited by Captain Henry Bell and published in London in 1652 [public domain \/ Wikimedia Commons] Table Talk (in its many forms, of various levels of accuracy) purports to be transcriptions of utterances by Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism. 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Dave\u2019s apologetics and writing apostolate was the subject of a feature article in the May 2002 issue of \\\"Envoy Magazine.\\\" He served as the staff moderator at the Internet discussion forum for The Coming Home Network, from 2007-2010. Dave has been interviewed on many nationally syndicated Catholic radio shows, including \\\"Catholic Answers Live\\\" (twice), \\\"Faith and Family Live\\\" (Steve Wood), \\\"Kresta in the Afternoon,\\\" \\\"Son Rise Morning Show,\\\" \\\"Catholic Connection\\\" (Teresa Tomeo), and \\\"The Catholics Next Door.\\\" His large and popular website, \\\"Biblical Evidence for Catholicism,\\\" was online from March 1997 to March 2007, and received the 1998 Catholic Website of the Year award from \\\"Envoy Magazine.\\\" His blog of the same name (now transferred to Patheos), begun in February 2004, contains more than 1,500 papers, at least 500 debates or dialogues, and over 50 distinct \\\"index\\\" web pages. Unsolicited correspondence has indicated many hundreds of conversions (or returns) to the Catholic faith as a result, by God's grace, of these writings. Dave's conversion story was published in the bestselling book \\\"Surprised by Truth\\\" (edited by Patrick Madrid; San Diego: Basilica Press, 1994). Sophia Institute Press has published six of his books: \\\"A Biblical Defense of Catholicism\\\" (Foreword by Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J., 1996 \/ 2003), \\\"The Catholic Verses\\\" (2004), \\\"The One-Minute Apologist\\\" (2007), \\\"Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths\\\" (2009), \\\"The Quotable Newman\\\" (editor: 2012), and \\\"Proving the Catholic Faith is Biblical\\\" (2015). He is co-author (with Dr. Paul Thigpen) of the inserts for \\\"The New Catholic Answer Bible\\\" (Our Sunday Visitor: 2005), and editor for \\\"The Wisdom of Mr. Chesterton: The Very Best Quotes, Quips, and Cracks from the Pen of G. K. Chesterton\\\" (Saint Benedict Press \/ TAN Books: 2009). \\\"100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura\\\" was published by Catholic Answers in May 2012. His \\\"Quotable Wesley\\\" compilation was published by (Protestant \/ Wesleyan publisher) Beacon Hill Press in April 2014. Several of his 49 books are bestsellers in their field. Dave maintains a popular personal Facebook page, a Facebook author page, and has a Twitter account as well. He offers almost all of his books in e-book form on his own Biblical Catholicism site (http:\/\/biblicalcatholicism.com\/), at a permanent deep discount: only $2.99 for ePub, mobi, and AZW, and $1.99 for PDF. His writing has been enthusiastically endorsed or recommended by many leading Catholic apologists, authors, and priests, including Dr. Scott Hahn, Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Marcus Grodi, Patrick Madrid, Steve Ray, Tim Staples, Devin Rose, Mike Aquilina, Al Kresta, Karl Keating, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Brandon Vogt, Marcellino D'Ambrosio, and Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave has been happily married to his wife Judy since October 1984. 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Formerly a campus missionary, as a Protestant, Dave was received into the Catholic Church in February 1991, by the late, well-known catechist and theologian, Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave\u2019s articles have appeared in many influential Catholic periodicals, including \"This Rock\" (now called \"Catholic Answers Magazine\"), \"Envoy Magazine\" (Patrick Madrid), \"The Catholic Answer,\" \"The Coming Home Journal,\" \"Gilbert Magazine\" (American Chesterton Society), and \"The Latin Mass.\" He also writes a featured column for every issue of \"The Michigan Catholic\": published by the archdiocese of Detroit, and was editor for most of the apologetics tracts published by the St. Paul Street Evangelization apostolate. Dave\u2019s apologetics and writing apostolate was the subject of a feature article in the May 2002 issue of \"Envoy Magazine.\" He served as the staff moderator at the Internet discussion forum for The Coming Home Network, from 2007-2010. Dave has been interviewed on many nationally syndicated Catholic radio shows, including \"Catholic Answers Live\" (twice), \"Faith and Family Live\" (Steve Wood), \"Kresta in the Afternoon,\" \"Son Rise Morning Show,\" \"Catholic Connection\" (Teresa Tomeo), and \"The Catholics Next Door.\" His large and popular website, \"Biblical Evidence for Catholicism,\" was online from March 1997 to March 2007, and received the 1998 Catholic Website of the Year award from \"Envoy Magazine.\" His blog of the same name (now transferred to Patheos), begun in February 2004, contains more than 1,500 papers, at least 500 debates or dialogues, and over 50 distinct \"index\" web pages. Unsolicited correspondence has indicated many hundreds of conversions (or returns) to the Catholic faith as a result, by God's grace, of these writings. Dave's conversion story was published in the bestselling book \"Surprised by Truth\" (edited by Patrick Madrid; San Diego: Basilica Press, 1994). Sophia Institute Press has published six of his books: \"A Biblical Defense of Catholicism\" (Foreword by Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J., 1996 \/ 2003), \"The Catholic Verses\" (2004), \"The One-Minute Apologist\" (2007), \"Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths\" (2009), \"The Quotable Newman\" (editor: 2012), and \"Proving the Catholic Faith is Biblical\" (2015). He is co-author (with Dr. Paul Thigpen) of the inserts for \"The New Catholic Answer Bible\" (Our Sunday Visitor: 2005), and editor for \"The Wisdom of Mr. Chesterton: The Very Best Quotes, Quips, and Cracks from the Pen of G. K. Chesterton\" (Saint Benedict Press \/ TAN Books: 2009). \"100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura\" was published by Catholic Answers in May 2012. His \"Quotable Wesley\" compilation was published by (Protestant \/ Wesleyan publisher) Beacon Hill Press in April 2014. Several of his 49 books are bestsellers in their field. Dave maintains a popular personal Facebook page, a Facebook author page, and has a Twitter account as well. He offers almost all of his books in e-book form on his own Biblical Catholicism site (http:\/\/biblicalcatholicism.com\/), at a permanent deep discount: only $2.99 for ePub, mobi, and AZW, and $1.99 for PDF. His writing has been enthusiastically endorsed or recommended by many leading Catholic apologists, authors, and priests, including Dr. Scott Hahn, Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Marcus Grodi, Patrick Madrid, Steve Ray, Tim Staples, Devin Rose, Mike Aquilina, Al Kresta, Karl Keating, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Brandon Vogt, Marcellino D'Ambrosio, and Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave has been happily married to his wife Judy since October 1984. They have three sons and a daughter, and reside in southeast Michigan (metro Detroit).","sameAs":["https:\/\/biblicalcatholicism.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/dave.armstrong.798","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@LuxVeritatisApologetics"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/author\/davearmstrong"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}