The most widespread of these naturalistic explanations of the religion of Paul is what may be called the "liberal" view. The name is highly unsatisfactory; it has been used and misused until it has often come to mean almost nothing. But no other term is ready to hand. "Ritschlian" might possibly describe the phenomenon that is meant, but that term is perhaps too narrow, and would imply a degree of logical connection with the Ritschlian theology which would not fit all forms of the phenomenon. The best that can be done, therefore, is to define the term "liberal" in a narrower way than is sometimes customary and then use it in distinction not only from traditional and supernaturalistic views, but also from various "radical" views, which will demand separate consideration. The numerous forms of the liberal view differ from other naturalistic hypotheses in that they attribute supreme importance in the formation of the religion of Paul to the influence of the real historic person, Jesus of Nazareth, and to the experience which Paul had near Damascus when he thought he saw that person risen from the dead. Jesus of Nazareth, according to the liberal view, was the greatest of the children of men. His greatness centered in His consciousness of standing toward God in the relation of son to Father. That consciousness of sonship, at least in its purity, Jesus discovered, was not shared by others. Some category was therefore needed to designate the uniqueness of His sonship. The category which He adopted, though with reluctance, and probably toward the end of His ministry, was the category of Messiahship. His Messianic consciousness was thus not fundamental in His conception of His mission; certainly it did not mean that He put His own person into His gospel. He urged men, not to take Him as the object of their faith, but only to take Him as an example for their faith; not to have faith in Him, but to have faith in God like His faith. Such was the impression of His personality, however, that after His death the love and reverence of His disciples for Him not only induced the hallucinations in which they thought they saw Him risen from the dead but also led them to attribute to His person a kind of religious importance which He had never claimed. They began to make Him not only an example for faith but also the object of faith. The Messianic element in His life began now to assume an importance which He had never attributed to it; the disciples began to ascribe to Him divine attributes. This process was somewhat hindered in the case of His intimate friends by the fact that they had seen Him under all the limitations of ordinary human life. But in the case of the apostle Paul, who had never seen Him, the process of deification could go on unchecked. What was fundamental, however, even for Paul, was an impression of the real person of Jesus of Nazareth; that impression was conveyed to Paul in various ways--especially by