The pre-Christian history of Paul has been probed often enough, but without much success. Psychological analyses of Paul, which usually result in his being portrayed as the victim of a divided mind or as thoroughly discontented with the Law and Pharisaism, have been justly discredited. There is no positive evidence for such views, unless one reads Rom. 7 as a thinly disguised autobiography of Paul's pre-Christian existence, or overloads with significance the proverb which Luke uses in Acts 26: 14. Moreover, they are contradicted by the significant remark of Paul in Phil. 3: 6 – ‘as to righteousness under the Law blameless’ – which reveals a man who had not the slightest qualms about the value of the Law or of his own ability completely to fulfil its demands. As Dibelius says, ‘Paul was not converted from a life of sin to a life of righteousness; one might rather say that he turned from a religion of righteousness to a religion of the sinner’. This is not to say that psychological analyses are inherently false. An analysis which took account of all the facts might be correct, but it might just as easily be false. Since the evidence is so sparse, speculation is endlessly possible, but ultimately fruitless. Besides, this kind of speculation is basically anthropocentric, whereas the overriding impression conveyed by the narratives of both Luke and Paul is theocentric. It shifts the centre of gravity from God to man. Neither Luke nor Paul was concerned with psychological explanations, but with an act of God and its palpable results.