From E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM Press Ltd 1977)
"The most conspicuous case [of (apparent) discrepancies in Paul's language] is the distinction between juristic and participationist terminology. Here is a distinction that will not go away. In brief, it is the distinction between saying that Christ dies for Christians and the they die with Christ, [...]" (p. 519-520)
"In saying that the participationist language brings us closer than the juristic to the heart of Paul's thought and reveals the depth of it, we move away from one way of making Paul's thought relevant. Since the participationist way of thinking is less easily appropriated today than the language of acquittal and the like, or than the language of obedience versus boasting, it has not infrequently been dismissed or played down. Thus, for example, Bultmann argued that Paul's discussion of 'the mythological notions of the spirit powers and Satan do not serve the purpose of cosmological speculation nor a need to explain terryfying or gruesome phenomena or to relieve men of responsibility and guilt'. When Paul spaeks 'in naive mythology of the battle of the spirit powers against Christ or of his battle against them (I Cor. 2.6-8; 15.24-26)', he does not really mean that. 'In reality he is thereby only expressing a certain understanding of existence.' 'Through these mythological conceptions the insight is indirectly expressed that man does not have his life in his hand as if he were his own lord but that he is constantly confronted with the decision of choosing his lord.' [(Bultmann, Theology I, pp. 258f)]. In a similar way Bultmann explained the meaning of the transfer from the old creation to the new: 'no magical or mysterious transformation of man' takes place. Rather, 'a new understanding of one's self takes the place of the old'. Particularly striking is the interpretation of being one body with Christ: 'The union of believers into one soma with Christ now has its basis not in their sharing the same supernatural substance, but in the fact that in the word of proclamation Christ's death-and-resurrection becomes a possibility of existence in regard to which a decision must be made, and in the fact that faith seizes this possibility and appropriates it as the power that determines the existence of the man of faith.' [(Bultmann, Theology I, p. 302)" (p. 520-521)
"But what does this mean? How are we to understand it? We seem to lack a category of 'reality' - real participation in Christ, real possession of the Spirit - which lies between naive cosmological speculation and belief in magical transference on the one hand and a revised self-understanding on the other. I must confess that I do not have a new category of perception to propose here. This does not mean, however, that Paul did not have one. It must be emphasized that what Bultmann said against magical transference is correct. It is correct not only because it would lead to false theology today, but as a precise exegesis of Paul. The Christians whom he addressed had not been magically transferred, and he explicitly repudiated the notion when it cropped up in Corinth. On the other hand, he thought that a real change was at work in the world and that Christians were participating in it." (p. 522-523)
