“Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom … Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.”
[Martin Luther, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142-148 ]
And I sat in my heap of pain until the words emerged and opened out, ‘The just shall live by faith. My pain vanished, my bowels flushed and I could get up. I could see the life I’d lost. No man is just because he does just works… This I know; reason is the devil’s whore, born of one stinking goat called Aristotle, which believes that good works make a good man. But the truth is that the just shall live by faith alone. I need no more than my sweet redeemer and mediator, Jesus Christ