And how, on the other hand, could the later Hellenising theology pass over in silence the man who had been its precursor in uniting the conceptions of Graeco-Oriental religion with the Gospel? The inexplicable fact that Paulinism played no part in the subsequent development, but is left to lie unused and uncomprehended, becomes still more inexplicable if Dieterich and Reitzenstein are right. They assert that the Hellenising force did not issue from philosophy but from the Graeco-Oriental religious movement, and found expression in Paul not less than in the Johannine and early Greek theology. [pg 230] Why, then, are the results so different in the two cases that they have no kind of outer or inner relation to one another? If the same force is applied at different times to the same object and in the same line, can the resultant movement vary so much in direction? How is it possible that Paul represents a Hellenisation of Christianity which is so unique in character and so unnoticed by others? How could two different types of Greek transformation of the Gospel come into existence, and in such a way, moreover, that the second discovered nothing Hellenic in the first? According to the theory of Dieterich and Reitzenstein, Paulinism ought to be detached from early Christianity and closely connected with Greek theology. The contrary is the case. It stands in undisturbed connexion with the former, whereas it shows no connexion whatever with the latter. Any one who thinks of the Apostle’s doctrine as in any sense a Hellenisation of the Gospel, whether he owes allegiance to ordinary theology or to Comparative Religion, has gone over to the radicalism of the Ultra-Tübingen party, and must, like it, go forth with his Paul out of primitive Christianity into a later period, unless, indeed, as the Comparative method admits, he is prepared to consider the faith of the early Church as Graeco-Oriental, or Paul as the founder of Christianity. In any case the hypothesis of a Hellenising of the Gospel in early Christianity carried out by Paul as an individual is a historic impossibility. From the dilemma, either early Christian or Greek, there is no escape, however one may twist and turn. If the students of Comparative Religion had been better acquainted with the attempt of the Ultra-Tübingen critics, and had had a more accurate understanding of the difference between Paulinism and the Johannine and early Greek theology, they could hardly have retained the open-mindedness necessary to the commencement of their undertaking; for in that case they would have been [pg 231] forced to reflect on the inconvenient consequences of their possible victory.