His vast learning was the result of a powerful memory and unwearied industry, and he lacked the creative imagination necessary to mould this material into new forms. He was a powerful debater, but his victories were those of a dialectician rather than a convincing reasoner, and in him depth of insight and conviction were ill replaced by the controversial violence characteristic of the age.
He was an orthodox Calvinist and an able dialectician.
Meanwhile, however, the truth about the Eudemian Ethics in general is that it was an earlier rudimentary sketch written by Aristotle, when he was still struggling, without quite succeeding, to get over Plato's view that there is one philosophical knowledge of universal good, by which not only the dialectician and mathematician must explain the being and becoming of the world, but also the individual and the statesman guide the life of man.
But these somewhat "indiscriminate denunciations are certainly not what we expect from a man like Paul, who was an uncommonly clear-headed dialectician" (McGiffert).
He soon gave evidence of rare ability as a preacher and a dialectician.