Sean.
Thanks very much for your thoughts. The difficulty I percieve with the view you've described is that even if the temporal judgement was all they recieved, then they have still had their sin imputed against them. Romans doesn't seem to restrict the punishment for their sin to a time after their death.
Paidion,
Thanks also for your thoughts. I have some trouble with this understanding of the passage, for this reason: I've been taught that the definition of the word 'sin' is 'a violation of any of God's commands'. A subset of God's commands are the Old Testament Laws given to Moses. The verse says that these people have sinned, but Paul says there has to be a law.
I can see two possibilites for a solution:
(1) Maybe the word 'sin' should be understood as something other than I've described above.
(2) Maybe the word 'law' is used in two different ways in the Romans passage.
For the latter possibility, maybe the passage should be understood this way. Bold text added.
12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--
13 for until the Law given through Moses sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no command from God of any sort.
14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
So, then in v13b Paul is just stating the obvious - that God only imputes sin when a command has been both given and has been violated. The disadvantage of this view is that Paul still uses the word 'sin' to describe a violation of a law that doesn't exist, which seems peculiar.
Peter