"Paul already believed in such a heavenly Being, in a divine Christ, before he believed in Jesus." [358] The truth is that he never believed at all in the Jesus of liberal theology. The "man" Jesus already belonged to his faith in Christ, so far as Christ's act of redemption was supposed to consist in his humbling himself and becoming man--and no historical Jesus was necessary for that. For Paul also, just as for the whole heathen world, the man actually sacrificed in God's place was at best merely a chance symbol of the God presenting himself as victim. Hence it cannot be said that the man Jesus was but "the bearer of all the great attributes," which as such had been long since determined; [359] or, as Gunkel puts it, that the enthusiastic disciples had transferred to him all that the former Judaism had been wont to ascribe to the Messiah; and that consequently the Christology of the New Testament, in spite of its unhistorical nature, was nevertheless "a mighty hymn which History sings to Jesus"(!). [360] If we once agree as to the existence of a pre-Christian Jesus--and even Gunkel, apart from Robertson and Smith, has worked for the recognition of this fact--then this can in the first place produce nothing but a strong suspicion against the historical Jesus; and it seems a despairing subterfuge of the "critical" theology to seek to find capital, from the existence of a pre-Christian Jesus, for the "unique" significance of their "historical" Jesus. Christ's life and death are for Paul neither the moral achievement of a man nor in any way historical facts, but something super-historical, events in the supersensible world. [361] Further, the "man" Jesus comes in question for Paul, just as did the suffering servant of God for Isaiah, exclusively as an Idea, and his death is, like his resurrection, but the purely ideal condition whereby redemption is brought about. "If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain." [362] On this declaration has till now been founded the chief proof that an historical Jesus was to Paul the pre-supposition of his doctrine. But really that declaration in Paul's mouth points to nothing but the faith of his contemporaries, who expected natural and religious salvation from the resurrection of their God, whether he were called Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, or anything else.