Paul the mystic: is being-in-Christ the centre of Paul, rather than justification by faith?

Albert Schweitzer, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

Justification is a subsidiary crater within the main crater of the mystical doctrine of redemption through being-in-Christ.12 Paul's categories are eschatological and participatory, not Hellenistic and forensic.345

Sources

  1. It is possible for the idea of righteousness apart from works of the Law to be expounded by means of this ingenious reasoning; but it could never have arisen out of it. The doctrine of righteousness by faith is therefore a subsidiary crater, which has formed within the rim of the main crater—the mystical doctrine of redemption through the being-in-Christ.
    The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, pp. 225–226
  2. At the Reformation this Pauline doctrine of justification rose up and cast off the fetters which the Church had laid upon it. In this way there arose in Western Christianity a movement which professed an absolute allegiance to Paul's teaching.
    The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, p. 392
  3. In advocacy of its expectation of the end of the world Pauline mysticism is something absolutely unique. There is no mysticism, whether earlier, contemporary, or later, which comes into comparison with it. A further peculiarity of the mysticism of Paul is that he is not wholly and solely a mystic.
    The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, pp. 24–25
  4. The continuously renewed forgiveness of sins, which the religious have sought to find in it, both in the Reformation period and in modern times, is unknown to it and impossible to it. In it Christ's atoning death has reference only to sins committed in the old condition of existence, that is to say, before baptism (Rom. iii. 25).
    The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, pp. 220–221
  5. If it had the impression that the background as thus restored, while no doubt "interesting," was somewhat too glaring and obtrusive, it remained confident that the "doctrinal system" which it throws into relief is not otherwise affected by it. The appendix-chapter on eschatology grows in size and acquires a certain connectedness.
    Paul and His Interpreters

Where the argument is made

  • Geschichte der Paulinischen Forschung (1911)
  • Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (1930)

How the argument was received

Marginal when published and substantially vindicated fifty years later.