Pfleiderer in his “Primitive Christianity” does not accept this explanation, but maintains that this passage and two others—Phil. i. 21 f. and iii. 8 f._(_61_)_—imply a departure from the Pharisaic eschatological hope in which the Apostle’s thought elsewhere moves. In this later period of his life, represented by 2 Corinthians and Philippians, he turns away—so runs the theory—from the primitive view of an intermediate state of death, followed by a subsequent resurrection, and comes to hold that his soul, immediately after his departure, will pass into the presence of Christ in order to dwell with Him. And Paul is more and more driven to adopt this view in proportion as his life is daily exposed to greater danger, and he has to reckon with the possibility of dying before the parousia takes place. Under the pressure of this inward anxiety, guided by Platonising Alexandrianism, illuminated by the Greek spirit, he creates—we are still following Pfleiderer—a spiritualising hope of future blessedness, which in the sequel becomes of the utmost value to Gentile Christianity by enabling it to reconcile itself to the delay of the parousia. [pg 071] Pfleiderer believes also that he can show the course of the development by which the new conception was arrived at. In I Thessalonians, he thinks, the Apostle still rested unquestioningly in that notion of a corporeal resurrection which primitive Christianity shared with Judaism. But in the explanations in I Cor. xv. the influence of the Greek ideas becomes observable, while in 2 Corinthians and Philippians it becomes dominant. This construction of the course of events is defended by Pfleiderer and his followers—Holsten here stands apart—with fanatical energy, as though they wished to make noise enough to distract attention from the fact that they have so very little else to point to in the shape of positive evidence of Greek influence in Paul. What are the difficulties which are raised by the assumption of Greek ideas in Paul’s doctrine? They are many and various, and they grow greater in proportion as the new element in Paul is more strongly emphasised. Take the problem of explaining the dualism of flesh and spirit. It is assumed that this has been done when it has been declared to be Greek. But in doing so a duality has been introduced into Paul himself which creates many more difficulties than the dualism it was invoked to solve.