Just because infants are not responsible agents does not mean they are born with a sinless nature.
I have never claimed that.
Jesus said a good tree (heart) cannot bring forth evil fruit (evil works) and an evil tree (heart) cannot bring forth good fruit (good works). The hearts of infants bring forth evil works.
Yes, in time, they exhibit their sin nature. I said that.
David, Isaiah, Job all assert that infants from the womb come into this world with a depraved nature.
Yes.
Paul asserts that infants (all humans come into the world as infants) were made sinners BY ONE MAN'S ACT OF DISOBEDIENCE - Rom. 5:15-19.
They have the sin nature from their ancestors.
However, your whole position is that it is by many individual acts of disobedience that many are made sinners - the very opposite of what Paul claims to be the case.
Please don't tell me what my "position" is, especially when you are wrong.
I wrote, "
As a child gets older, they learn the difference between right and wrong - not just because their parents say so, but because they sense that they have broken their own moral code - and they become responsible toward God. They repeat the sins of their ancestors going all the way back to Adam and Eve. THEN, they are in need of embracing redemption in a personal way."
I know what Paul has written. I have studied it carefully. I am open to correction, but you don't seem to even understand what I have been trying to communicate.
The whole argument in Romans 5:12-19 is BY ONE MAN'S SIN many sinned as the whole human nature existed in one man and thus the whole race sinned when that one man sinned.
That's not the whole argument, but that is a major portion of it.
That is why all humans between Adam and Moses suffered death not due to individual disobedience to the Law of Moses or due to violation the law of conscience as infants cannot violate conscience as they are incapable of discerning right from wrong. Hence, their sinful nature and death can only originate from ONE MAN'S VIOLATION of the law in the garden - Rom. 5:12-14 and that fact is repeated over and over again in Romans 5:15-19.
Did you notice verse 13?
"
...for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is not accounting for sin when there is no law."
While the effects of sin (physical death, the malaise of creation, etc.) are endured by everyone, the responsibility for sin is only held against us when we have knowledge of it. Paul - the writer of the argument you cite - said to the Athenians, "Therefore,
although God has overlooked such times of ignorance, he now commands all people everywhere to repent..." (Acts 17:30). While we do not have to have an explicit witness of the law (as Jewish believers had) or an explicit Christian witness, like the hearers of Paul and many of us had, we can know that there is a God through the evidence of creation (Romans 1:20).
But infants do not know that yet. There are others who do not have the capacity to confirm themselves in the guilt of their ancestors yet. God does not hold them accountable for what they do not know.
Jewish tradition is not a substitute or an basis of authority for interpreting God's Word.
Not an authority, but it can be used as an example of a God-ordained faith tradition that recognizes some realities about humankind.
May I point out that you are reading Romans through a lens formed by the Reformation and later traditions, and you don't mind using those as a guide to interpreting God's word? Take a deep breath and realize that there may be more to this than you imagined.
