We may call attention to a curious parallel. _A priori_ the assumption might appear justified that the Apostle of the Gentiles would have taken from Jewish Hellenism material wherewith to Hellenise Christianity. In reality he did not do so. _A priori_ it was to be expected that the creators of Greek theology would have taken from Paulinism material for the construction of their doctrines. In reality they did not do so. The three points which it seemed would allow themselves to be joined to form a triangle, lie, in reality, in different planes, belong to different systems, and have no natural relation to one another. If Paul stands solitary, without receiving or exercising [pg 094] influence, between these two factors in which Greek characteristics are manifest, it follows that he does not exhibit their common element. If he did not adopt Platonism and Stoicism in the convenient compound which Jewish Hellenism had mixed ready for him, it is antecedently little probable that he made use of the uncompounded substances in the form in which they are to be met with in Greek life and literature. What are the possibilities of direct influences which have to be taken into account? It is to be remarked that Paul never gives the slightest hint that he is making use of something which is familiar to and valued by the Greeks in his churches. The Acts of the Apostles indeed pictures him as a preacher who in the Areopagus at Athens takes as his starting-point an inscription upon an altar, and quotes from the Greek poet Aratus the pantheistic saying that men are of the Divine race (Acts xvii. 28). But for this Paul, the author of Acts, must take, all responsibility._(_78_)_ The Apostle of the Gentiles who is made known to us by the Epistles wears a different aspect. In this sense he never became a Greek to the Greeks. We find in him no trace of any high estimation of heathenism and its thought. It is for him idolatry, nothing less nor more. His estimate is purely negative. He can therefore hardly have intentionally taken over anything from Greek thought. It is possible, however, that he did so unconsciously. The most obvious suggestion is to assume that this was the case in regard to ethics. What he says in Rom. ii. about conscience, which in the heathen takes the place of the law, might be based on ideas derived from Greek rationalism. But on close examination what we find here is not so much a positive valuation of natural ethical feeling, but rather the creation for dialectic purposes of something to serve as an analogue to the law. Paul’s [pg 095] purpose is to prove that Jew and Greek are alike delivered over to sin; consequently the position in the two cases, if an injustice on the part of God is not to be suggested, must be made as similar as possible.