This difference is intimately connected with a highly significant fact--the presence in Paul of a "forensic" view of salvation. Salvation, according to Paul, is not only salvation from the power of sin; it is also salvation from the guilt of sin. Not only regeneration is needed, if a man is to be saved, but also justification. At this point, there is apparently in the mystery religions no parallel worthy of the name. At least there is none if Reitzenstein's attempt to exhibit a parallel[214] is at all adequate; for Reitzenstein has succeeded only in setting in clearer light the enormous difference at this point between Paul and his pagan environment. The word "justify" appears, indeed, in the Hermetic corpus (xiii. 9), but as Reitzenstein himself observes, it means not "declare righteous" but "make righteous." A parallel with Paul can be set up, therefore, only if "justify" in Paul also means "make righteous." Reitzenstein actually finds such a meaning in Rom. vi. 7, and in Rom. viii. 30. But the expedient is desperate in the extreme. It will probably be unnecessary to review again the absolutely overwhelming evidence by which the word "justify" in the Pauline Epistles is shown to mean not "make righteous" but "declare righteous." Without the slightest question Paul did maintain a forensic view of salvation. The believer, according to Paul, is in himself guilty in the sight of God. But he is given a sentence of acquittal, he is "justified," because Christ has borne on the cross the curse of the Law which rightly rested upon those whom Christ died to save. [214] Reitzenstein, _Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen_, 2te Aufl., pp. 112-116. The presence of this forensic element in the teaching of Paul is universally or generally recognized; and it is usually admitted to be not Greek but Jewish. But there is a tendency among recent scholars to minimize its importance. According to Wrede, the forensic conception of salvation, the complex of ideas centering around justification apart from the works of the Law, was merely a weapon forged by Paul in the exigencies of controversy.[215] Against the Judaizing contention for the continued validity of the Law Paul developed the doctrine that the penalty imposed by the Law upon sin was borne by Christ, so that for the believer the bondage of the Law is over. But, Wrede believes, this whole conception was of minor importance in Paul's own life; it was merely necessary in order that he might refute the Judaizers and so continue his free Gentile mission. A somewhat similar view is advocated by Bousset; Bousset believes, at least, that the forensic conception of salvation occupies a subordinate place in the thought and life of Paul. [215] "Kampfeslehre." See Wrede, _Paulus_, 1904, pp. 72ff. (English Translation, _Paul_, 1907, pp. 122ff.).