One looks, therefore, in vain in his work for a fundamental statement and solution of the problems. They are mentioned where they happen to come up, and are [pg 102] there discussed in a fragmentary fashion. In addition to this the author’s peculiarly subtle and delicately shaded method of exposition has to be reckoned with. Any one who is not familiar with it runs the risk of passing too lightly over these passages and failing to appreciate the significance which Holtzmann himself attaches to his remarks. What he intends to give is a General-staff map of the results of investigation. The heights and hollows are not shown as such, but represented by curves which are only later to be carried out in relief. Holtzmann does not stand above the post-Baur study of the subject, but within it. That is immediately evident from the fact that, speaking generally, he takes as the plan of his exposition the scheme, partially “Reformation,” partially modern, which the head of the Tübingen school had used in his theology and left as a legacy to his successors. After dealing with the doctrine of man, law, sin, and corruption, he describes the “revolution” (conversion). Then follow Christology, the work of redemption, and the Divine righteousness. The close is formed by the chapters on the “ethical” material, the “mystical,” and “eschatology.” The difficulties and errors which are involved in this division of the subject have not been escaped by Holtzmann any more than by others. At every step it is evident how unnatural is an arrangement of the material which leaves out of account the connexions inherent in the system. How much art is expended on breaking off the thread at a given moment, in order to take it up again in a later chapter! How many unnecessarily fragmentary representations! How many annoying repetitions! How many references forward and backward! Thus, for example, what Paul has to say of redemption is not developed connectedly but split up among a number of chapters. And the same thing happens with regard to the doctrine of the death and resurrection of Christ. The division which he has taken over leads Holtzmann [pg 103] to regard the Pauline teaching on redemption from the stand-point of the Reformation doctrine. Involuntarily he always thinks either of the individual man, or humanity, instead of the entity always present to the mind of the Apostle, the group of the elect of the last generation, who have been subjected to the influence of the death and resurrection of Christ. He quotes the acute remark of Schmiedel_(_85_)_ that “the men who had sought (and found) in Jesus before His death forgiveness and peace of soul” are left out of account by the Apostle, but he does not go further into the problem which this suggests. The temporally conditioned character and the general point of view of the Pauline doctrine of redemption is, owing to the faulty division, practically overlooked.