Sacred Violence and the Curse of the Law (Galatians 3.13): The Death of Christ as a Sacrificial Travesty

Abstract

The death of Christ has not been prominent in the significant recent debate about the centre of Paul's theology, between E. P. Sanders and H. Hübner. Sanders characterizes Paul's pattern of religion as a ‘participationist eschatology’ as compared to the ‘covenantal nomism’ of the contemporary Judaism. H. Hübner champions the centrality of ‘justification by faith’, over against a ‘mystical identification with the crucified and risen Christ’. The former comes from Luther, and the latter from Albert Schweitzer. Hübner says of Sanders' book that in several passages it sounds as if Schweitzerredivivuswere speaking. Sanders tends to make Paul's religion too intellectual — a change of world view, rather than a response to experience. Hübner does not take seriously enough the convincing evidence that Paul's problem with the Mosaic law was not the same as Luther's, namely that it promoted a ‘works righteousness’ which caused pride, but rather that in its social role as the guardian of the boundaries of the Jewish community, it excluded the Gentiles. Both, however, do not take the Cross seriously enough.