His solution is ingenious and elegant. Of the hypothesis which places the controversies about the law in the post-apostolic period only so much is taken over as is absolutely necessary. The connexion between Paulinism and Gnosticism is made as loose as possible. The eschatology has a certain importance given to it. Hellenic elements are not assumed to be present in the primitive doctrine; on the other hand, a knowledge of the Book of Wisdom, Philo, Seneca and the Graeco-Roman philosophy in general is ascribed to the interpolators. The criterion by which to distinguish what is genuine from what is not is ingeniously chosen. It is not particularly difficult to separate in the letters the parts which are mainly plain and practical from those which relate to an antinomian speculative system. The resulting division between original text and interpolations has a [pg 147] more natural and simple air than is the case in any of the other attempts to draw the line between them. Nevertheless, it was scarcely possible that this work should contribute anything to the solution of the Pauline problem. It is built upon sand, for the argument on which everything is based is unsound. Völter asserts that “simplicity” is the mark of what is genuinely apostolic and Pauline. Since when? How does he know this? How, if it were just the other way round, and the strange, the abstruse, the systematic, the antinomian, the predestinarian represented the original element, and what is simple came in later! What he describes as the doctrine of the historic Paul has not a very convincing look. It has not the ring of what we find elsewhere in early Christian literature, but has a suspicious resemblance to the Good Friday and Easter-day meditations of the _Christliche Welt.__(_115_)_ What does not strike the modern man and his theology as distinctly peculiar is gathered together and receives the stamp of approval as historic Paulinism! Völter, like every one else, has failed to consider, or to grasp, that fundamental question as to what is primitive-Christian in the Apostle’s teaching, which, since the encounter between Baur and Ritschl, had tacitly dominated the discussion and had been again forced on the theological centre-party by the radicals. Otherwise it would have been impossible that he, after promising a “cautious criticism,” should have so incautiously decided that what is simple is what is primitive-Christian.