But another objection faces the solution proposed by Wrede and Brückner. Suppose the apocalyptic doctrine of the Messiah were really adequate to the strain which is placed upon it. Suppose it really represented the Messiah as active in creation and as indwelling in the hearts of the faithful and as exalted to the throne of God. These suppositions are entirely without warrant in the facts; they transcend by far even the claims of Wrede and Brückner themselves. But suppose they were correct. Even then the genesis of Paul's religion would not be explained. Suppose the Pauline doctrine of the Messiah really was complete in his mind before he was converted. Even then, another problem remains. How did he come to identify his exalted Messiah with a Jew who had lived but a few years before and had died a shameful death? The thing might be explained if Jesus was what He is represented in all of the extant sources as being--a supernatural person whose glory shone out plain even through the veil of flesh. It might be explained if Paul before his conversion really believed that the heavenly Christ was to come to earth before His final parousia and die an accursed death. But the former alternative is excluded by the naturalistic presuppositions of the modern man. And the latter is excluded by an overwhelming weight of evidence as to pre-Christian Judaism and the pre-Christian life of Paul. How then did Paul come to identify his heavenly Messiah with Jesus of Nazareth? It could only have been through the strange experience which he had near Damascus. But what, in turn, caused that experience? No answer, on the basis of naturalistic presuppositions, has yet been given. In removing the supernatural from the earthly life of Jesus, modern naturalism has precluded the only possible naturalistic explanation of the conversion of Paul. If Jesus had given evidence of being the heavenly Son of Man, then Paul might conceivably, though still not probably, have become convinced against his will, and might, conceivably though still not probably, have experienced an hallucination in which he thought he saw Jesus living in glory. But if Jesus was a mere man, the identification of Him with the heavenly apocalyptic Messiah becomes inconceivable, and the experience through which that identification took place is left absolutely uncaused. Thus the hypothesis of Wrede and Brückner defeats itself. In arguing that Paul's pre-conversion conception of the Messiah was not a conception of a mere earthly being or the like, but that of a transcendent being, Wrede and Brückner are really digging the grave of their own theory. For the more exalted was the Messiah in whom Paul believed before his conversion, the more inexplicable becomes the identification of that Messiah with a crucified malefactor.