St Francis of Assisi is famous for two things: preaching to birds, and the useless saying ‘Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words’.  Presumably his theology of preaching was dictated by his audience.  Francis earned himself the nickname ‘God’s Jester’ and the 14th Century Tuscan work, Fioretti di San Francesco, follows the escapades of his band of monks for our spiritual instruction and amusement.

The RSPCA have requested that you do not try this at home 

One of the best known is the story of St Juniper who joined Francis in 1210 and of whom Francis remarked, ‘Would to God, my brothers, I had a whole forest of such Junipers’.  Boom boom.  One of the friars was ill and Juniper asked if there was anything he could do for him.  The brother asked for a simple meal of a pig’s foot, so Juniper happily trotted off in search of a pig.  He spotted one wandering around in a neighbour’s farm and lopped-off a foot for his brother.

The owner of the pig was furious and hurled abuse at the Franciscans.  Francis demanded that Juniper apologise and make some reparation to the farmer.  Juniper was a simple soul, though, and failed to understand how the man could be so upset about such an act of kindness so he retold the story of the pig’s trotter as if he had done the farmer a favour.  When the farmer exploded at this, Junpier assumed he had misunderstood and gave him a hug, told the story again- this time hamming it up great deal- and asked that the whole pig could be given to the Franciscans.  The farmer was won over by Junpier’s pigheadedness and donated the animal to be slaughtered.

Perhaps Juniper would have looked back to the father of monasticism, St Anthony, who is also the patron saint of pigs.  While on a year of solitary retreat and prayer, Anthony was tempted by the devil appearing to him in the form of a fierce porker which viciously mauled him.  Anthony graciously resisted the temptation to fight back and serve-up bacon butties, was enveloped by a ‘wondrous light’ and the pig was transformed into a humble and docile porcine companion.  Since then, ‘Tantony’ (a contraction of ‘Saint Anthony’) is the nickname given to runt piglets in the litter.

C. S. Lewis was a lord of language. Sometimes he used his powers to explain the difference between Christianity and other faiths, but in The Horse and His Boy he gets readers to feel the difference as he takes them out of beautiful, Aslan-serving Narnia to Calormen, land of the demon-god Tash. There in Calormen readers enter a society that Tash has made as haughty, cruel and bigoted as himself. 

And what does that look like? It isn’t just all the whips that are revealing; it’s all the words. The Calormenes liked ‘talking to one another very slowly about things that sounded dull’, and all those words betray the real nature of Tashism. The stodginess, pomposity and intimidation involved in worshipping Tash all leak out into the language. For example, the Tisroc (‘May he live for ever’): ‘ My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier: for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old-age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects’. Or try saying a Calormene proverb: ‘Application to the root of business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern them are steering the ship of folly toward the rock of indigence’.

In contrast, the words of those who know Aslan are perky and bright. Their proverbs are pithy: ‘Nests before eggs’; ‘Come live with me and you’ll know me’. It seems that the living Lion makes his followers and their words lively. His joy makes them playful. And what Lewis shows so well is that the truth seems to be captured and presented better by lively speech.

In other words, we speak like our gods. One has to wonder what Lewis thought of stodgy and pompous theology. 

Romans 5 is very clear that within humanity, there are really two humanities; one headed by Adam and destined for death, and the other headed by Christ and promised eternal life. Orthodox Christians have always held that the way to transfer membership from the first humanity into the second is to be born again by the Holy Spirit.  Yet for some throughout Church history, the idea of charting new paths from one to the other has proved far more attractive.

The Adamites were a well known North African cult in the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th Centuries, devoted to regaining the innocence of pre-Fall Adam.  Their main expression of (or motivation behind) this rediscovered ‘liberty’ was to practice ‘holy nudism’- both in every day life, and in public worship.  They tended to meet underground, and referred to their services as ‘Paradise’.  Their favourite Bible moment was, unsurprisingly, David’s undignified dancing in his pants at the return of the ark in 2 Samuel 6.

Adamites having a jolly in the street, disturbed by armed soldiers

Despite being condemned as heretics by the likes of Augustine, the Adamites saw something of a revival in 15^th Century Bohemia with a sect of Taborites who ‘indulged in predatory forays upon the neighborhood, and… committed wild excesses in nocturnal dances.’  A further revival in 17^th Century London saw Adamites rejecting most civil, moral and social restraints on their behaviour- including marriage, adherence to the law, and the ‘false modesty’ of society.  Perhaps due to the chillier location (London is hardly Algeria) this group tended to restrict their displays of the ‘divine state of grace’ to closed meetings in members’ homes.

Enjoying the comforts of one’s bed has long been a hobby associated with students.  Yet it seems that eminent theologians have also noted the great benefits of the discipline.

C. S. Lewis wisely noted,  ‘At the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies, there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven.’ (From Surprised by Joy)  A sound piece of advice for the reader who wants to clock-up a decent lie in.

G. K. Chesterton was so enamoured with staying in bed that he wrote a short essay, On Lying in Bed.  In it he imagined that ‘Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.’ 

After some time ruminating on the merits of lying in bed for a good deal of time, Chesterton gets firm. ‘The tone now commonly taken toward the practice of lying in bed is hypocritical and unhealthy…  Instead of being regarded, as it ought to be, as a matter of personal convenience and adjustment, it has come to be regarded by many as if it were a part of essential morals to get up early in the morning... Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.’

Clearly, a breakfast (or lunch) in bed now and then is the mark of a man or woman of fine moral character.  Let’s not forget that Moses enjoyed lying in bed and thinking about theology often (Deuteronomy 6:7), Adam and Boaz both got their wives by enjoying a good sleep, and of course the promise of the new creation is finally to enjoy the Sabbath rest of God’s 7^th Day (Hebrews 8).  Until that great day, we are to rest- with theological appreciation- on the promise of Psalm 127:2, ‘the Lord gives sleep to those he loves.’

On this day, 491 years ago, Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg 95 theses for debate over the matter of indulgences.

An actual photo of Luther nailing up his theses

Some of the theses were actually quite funny, like Thesis 82, which asked why the pope didn’t just release all souls from purgatory out of love, instead of charging for it. Later, though, Luther realised he’d missed a trick, and he circulated a pamphlet inviting people to see an even greater collection of relics than that in Wittenberg. This included:

·    Three flames from the burning bush on Mt Sinai
·    Two feathers and an egg from the Holy Spirit
·    Half a wing of the archangel Gabriel
·    A section of Moses’ left horn [Exod 34:29, in the Vulgate, Moses‘ face was ‘horned’ from the conversation with the Lord]
·    Two ells of sound from the trumpets on Mt Sinai
·    A remnant of the flag with which Christ opened hell
·    A large lock of Beelzebub’s beard, stuck on the flag

Who says you have to be always serious to reform the Church?  The laughter of the Reformation was one its most powerful weapons, exposing and humiliating bankrupt theology.

Posted as part of the Challies.com Reformation Day 2008 Symposium.

‘What a bubbling fountain of humour Mr. Spurgeon had!  I laughed more, I verily believe, when in his company than during all the rest of my life besides.’  That’s what people said about Charles Spurgeon, the nineteenth century ‘prince of preachers’. 

Today in theological debate, mentioning Adam and Eve is likely to get you into discussion about the interpretation of Genesis 1, the age of the earth, or whether the Fall was a real historical event.

There was a time, however, when you’d have been pinned to the wall by your sparring partner and forced to declare your position on the thorny issue of whether or not Adam and Eve had navels.  While Monks spent time literally 'navel gazing' over the puzzle in the quiet of their monasteries, fierce rival factions warred outside over what they took to be a key theological battleground. When Michelangelo painted Adam with a navel on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he was labelled a heretic by some theologians.  In 1646, Sir Thomas Browne an English philosopher published his Pseudodoxia Epidemica in which a whole chapter was dedicated to the evils of ‘Pictures of Adam and Eve with Navels’, describing it a ‘vulgar error’.

Michelangelo dares to paint Adam's navel on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. 

The opposite team argued hard for Adam and Eve’s belly buttons, laughing-off accusations that they must have pictured God with one since the our first parents were made in His image. Unfortunately, this group had to deal with some internal politics as three distinct camps emerged; the pre-umbilicists, mid-umbilicists, and post-umbilicists.  The first group assumed that Adam and Eve were created with navels (usually in order to give the appearance of prior history, solving the infamous chicken and egg connundrum); the second posited that surely Adam’s navel was created when the Lord removed his rib to create Eve, and Eve went without; the third places the umbilicus on the pair after the Fall as a reminder that they’d been severed from the Lord, just as a child would be severed from his mother at birth.

The debate over whether Adam and Eve’s navels were intrusions (innies) or protrusions (outies) is still simmering in theology faculties around the country.

Tertullian, the great North African theologian writing around 200 AD, was like a cross between Bruce Banner and Oscar Wilde: scary enough that you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, and very, very funny.


Tertullian, ready either to explode or write a 'Knock! Knock!' joke.

Tertullian chuckled so much it disturbed people.  First of all, he used to laugh at how simple – in fact, how absurdly simple – truth is, meaning it takes a humble mind to recognise it.  Once, he put it like this:

‘The Son of God was crucified: I am not ashamed, because it is shameful.
The Son of God died: it is immediately credible, because it is silly.
He was buried, and rose again: it is certain,  because it is impossible.’
 
Fighting talk for those who reasoned God couldn’t become man, nor three be one!

But he also used to laugh at the absurdity of false belief.  This was quite appropriate, he reckoned:

‘There are many things which deserve refutation in such a way as to have no gravity expended on them. Vain and silly topics are met with especial fitness by laughter. Even the truth may indulge in ridicule, because it is jubilant; it may play with its enemies, because it is fearless. Only we must take care that its laughter be not unseemly, and so itself be laughed at; but wherever its mirth is decent, there it is a duty to indulge it.’

Marcion was a heretic to be given exactly such treatment.  Marcion, reasoning that Jesus was God, felt he had to deny that Jesus was fully human.  Tertullian reckoned this merely proved that Marcion himself was not fully human, because he must be lacking a brain.  Tertullian thought he probably had a pumpkin instead, meaning Marcion was half-man, half-fruit.

He dished out such lines because he believed they were just the sort of jolt the pompous heretics, puffed up with all their pretentious ‘profundity’, needed.  And, especially for dealing with those who denied Jesus’ humanity (and so were a bit inhuman themselves), it was a very human way of arguing.  

Perhaps PC means we can’t be like Tertullian any more (or like Paul in Galatians 5:12).  Or is it that PC, bone-dry theology is itself a bit half-man, half-fruit?

Reading different versions of the bible can be a good thing. But sometimes it can be quite surprising. Read Psalm 91:5 in the Coverdale Bible of 1535 and you’ll find ‘Thou shall not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night’ (‘bug’ meant ‘something terrifying’). 

Bored or naughty typesetters, however, once forced bible readers to be much more wary:

In the 1562 edition of the Geneva Bible, Matthew 5:9 read ‘Blessed are the placemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.’ 
A 1716 edition of the King James Bible has Jesus say ‘sin on more’ in John 5:14, rather than ‘sin no more’. 
A 1795 edition had Jesus say in Mark 7:27 ‘Let the children first be killed’ instead of ‘Let the children first be filled’.

Probably the worst mistakes, however, were made in the 1631 and 1653 ‘Wicked Bibles’.  In the 1653 edition, 1 Corinthians 6:9 read ‘the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God’ and the 1631 edition had the seventh commandment as ‘Thou shalt commit adultery.’  The bibles were ordered to be burned, and the sloppy (one hopes it was just sloppiness) printer fined a then-hefty £300.

In the Charing Cross Bible of 1651, the bored typesetter replaced Ezekiel 48:5 with the following rant: ‘I amme sick to mye Hart of typesettinge... I telle you, onne daye laike this Ennyone with half an oz. of Sense should bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the livelong daie inn this mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workeshoppe.’ 

It also included the following three extra verses at the end of Genesis 3:

25. And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?
26. And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.
27. And the Lord did not ask him again.

Unlike the ‘Wicked Bibles’, however, the Charing Cross Bible was (after painstaking research) proved to be a forgery.  

The old Puritans aren’t generally known for their rollicking laughs; yet when it came to naming their children, they seemed to have the most roguish sense of humour.  Not satisfied with biblical names, some sought to give their children whole bible verses or edifying slogans for Christian names:

‘Job-Raked-Out-Of-The-Ashes,’ ‘Search-The-Scriptures,’ or ‘Fly-Fornication’ for example.  Surely no child could be so-named with a straight face.

Perhaps the best-known example was ‘Praise-God’ Barebone, a member of the Nominated Assembly in Cromwell’s day.

Praise-God Barebone

‘Praise-God’ got off lightly, though – his brother was called ‘Christ-Came-Into-The-World-To-Save’ Barebone.  Nevertheless, he decided to exact his revenge on his son, naming him ‘ Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned’ Barebone.  Unsurprisingly, people found it easier to refer to the son simply as ‘Damned’ Barebone. Yet, for some reason, ‘Damned’ preferred to be known as Nicholas, and it is under that name that he founded London’s first fire insurance company and fire brigade

If you’d like some more Puritan advice in naming your child, maybe one of the following can inspire you:

No-Merit
Sorry-For-Sin
More-Trial
Small-Hope
Kill-Sin
Fight-The-Good-Fight-Of-Faith

Some of most rib-tickling theologians of all were the ‘holy fools’ of the 6th century, who behaved foolishly so as to defy the conventions of the sinful world.  Perhaps the most famous was Simeon the Fool.

Simeon the Fool (as he never looked)

He famously began his ministry of folly by entering the city of Emessa (dragging a dead dog behind him) and mimicking Jesus’ healing of the blind man.  Jesus had used saliva and clay on the man’s eyes; but when a man suffering from leucoma in both eyes approached Simeon, he anointed the man’s eyes with mustard, burning him and so aggravating his condition that he went completely blind. 

The rest of his ministry consisted of streaking in the circus, tripping people up, and consuming vast amounts of beans on solemn fast days – with predictable and hilarious results.  During church services, he would pelt the priests with nuts and blow out the candles; at other times he would drag himself around on his buttocks, punch adulterers, eat raw meat and defecate in public. 

Simeon was understandably revered by many (and was later canonised as a saint); yet when he ran naked into the crowded women’s section of the bath-house and jumped in to join them, he was promptly beaten and thrown out by the women, who suspected that perhaps he was not as foolish as he pretended. 

Simeon has inspired many people down through history, men such as Basil the Fool and John the Hairy, and is widely followed today.

The good theologian chuckles at how absurdly good the gospel of Jesus is. He laughs, because he doesn’t take himself too seriously. And he knows the power of a good giggle: tittering at what tempts him robs it of its power. So don’t be a pompous ass. Be a merrie theologiane!

Luther knew how to be merry: at home, Luther had his own bowling alley (he loved bowling – he’s said to be the guy who standardised the rules, fixing the number of pins at nine); he even had his own brewery.  Much of the Reformation in Germany stemmed from Luther having people over for dinner.  He had people over the whole time.  And over supper they’d talk theology: sometimes it was justification, sometimes the theology of farting.  For example:

“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?’”

Clearly the Devil’s taunts weren’t so bad after that! 

Fancy some more?  Laugh your way through this most rip-roaring read: