Hey Joel

[e_dog]

"An anxious ass does not a happy fart produce." --Blessed Dr Martin Luther

is that quote legit.?

[Lightning Rod]

"An anxious ass does not a happy fart produce." --Blessed Dr Martin Luther

is that quote legit.?

I was wondering that myself, dog

But what does joel know about Luther? He's just a Lutheran.

I do know that Luther was a flute player, so he could have said that.

[joel]

Das Wort Martin Luthers:
"Aus einem verzagten Arsch kommt kein fröhlicher Furz!"

It's been variously translated as:
1) Out of a faint-hearted ass comes no happy fart!
2) No happy fart escapes a timid ars.
3) A happy fart never comes out of an unhappy ass.

The more poetic version adopted by the students at the Lutheran seminary in Gettysburg follows Gritsch: An anxious ass does not a happy fart produce.

Luther like farting and beer and shit...he felt they made good sermon illustrations. I, however, don't think I could get away with all that....

[jimboloco]

an eloquent fart escaped his arse
enlightened, he fell off upon the grass
and when he got up he had found
an epiphany a poop upon the ground
of being flouted and touted pound for pound
and this too, he pondered, will parse.

[Peevette]

I suddenly feel this incredible urge to go potty........

[hester_prynne]

Oh come on, we all know it's true.....

H

[e_dog]

yeah but wheres tha proof? did he write this proverb in a book, or delivered it a sermon? or what.

that's one blasphemin' bible-batter.

[joel]

I tired to look it up...but all my life (incl. books) are packed for a move that seems to be drawing on and on and on).

My guess is that it was recorded in the Table Talks (the minutes from dinner conversations that were kept when he invited students to his home in Wittenberg and made his wife Katie feed them). Could be a letter...or a sermon. He didn't shy away from such in sermons, but it would more likely be calling the pope or the devil an ass in those contexts....

[Doreen Peri]

I just googled "Martin Luther fart quote".. lol.. and came up with this

Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?

—Martin Luther

http://thessalonians.wordpress.com/category/fart/

Maybe he just liked the word "fart," the old fart.

[joel]

Proof of how scary a twist in life can be, that Luther, who at one point was a leading voice in European support for the dignity and worth of Jewish peoples as sacred unto God, later published things like "Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?" in his "On the Jews and and Their Lies."

Luther figured that it made a lot of sense to be Jewish in the Middle Ages because the Church out of Rome had, in his opinion, hidden the beautiful truth from the world. Luther figured that his reforming work would open the eyes of Jewish people to the truth of the gospel--and voila!: All Jewish people would happily convert to Lutheranism. When that didn't happen...Luther went mad.

He wasn't racially anti-semitic...he was radically anti-non-Lutheran. He was obsessed with belief, not biology. Anyone who converted to think like him was cool...but he did not feign away from damning those who profess Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Anabaptist thoughts, Calvinism, Islam, et cetera.

Where were we talking about people who actually think they have possession of absolute truth? <sigh> Fun legacy for Lutherans....

Perhaps he went out of his way to be an ass at times to remind his followers that Luther was no one to become the new idol; maybe if he weren't such a blowhard, his words would take preceidence over the word he was trying to liberate.

[e_dog]

"Did I not tell you earlier that a Jew is such a noble, precious jewel that God and all the angels dance when he farts?"

—Martin Luther

Look, i'm no expert on Early Modern Germanic Humour but that sounds like (anti-semitic) sarcasm to me, not the Blessed Doktor Luther standing up for the dignity of Jewry. as your post suggested.

Stilltru', what says you? You's a student of Hannah Arrent, no?

[joel]

Look, i'm no expert on Early Modern Germanic Humour but that sounds like (anti-semitic) sarcasm to me, not the Blessed Doktor Luther standing up for the dignity of Jewry. as your post suggested.

My apologies!!!

Ok, I'm going to go clarify my previous post because I do not intend to imply that what Luther said was less than evil/condemning/wrong. The quote is from an essay Luther published entitled "On the Jews and Their Lies." The essay is repulsive. It was used as a MAJOR rallying-point for Nazi attrocities. Nazi anti-semiticism (and anti-semiticism in general) has found a big old friend in these writings from the end of Luther's life.

What Luther writes against Judaism in the last years of his life is self-condemned by what he had professed earlier in life: "Good God, who would want to join our religion, even though he were of a meek and submissive mind, when he sees how spitefully and cruelly he is treated, and that the treatment he can expect is not only unchristian, but worse than bestial? If hating Jews and heretics and Turks makes people Christians, we are beyond a doubt worse than Jews, heretics, and Turks, because no one loves Christ less than we. The rage of these people reminds me of children and fools, who, when they see a picture of a Jew on a wall, go and cut out his eyes, pretending that they want to help the Lord Christ. Most of the preachers during Lent treat of nothing else than the cruelty of the Jews towards the Lord Christ, which they are continually magnifying. Thus they embitter believers against them, while the Gospel aims only at showing and exalting the love of God and Christ” from W.H.T. Dau, Luther Examined and Reexamined: A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation (St Loius: Concordia Publishing House, 1917), 202-203.

Luther championed the rights of Jews in his earlier years as a reformer, defending marriage, working against the burning of Hebrew books, acquiring Jewish professors at Wittenberg, calling for an end to physical abuse, etc. In the same way, as the Ottoman Empire apporached central Europe, Luther denied that rape and pillage was acceptable against the Muslim Turks. But when he didn't get his way (i.e. the mass conversion of all non-Lutherans (including Jewish believers) to adopt his faith), Luther turned on them all.

Christians in the Lutheran tradition have to deal with a respected and "blessed" reformer whose tirades have led to the murder of millions of people (not to mention the general support of Naziism by German Lutherans in WWII). In 1983, the nation-wide Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, and in 1994, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (which account for the majority of Lutheran Christians in the US) explicitly denounced Luther's statements against Jewish people. Luther's personal statements hold no authority in our tradition, but we have to acknowledge that our histories are intimately intertwined.

All that to say: Yes, Luther said terrible things against Jewish and other non-Lutheran peoples and I neither excuse nor defend them.

[Totenkopf]

What did Nietzsche call Herr Luther? An abortion or something. Luther was about like the Dick Cheney of the Germany of his time--a pal of potentates, mostly anti-semitic, and in favor of busting the rebels of the time (like the anabaptist Munzer, whose execution Luther approved of) .

The Catholics were rife with corruption but Luther replaced it with another sort. (however we grant that some Lutherans were rather talented: like JS Bach.)

[e_dog]

and I. Kant?

[Totenkopf]

A spider or ghost or something. Kant also a Lutheran; but there are sort of liberal lutherans and more rightist ones. Kant was a peacenik, arguably, though moralist (there are a few skeptics who argue that Kant is actually an empirical-materialist and atheist, however). Hegel was a Lutheran as well: not a peacenik, though.

The Hegelian process--History is rational, etc.--could be read as Lutheran, really: that protestant "dispensation" (seen in sick-phucks like Falwell as well) implies anything goes, more or less, long as ya got "faith." Nietzsche's whole programme on the other hand, was contra--Luther, anti-faith (and anti-Paul--Luther's favored apostle). FN's vati was a Lutheran minister or something.

The nazis had some lutherans (Goering was , I believe), but there were some lutherans who denounced them (probably SPD), and were sent to concentration camps. At the same time, Catholic bishops blew kisses to Il Duce and even some to the Waffen SS. All brought to you by Gott.

Maybe an "Ode to Reichmarshall Goering," good Lutheran boy?

There are some wacky Lutheran/mennonites out in Cali central valley: hang around a few, you might be reminded of "Children of the Corn."