Conflation?

Stephen Finlan (The Background and Contents of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors) thinks that Paul mixes his metaphors:

“Paul indicates that
salvation is not free: ‘you were bought with a price’ (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23).
Here, the Christian gets a new owner: Christ. The death of Jesus functioned as
legal tender to make this purchase. In Rom 3:24–25 we have justification,
redemption, and place of atonement—a conflation of judicial, economic,
and sacrificial imagery. Paul will move from one metaphor to the other, but
always there is a transaction by which salvation is purchased, arranged, or ritually obtained for us” (5).

Finlan lists four metaphorical spheres: sacrifice, “curse transmission ritual,” redemption, and martyrdom. 

But these are “conflated” only if we begin from the assumption that they are separable spheres of action or thought. What if for Paul sacrifice was also redemption, or that it was a curse transmission ritual precisely because it was a martyrdom? In that case, Paul is not conflating metaphors; when he talks about being bought by Jesus’ death, he is simply describing one dimension of sacrifice. 

Perhaps – and it is only a perhaps – we see conflation of distinct realms where Paul did not. Perhaps in his ancient Jewish mind these were always already entangled.