This error in method—which he shares with scholars of the post-Baur period generally—runs through the whole of his undertaking. He frequently takes occasion to point to the element of [pg 107] “gnosis” in the Apostle’s doctrine. At bottom, however, he is afraid that his doctrine may be too much considered as an intellectual construction. For that reason he provides a special section on “the religious character of the doctrine.” “Paul’s world of thought,” he there tells us, “is, to put it in a word, not merely a product of intellection, it is antecedently to that a product of experience also; in this it differs fundamentally from any of the artificially excogitated gospels of Gnosticism proper. . . . The first condition for any understanding of Paulinism is that we should not obscure the volcanic character of its origin by any method which implies the gradual addition of one grain of sand to another. The whole system of doctrine means nothing more nor less than the way in which the Apostle objectified to himself the fundamental decisive experience of his life and theoretically explained its presuppositions and consequences. The doctrine fits the experience with a theory.” How, then, does Holtzmann know that Paul is not after all a Gnostic pure and simple? The whole character of his system makes him appear so. He himself claims to be one,_(_86_)_ and is quite unaware that his doctrine is nothing more than the form given by the constructive imagination to a personal experience. He knows no distinction between “gnostic” and “religious.” What is religious is for him gnostic, and what is gnostic, religious. Any one who strictly distinguishes the two in him is modernising. His mission to the Gentiles and his universalism are also, according to Holtzmann, to be explained directly from the vision at his conversion. The Christ who has won through to triumph by way of death, so Holtzmann explains, implies for the Apostle the purification of the Messianic idea from all the carnal elements which in Judaism still cling to it. In the exalted Christ he sees [pg 108] also the head of the Church gathered out from both Jews and Gentiles.