How to Become a Theologian

For as soon as God’s word takes root and grows in you, the devil will harry you, and will make a real doctor of you, and by his assaults will teach you to seek and love God’s word. I myself (if you will permit me, mere mouse-dirt, to be mingled with pepper) am deeply indebted to my papists that through the devil’s raging they have been, oppressed, and distressed me so much.

That is to say, they have made a fairly good theologian of me, which I would not have become otherwise.

Martin Luther, quoted in The Trials of Theology, p. 29