Whatever remains unexplained after the psychologising, the depotentiation, and modernisation, is referred to the peculiar character of the religious experience which the Apostle is supposed to have undergone in the vision on the Damascus road. What essential difference there was between this appearance of the Lord and those experienced by the other disciples is nowhere clearly worked out, not even by Holsten, who makes the most extensive use of this vision. It is simply taken for granted by them all that in the vision itself is to be found the explanation, not only of Paul’s conversion, but also in some way or other of his call to be a missionary to the Gentiles and of the peculiar character of his doctrine. All these accounts of his teaching agree in assuming that Paul’s system of doctrine was in the main a purely personal creation of his own, and is in some way to be explained by the special character of his religious experience. The question whether in this way his integral connexion with primitive Christianity is sufficiently preserved receives but little attention. In none of these works is the investigation of the doctrinal material common to Paul and his opponents seriously taken in hand. The writers are content with the affirmation that both parties took as their starting-point the fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus, without entering into any consideration of the question how far Paul’s reasonings, which they refer back to his inner personal experience, reproduce generally current ideas of primitive Christianity and simply carry them out to their logical issue. The question which Ritschl had formerly forced on the consideration of Baur has therefore not been faced or solved. It is true the author of “Justification and Reconciliation”_(_38_)_ thinks that he has not only raised the question but also answered it. He undertakes to explain all the Pauline doctrinal passages on the basis of [pg 041] Old Testament conceptions. In this way he hopes to work out the Apostle’s real conception of the atoning death of Jesus, and of “righteousness,” and believes that these will then, since they have been gained from the Old Testament, coincide with the primitive Christian views in all essential points. Speaking generally, Ritschl’s tendency is to make the differences between Paulinism and primitive Christianity as small as possible, and to find them, as he had already done in the “Origin of the early Catholic Church,” not so much in his doctrine proper as in his attitude to certain practical questions. Ritschl employs the dialectical skill with which nature had richly endowed him to transform and shade off the doctrine of the Apostle of the Gentiles until it harmonises with the fundamental Christian teaching which he assumes for the earliest period and finds necessary for his dogmatics.