From Paulinism, again, there are no visible lines of connexion leading to early Greek theology. Ignatius and Justin do not take over his ideas, but create, in their turn, something new. According to the assumption which in itself appears most natural, one would be prepared to see in the teaching of Jesus a mountain-mass, continued by the lofty summits of the Pauline range, and from these gradually falling away to the lower levels of the early Catholic theology. In reality the teaching of Jesus and that of the great Apostle are like two separate ranges of hills, lying irregularly disposed in [pg viii] front of the later “Gospel.” Even the relation which each severally bears to primitive Christianity remains uncertain. This want of connexion must have some explanation. The task of historical science is to understand why these two systems of teaching are necessarily independent, and at the same time to point out the geological fault and dislocation of the strata, and enable us to recognise the essential continuity of these formations and the process by which they have taken their present shape. The edifice constructed by Baur has fallen; but his large and comprehensive conception of the history of dogma ought not to be given up. It is wholly wrong to ignore the problem at which he laboured and so create the false impression that it has been solved. Present day criticism is far from having explained how Paulinism and Greek theology have arisen out of the teaching of Jesus. All it has really done is to have gained some insight into the difficulties, and to have made it increasingly evident that the question of the Hellenisation of Christianity is the fundamental problem of the history of dogma. It could not really hope to find a solution, because it is still working away with the presuppositions of Baur, Ritschl, and Renan, and has already tried three or four times over all the experiments which are possible on this basis, without ever attaining to a real insight into the course of the development. It has approached this or that problem differently, has given a new version—not to say in some cases a perversion—of it; but it has not succeeded in giving a satisfactory answer to the question when and how the Gospel was Hellenised.