I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. When he tempts me with silly sins I say, 'Devil, yesterday I broke wind too. Have you written it down on your list?'
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
"The pope, a nemesis, was his 'dearest little ass-pope.'"
"Beer is made by men, wine by God."
"The inner man cannot be forced to do out of his own free will, what he should do, except the grace of God change the heart and make it willing."
"If you are a preacher of grace, then preach not a legal but a true and spiritual grace. If grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save those who are only fictitious…"
"The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest."
German theologian whose 95 Theses (1517) launched the Protestant Reformation and broke the Catholic Church's monopoly on Western Christianity. Closely associated with Philipp Melanchthon (Lutheran systematizer) and John Calvin (later Reformer who built on Luther's break). For an intellectual contrast, see Pope Leo X, Renaissance pope (1513-1521) — Leo X's indulgence sales triggered Luther's break and Leo excommunicated him in 1521 — Luther's entire Reformation is structured as a direct answer to the indulgence-funded Vatican Leo represented.
Quoted in 'The Wit of Martin Luther' and other sources.
Date: 1530s-1540s (Table Talk)
GeneralFound in 1 providers: gemini
1 source checked
Luther says he fights off the devil's temptations with crude humor, literally mocking him with flatulence. When the devil tries to shame him over trivial sins, Luther refuses to take the accusation seriously. By reducing spiritual warfare to a joke about breaking wind, he argues that scrupulous guilt over minor faults gives evil more power than it deserves. Laughter and contempt, not anxious piety, are his weapons.
Luther was famously earthy, blunt, and fond of scatological humor, traits that fill his Table Talk and polemical writings. His theology of grace insisted believers were freed from obsessive guilt over small sins, since salvation came by faith, not scrupulous accounting. He also reported literal encounters with the devil at the Wartburg. Mocking Satan with a fart perfectly fuses his peasant tongue, his doctrine of Christian freedom, and his combative personality.
In the early sixteenth century, Europeans took the devil as a literal, prowling presence, and the medieval Church cultivated meticulous guilt through confession manuals cataloguing every sin. Luther's Reformation, launched in 1517, attacked this machinery, including indulgences sold to offset such faults. Bawdy, bodily humor was also common in Reformation pamphlet warfare, where reformers and Catholics traded gross insults. Luther's joke fits that combative print culture and his campaign against anxious, transactional piety.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].
Your cart is empty
