So Leppin’s point, that Luther thought of this life in such terms, means that when he referred to the cloaca, he was speaking tongue in cheek and seriously at the same time, as he so often did. The cloaca was not only literally that place in the tower where he went to the bathroom but also the essence of this world, a world not merely begrimed with but filled with and consisting of sin and shit and misery and death. For God to come into this foulest world is for him already to come most of the way into hell. This world is the antechamber to hell and eternal death, and unless we allow the God
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