When they finished the play, the professor asked the class, "What was Faustus's real sin? Where did he really fall?" And there had been the standard answers: He was greedy. He desired power, knowledge. He was lustful and blasphemous. Dr. Hemple agreed Faustus had been all those things, but that Marlowe had very carefully planted a clue in the first scene in the play; he had revealed the trap from the beginning.

In the text, Faustus is reading the Vulgate of Saint Jerome, and comes to Romans 6:23: "The wages of sin is death," he quotes, and stops right there, despairing, without turning the page. Dr. Hemple looked out at the class. "You're all good Christians, right? What's the rest of the verse? What would Faustus have seen if he'd turned the page?" There had been no answer. " 'For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Don't you understand? Faustus was eternally damned because he was a bad reader."

It's a bit more extreme, but this made me remember a scene from The Solace of Leaving Early.