The relationship between law and religion can be imagined as a conjunction or a disjunction. Beginning with the suggestion that the terms “law” and “religion,” when their meaning has not been taken for granted, have become too invested with ideological weight, as a result of debates over secularism, to be of much use for analytical purposes, this essay substitutes a series of alternative dichotomies: among others, auctoritas versus potestas, the constituting versus the constituted power, and charisma versus law. Examining the history and interplay of such categories, I suggest that such dualities often describe the dynamic tension between sovereignty and legality that defines an existing order. Special attention is given to the historical examples of the pardon power and the Pauline opposition between charis and nomos, as well as to David Daube’s argument that redemption in biblical traditions was a sacralized legal concept. Through a series of thought experiments, I suggest that law and religion may be understood in some cases as twins, born together and inseparable, just as law cannot be fully distinguished from sovereignty.