With this the matter is disposed of—on the third page of the work! Gunkel’s and Kabisch’s arguments to show that the doctrine of the Spirit is intelligible apart from Greek influences, are left out of account; that Hatch in his “Influence of Greek Ideas” had nothing to say about any Hellenisation of the Gospel on the part of Paul is not mentioned. On the contrary there follows a profession of faith in Pfleiderer’s doctrine that Paul in the course of his career even advanced to the Hellenisation of his eschatology. Holtzmann cheerfully and courageously defends this theory to its ultimate consequences, and holds that in Paul’s dread of being found unclothed [pg 112] (2 Cor. v. 3) his national mode of feeling and a Greek mode of thought “are combined in a fashion which no one would have dreamed of inventing.” The usually so cautious scholar goes in this case unhesitatingly forward. The difficulties which arise out of the assumed collocation and opposition of Jewish and Greek ideas fascinate instead of alarming him. Here, as in some other points, Holtzmann betrays Kantian tendencies and instincts, and is inclined to exhibit the problems as antinomies. Paul’s system of teaching, as it had shaped itself in the course of the study of the subject since Baur, appears to him a unique formation, since in it are combined two worlds of thought and two different sets of religious ideas which are supposed to hold each other in equipoise and mutually interpenetrate one another. He takes it to be his task to lay bare this remarkable construction in its minutest details, and to show how the most diverse thoughts sometimes conflict, sometimes stand in a state of tension, sometimes mutually limit, and sometimes supplement each other. If he succeeds in making clear the position and relation of the various strata of thought, the system, he believes, will become intelligible. This idea runs through his whole treatment of the subject, and gives him courage to take over all the contradictions and compromises which scholars from Baur onwards have discovered, and even to add new ones in addition. He is especially interested in the questions regarding the juridical and ethical sets of ideas, the relation of the “popular” missionary preaching to the “system of doctrine,” the antithesis between “theory” and “practice” in the ethics, and the inconsistencies of the eschatology. In these discussions there is much penetrating observation. The picture, however, does not become clearer, but rather more confused.