Who was Cain’s wife

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Paul, for instance, seems to take the existence of sin for granted, without wading too deep into the whole "inherited sin" argument.

Paul's Christology is very much centred on Christ as the last Adam whose cosmic sacrifice defeats Sin and Death that the first Adam brought into the world. But that's peculiarly Pauline and not really found elsewhere in the New Testament.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Paul, for instance, seems to take the existence of sin for granted, without wading too deep into the whole "inherited sin" argument.

Paul's Christology is very much centred on Christ as the last Adam whose cosmic sacrifice defeats Sin and Death that the first Adam brought into the world. But that's peculiarly Pauline and not really found elsewhere in the New Testament.

Headship theory did not dictate these terms are to be taken literally.

I don't know what "literally" would mean exactly here. But in any case I was making a point about what Paul says in his letters, not whatever is dictated by headship theory.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Paul's Christology is very much centred on Christ as the last Adam whose cosmic sacrifice defeats Sin and Death that the first Adam brought into the world. But that's peculiarly Pauline and not really found elsewhere in the New Testament.

I think if an idea is found in Paul’s writings - 28% of the entire NT - it’s difficult to imply that he is somehow not the foremost personage after Jesus. He is, after all, the earliest interpreter of the Christian language community!

?? I didn't imply anything.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Paul's Christology is very much centred on Christ as the last Adam whose cosmic sacrifice defeats Sin and Death that the first Adam brought into the world. But that's peculiarly Pauline and not really found elsewhere in the New Testament.

I think if an idea is found in Paul’s writings - 28% of the entire NT - it’s difficult to imply that he is somehow not the foremost personage after Jesus. He is, after all, the earliest interpreter of the Christian language community!

?? I didn't imply anything.

“Peculiarly Pauline” makes it sound like Paul has some strongly distinctive voice of Christus Victor atonement, and that, in such thought, Paul had a distinct view from the other NT writers.

Paul's patterning of Christ after Adam is distinct, as I said. Didn't need to be overinterpreted.

Though bringing up Christus Victor reminds me one of the strangest things about Christianity is how the centrifugal part of the religion, the crucifixion of Jesus, is so undertheorised. Christians seem to have taken faith in a vague cosmic/apocalyptic/salvific importance attached to the event and worked forwards from there.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Paul's patterning of Christ after Adam is distinct, as I said. Didn't need to be overinterpreted.

Though bringing up Christus Victor reminds me one of the strangest things about Christianity is how the centrifugal part of the religion, the crucifixion of Jesus, is so undertheorised. Christians seem to have taken faith in a vague cosmic/apocalyptic/salvific importance attached to the event and worked forwards from there.

Theology of the Cross is a pretty big field - you can go to Amazon and see how many books come up when you search “a theology of the cross,” but please don’t buy books from them. A number of major modern theologians have written on the topic, including Douglas John Hall, James Cone, and Alister McGrath.

Probably the most fascinating one is the heretical Hegelian model of the cross, in which God died on the cross and became embodied in the church at Pentecost.

The variety of answers is kind of why I said undertheorised. The vast majority of Christians have a very exactly defined (to the point of absurdity) Christology since Nicaea and Chalcedon, for example. But the nature of atonement, which actually describes how Christianity works, is subject to a bewildering array of different theories with some of the popular ones only a few centuries old. It seems like early Christians had a fairly vague understanding of the mechanism behind Christ's sacrifice and just took the event at face value.