The authors regard with a certain amount of self-satisfaction the way in which they have emphasised the importance given to the eschatology by Paul. In the chapter devoted to it they have certainly emphasised again and again, “with the utmost energy,” the fact that he really “shared” the eschatological expectations of his time and admitted them to an important place in his creed. The chapter in question, however, only gets its turn after the whole “system of doctrine” has been safely housed in the earlier chapters without seeking any aid from the eschatology or even saying a word about it. As in the Church prayers of to-day, one catches an echo of it only at the end. This means that, when all is said and done, these writers regard it only as a kind of annexe to the main edifice of Pauline doctrine. That is a fact which their brave words about the importance attributed to it in their account do not alter in the slightest. None of these students of Paulinism asks himself whether there is an organic connexion between the eschatological expectations and the system as such, and whether the fundamental conceptions and concatenation of ideas are not somehow or other conditioned by the hope of the final consummation. It is simply taken as self-evident that eschatology can only form an incidental chapter in Paul’s teaching. [pg 054] The most natural course to follow in the investigation would have been to begin with the eschatology as the most general and “primitive-Christian” element, and then to have tried to find a path leading from here to the central doctrine of the new life in union with the dying and resurrection of Christ. This course is nowhere followed. That is the more surprising as it is generally assumed that the “missionary preaching” of the Apostle took an almost purely eschatological form, and was scarcely distinguishable from the primitive-Christian preaching of repentance, the judgment, and the parousia. The point to examine would therefore have been precisely how the “Pauline theology” grew out of the eschatology which Paul shared with primitive Christianity. Instead of that, these writers begin with the “doctrinal system,” and attach to that by way of appendix an account of the eschatology. It here first becomes fully apparent what a misfortune it was for Pauline study in the post-Baur period that it kept to the method of presentation under _loci,_ and consequently accorded eschatology, in principle, no greater importance for Paulinism than it had had for Reformation theology.