For the liberal conception of Paulinism this was a blow at the heart. If redemption is effected through the sacraments, these are no longer an “outlying point” in the Apostle’s doctrine, but lie at its centre. And at the same time the distinction between “theoretical” (theological) and “religious” is rendered impossible. A doctrine of redemption which is thus bound up with Mysteries which work in a physico-hyperphysical way is in its essence purely supernaturalistic._(_131_)_ [pg 166] The courage of theological thinkers was put to a severe test. When Baur and his followers made their profession of faith in unbiassed free investigation they could have had no inkling that it would become so difficult for a later generation to remain true to this principle. To give up the distinction between “theoretical” and religious and to follow a purely historical method meant, as things stood at the beginning of the twentieth century, to be left with an entirely temporally conditioned Paulinism, of which modern ways of thought could make nothing, and to trace out a system which for our religion is dead. At this crisis theology encountered in William Wrede a candid friend who sought to keep it in the path of sincerity. His _Paulus,_ short and written in such a way as to be universally intelligible, appeared in the year 1904._(_132_)_ The “theology,” he writes, is in Paul not to be separated from the “religion.” His religion is through and through theological; his theology is his religion. The theory which Holtzmann introduced in his “New Testament Theology,” and which Wernle, Weinel, Heitmüller, Titius, and the rest had developed, thus came to an untimely end before it had left its nonage. It survived only seven years. And then the second expedient—that Paul had thought out no system, but just put down his thoughts in any kind of fortuitous order—is set aside. The framework of the doctrine of redemption, Wrede declares, is very closely articulated. Further, it is not really complicated, but is at bottom quite simple, if once we take account of the thought-material out of which it is constructed and take the most general conceptions as the starting-point. Redemption—this is, according to Wrede, Paul’s train [pg 167] of thought—is not something which takes place in the individual as such, as the later Christian view was, but signifies a universal event in which the individual has a part. It consists in the deliverance of mankind from the dominion of the powers which hold sway over this world. These powers have been destroyed by the death and resurrection of Jesus, as will become manifest at the parousia. Thus redemption is essentially an insurance for this future. But it is even in the present real, though not visible. Christ is the representative of the human race. What happened to Him, happened to all.