there’s a scene in aristophanes’ clouds where socrates claims that the clouds effectively change shape based on your personality to reveal your fursona to you and i for one am glad to see that the ancients still had access to buzzfeed personality quizzes
The indulgence peddler and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent soteriology, condense it into a three-ring binder — its DNA — xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a nearby pilgrimage site…
“Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible?” Eck says. First things first.
“Definitely.”
“Do you believe in one holy, apostolic and catholic Church?”
“Yes. But not in the physical institution of the Church.”
“How can you be a Christian without believing in that?”
“I would say,” Luther says, “how can you be a Christian with it?“
“Did you win your theology fight?”
“Of course I won the fucking theology fight,” Luther says. “I’m the greatest theology fighter in the world.”
“And you’ve got the printing press.”
“Yeah. That, too,” Luther says.
Luther is a religious reformer. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the bleak light of 1522, which is to 1517 as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: he’s excommunicated and under house arrest.
Writing tracts won’t pay the bills, but that’s okay. When you live a Wartburg, there’s always the republic of letters. And in the republic of letters, Martin Luther is a warrior priest.
“Wait a minute, Martin. Make up your mind. This vernacular Bible thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”
He shrugs. “What’s the difference?”
