Searching for Luther on Laughter

Martin Luther said, “It is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.”

My fellow Patheos blogger Randy Alcorn quoted that.  It’s such a good quote that I wondered why I hadn’t heard it before.  Which set me on a merry chase to find the source.  Along the way, I found lots of fascinating material on Luther’s thoughts about laughter, including these other quotations, from AZ Quotes:

If the earth is fit for laughter then surely heaven is filled with it. Heaven is the birthplace of laughter.

If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

The Gospel is nothing less than laughter and joy.

The heart overflows with gladness, and leaps and dances for the joy it has found in God. In this experience the Holy Spirit is active, and has taught us in the flash of a moment the deep secret of joy. You will have as much joy and laughter in life as you have faith in God.

But AZ Quotes doesn’t give sources!  Resisting the felt need to also identify the sources of these quotes (if you know them or can find them, please say what they are in the comments), I forged ahead.

I found several citations of Alcorn’s quote, but, again, no source.  The closest authoritative citation with some illuminating context is from Strong’s Systematic Theology by the Reformed Baptist theologian Augustus Hopkins Strong (1836-1921) (not to be confused with the James Strong who gave us Strong’s Concordance).  Strong contrasts Luther’s appreciation of laughter with a medieval theologian who considered laughter a sin:

Peter Damiani, the great monk-cardinal, said that the sin he found it hardest to uproot was his disposition to laughter. The homage paid to asceticism is the homage paid to the conqueror. But not all conquests are worthy of homage. Better the words of Luther: “If our God may make excellent large pike and good Rhenish wine, I may very well venture to eat and drink. Thou mayest enjoy every pleasure in the world that is not sinful; thy God forbids thee not, but rather wills it. And it is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.”

This is probably where Alcorn picked up the quote, since Strong’s Systematic Theology is still studied in evangelical and Reformed circles.  But where is it in Luther?

I had just about given up my search on Google.  But then I remembered how I said that ChatGBT is best used as search engine.  So I gave the virtually-intelligent site the quotation and asked what the source is.  I got this:

I’m not entirely sure that this quote is from Martin Luther’s works. I’ve searched through his writings and speeches, including his sermons, commentaries, and letters, but I couldn’t find any reference to this exact quote.

It is possible that the quote is a paraphrase or a summary of Luther’s teachings on the role of joy and laughter in the Christian life. Luther did emphasize the importance of joy as a fruit of faith, and he encouraged Christians to find delight in God’s grace and the promises of the Gospel. He also believed that laughter and humor were gifts from God that could be used to relieve stress and strengthen relationships.

However, without more specific information, I cannot determine the exact source of this quote or whether it can be attributed to Martin Luther with certainty.

So I was just about to consign this saying to the rather large list of Luther quotes that he didn’t really say, when I had one more idea.  This sounds like something Luther might have said in Table Talk, the collection of notes drawn from the Reformer’s dinner conversations.  So I gave ChatGPT a little help.  I asked,

Is the following quote from Martin Luther’s “Table Talk”? “It is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.”

And this is the reply:

Yes, that quote is from Martin Luther’s “Table Talk”. “Table Talk” is a collection of informal conversations, anecdotes, and sayings attributed to Martin Luther, recorded by his students and friends over the years. The quote you mentioned is found in a section titled “On the Duty of Preachers”, and it reads as follows:

“The world is now so full of venom and malice that every Christian ought to be armed with the knowledge that it is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.” (Table Talk, No. 1015)

So, while the quote you asked about is similar to the one you mentioned earlier, it differs slightly in wording and context.

Success!  Or so I thought.  But whereas Strong put the words in the context of “excellent large pike and good Rhenish wine,” ChatGPT put them in the context of “venom and malice.”  So I next looked up Table Talk, No. 1015, and found nothing!  There weren’t any entries with that number.  And yet I knew that the best-known English translation by the Victorian writer William Hazlitt that I was consulting is just a selection, as is the more scholarly translation by Theodore Tappett, volume 54 in Luther’s Works.  The entire Table Talk, that is to say, Tischreden, in the German Weimar Edition of Luther’s complete works takes up six volumes!  This is where they are numbered, and they go up to 6,507.

I wasn’t aware that ChatGPT read German, so, after a fruitless search on Google, I asked it, “What is the source of this quotation that you gave me earlier?: ‘The world is now so full of venom and malice that every Christian ought to be armed with the knowledge that it is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.'”

This brought forth this confession, plus the answer I was seeking:

I apologize for the confusion earlier. I made an error in my previous response. The quotation “If our God may make excellent large pike and good Rhenish wine…” is indeed from Luther’s Table Talk, but the quotation “The world is now so full of venom and malice that every Christian ought to be armed with the knowledge that it is pleasing to the dear God whenever thou rejoicest or laughest from the bottom of thy heart.” is not found in Table Talk No. 1015.

After doing further research, I have found that this quotation is actually from a letter that Luther wrote to his friend Nicholas von Amsdorf on December 30, 1530. The letter is included in the English translation of Luther’s letters, edited by Henry Wace and published by A. J. Holman in 1913. The quotation is found in Letter No. 254, and it is in line with Luther’s emphasis on finding joy and pleasure in life as long as it is not sinful.

The satisfaction for finding two sources of Luther’s contention that God is pleased at our laughter  was heightened by my satisfaction at the much-feared and groveled-to Artificial Intelligence confessed to making an error and apologized for it.

At the end of this research, I not only learned about the possibilities and the limits of today’s online technology, I was left with a provocative statement from Luther that I will continue to muse on:  “Thou mayest enjoy every pleasure in the world that is not sinful.”

On the way, Google did turn up quite a few articles, scholarly and otherwise, on Luther’s humor.  In tomorrow’s post, I will tell you what I learned.

 

Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay