In order to salve his conscience he gives at the beginning, “by way of an introductory outline,” a sketch of the “organic development of the Pauline gnosis from its single root.” This general view—it occupies twenty-seven pages—is the most important part of the whole book. The succeeding chapters treat of sin, flesh, character of the law, aim of the law, Christ’s atoning death, Christ’s death as a means of liberation from the dominion of sin, the resurrection of Christ, the Person of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of God and heavenly Christ, the appearing of Christ in the flesh, faith, justification, sonship, the beginning and the progress of the new life, the Christian Church, the Lord’s Supper, the election of grace, the parousia, and the end of the world. Lüdemann was prevented by the task which he had set himself from adopting the division according to _loci._ [pg 035] His object was only to investigate Paul’s conception of the fleshly man in its relation to his doctrine as a whole. In this way he was led to arrange the ideas in their natural order and, without strictly intending to do so, to give a general account of Paulinism, which is almost entirely free from the defective arrangement of other works, permits something of the logical articulation of the Apostle’s circle of ideas to appear, and certainly penetrates more deeply than the rest into the Apostle’s world of thought. As the works of Reuss, Weiss, Pfleiderer, Holsten, Renan, Sabatier, Ménégoz, Weizsäcker, do not aim at understanding and showing the development of this doctrine from a single fundamental thought, there are no real divergences in the general view which they take of the system. The differences of opinion with their predecessors which the authors express in their text and notes relate, in point of fact, only to details and minutiae, surprising as this may at first sight appear. The plan and design of the system are in general everywhere the same; the differences regard only the mixing and application of the colours, and the question how far Greek influences are to be recognised.