{"id":28513,"date":"2017-06-19T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T10:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=28513"},"modified":"2017-06-19T11:08:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T15:08:27","slug":"infant-morality-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2017\/06\/infant-morality-draft\/","title":{"rendered":"Infant morality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Birth<\/a><\/p>\n

Christians who don\u2019t believe in baptizing infants generally hold to the notion of \u201cthe age of accountability.\u201d \u00a0This means that children below a certain age (which varies) do not really sin because they don\u2019t know what they are doing and therefore are not accountable. \u00a0 After they reach that point, they can understand their sinfulness, repent, and make a \u201cdecision\u201d for Christ.<\/p>\n

\n

An article in the evangelical publication Christianity Today\u00a0<\/em>recounts some fascinating experiments that show that infants do, in fact, have a moral sensibility.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that these experiments\u00a0can address the question of \u201caccountability,\u201d but they do show that infants are not blank slates, to be programmed as we will. \u00a0Rather, they are complex human beings with an innate sense of right and wrong.<\/p>\n

And thus, we Lutherans say, they are good candidates for baptism.<\/p>\n

FURTHER THOUGHT: \u00a0These experiments also provide evidence that the Law is \u201cwritten on the heart\u201d (Romans 2:15), rather than morality simply being a social construction, as is often assumed today.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Rebecca Randall,\u00a0What Science Says About the Age of Accountability\u2026 | Christianity Today<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Christians have tended to consider whether babies have a sin nature. The emphasis is on culpability\u2014are children capable of right and wrong? Parents know even young children are capable of behaving badly or well. Because of this, Christians have debated an age of accountability, attempting to account for how God might still save children who haven\u2019t reached an age when they understand their sin.<\/p>\n

Yet as modern science asks questions about babies\u2019 morality, it helps us consider human nature as morality developed throughout our lives from infanthood to our senior years. What we find is not so black and white but a developed sense of morality resulting from a mix of nature and nurture.<\/p>\n

Can My Baby Sin?<\/h4>\n

First, in contradiction with early philosophers, psychologists are finding that humans aren\u2019t a blank slate at birth. As Paul Bloom, the author of Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil <\/em>concludes<\/a>, \u201cWith the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[Keep reading. . .]\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christians who don\u2019t believe in baptizing infants generally hold to the notion of \u201cthe age of accountability.\u201d \u00a0This means that children below a certain age (which varies) do not really sin because they don\u2019t know what they are doing and therefore are not accountable. \u00a0 After they reach that point, they can understand their sinfulness, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":26575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,27,33,37,40,47],"tags":[5529,3812,1488,3944],"class_list":["post-28513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-life-issues","category-nature","category-psychology","category-science","category-theology","tag-age-of-accountability","tag-infant-baptism","tag-moral-development","tag-original-sin"],"yoast_head":"\nInfant morality<\/title>\n<meta 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