Incompatible as the two dogmas are, Christian theologians of course have endeavoured to reconcile them. Only one explanation of the difficulty has been seriously offered. This is, that an absolutely sinless victim was required to become an atonement for human sins, and that such a victim could not be found outside the person of God himself. A reference to Pauline Christianity at once disposes of this explanation. Even if Christ as merely a man could not be sinless, he might be more than man without being actually God. From its very beginning, the Church regarded Christ, as the Messiah, as one greater than ordinary men, though still thoroughly human. Long before the dogma of the Incarnation was in existence, Christians looked on Christ as sinless, and connected his sinlessness with the Atonement.[97] Nevertheless, the explanation is the best available. It has created the doctrine of the “contract in the council of the Trinity,” as Mr. Arnold calls it. God the Father’s sense of justice could be satisfied only by the self-sacrificing love of God the Son, and hence the death of Christ upon the cross. It is certainly a characteristic example of a theological explanation. The two great dogmas remained really irreconcilable. The Jewish dogma of the Atonement and the Pagan dogma of the Incarnation entered into Christianity as the results of opposite religious tendencies, and they could never be brought into harmony. The inevitable attempt to reconcile them is chiefly responsible for the formation of the complex mass of theology which so greatly distinguishes Christianity. One or the other can strongly influence individual Christians, but it is impossible for both at once to occupy the same mind. Now that we have examined the chief consequences of the transition from Jewish to Pagan Christianity, and dealt with the greater part of the doctrine of the Trinity, we must investigate the means by which that doctrine was completed by the inclusion of the third person, the Holy Spirit.