Their method of procedure in their presentation of the doctrine is itself significant. They do not trace its development from one fundamental conception, but treat it under dogmatic _loci,_ as Baur had done in his New Testament Theology. The scheme is more or less closely based on that of Reformation dogmatics. It is therefore assumed _a priori_ that the Pauline theology can be divided into practically the same individual doctrines as that of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. Really, however, a preliminary question arises whether this arrangement of the material does not introduce a wrong grouping and orientation into the Apostle’s system, and whether it does not destroy the natural order and relative importance of the thoughts, falsify the perspective, tear asunder what ought not to be disjoined, and render impossible the discovery of the fundamental idea in which all the utterances find their point of union. This procedure is innocently supposed to be scientific; as a matter of fact it leads to the result that the study of the subject continues to be embarrassed by a considerable remnant of the prepossessions with which the interpretation of Paul’s doctrine was approached in the days of the Reformation. It is not less prejudicial when others, as for example Holsten,_(_35_)_ adopt an arrangement of the material suggested by modern dogmatics. As the Pauline theology has, if possible, less affinity with the latter than with the Reformation theology, the error is almost more serious. [pg 034] In general these scholars are quite unconscious of the decisive importance which attaches to the arrangement and articulation of the material. It has, indeed, always been weakness of theological scholarship to talk much about method and possess little of it. Otto Pfleiderer, alone, is not entirely in this state of innocence. He has an inkling that the usual way of approaching the subject is not wholly free from objection. In the first edition of his Paulinism (1873)_(_36_)_ he raises the question whether the “genetic method” is not demanded by the task of tracing out the organic progress of the development of dogma in its Pauline beginnings. Practical considerations, however, determine him “to arrange the matter very much according to the customary dogmatic _loci,”_ while, however, at the same time giving as much attention as possible to the position of the dogma in the Pauline system.” He fears that the carrying out of the genetic principle would lead to many repetitions, and would make it more difficult to get a general view of “the way in which the separate doctrines were connected with their bases.”