In his examination of the individual views Titius always takes the future-hope as his starting-point—indeed his book begins with chapters on God and eschatology. He shows that redemption, in the most general conception of it, is a liberation from the present evil world and a deliverance looking to the world which is to come, and that justification was originally bound up with the thought of the judgment at the parousia. Instead, however, of systematically carrying out the analysis in this fashion, he breaks off and begins to work up the historical material which he has brought to light on the lines of the problems, definitions, and distinctions of modern theology, because, as the very title of his book shows, he undertakes his investigation with a view [pg 158] to showing the significance of New Testament teaching for the present day. In order to portray the “religious life” he makes it a principle “not to hesitate to turn aside from the highway, to which the technical terms serve as sign-posts.” Thus he comes finally to discover everywhere that Paul clarified the doctrines which he took over and transformed them into ethico-religious teaching and subjective experience. From “the edifice of eschatologico-enthusiastic thought, most closely connected with it but unmistakable in its distinctive character,” he sees, to his satisfaction, “the spiritual life of the new religion” showing forth. Here also, therefore, as with Wernle and Weinel, there is conscious and intentional modernisation, in order to discover the religion of Paul behind his theology. One difference there is, however. The others brought to this undertaking a certain naïveté and enthusiasm which enabled them to see the modern and the historical the one in the other. Titius is an observer with a keen eye for the really historical. He holds past and present side by side but separate, and must apply a mighty effort of will and understanding and do violence to his feelings in order to bring them into connexion. Out of these inner pangs a book has come to the birth which in matters of detail is full of just and suggestive remarks, but as a whole is unsatisfactory.