Excerpt from St. Paul as a Theologian, Vol. 1

But those also are ignorant of the apos tle's teaching who can see in the preaching Of Paul no real theology but only a loose combination of thoughts on salvation. Paul studied theology in his youth when he sat at the feet of the rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem.

Certain doctrinal views of God, revelation, law, sin, world, history of salvation, perfec tion of salvation, etc., were transmitted to him, not in a systematic way as we now read them in a manual of Jewish theology, but after the manner of the rabbinic schools and according to their principles of Old Testament interpretation. Yet he received certain doctrinal teachings on which he still depended, or was in¿uenced by, even as Christian and Apostle. His Christian theology is a new building upon the ruins of his Jewish faith, but not only upon, but also partly with its ruins. One can indeed speak of a Pauline doctrine of salvation, for the question how man obtains salvation was clearly and keenly re¿ected upon by Paul. In his Epistles he never propounded his lines of thought in a systematical and strictly logical manner, but by collecting the ele ments of his doctrine one gets before him a picture which comprises the Whole history of humanity as well as of heaven and of earth.

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