Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Daniel A. Keating (RC) "Personal Responsibility and Generational Sin"

  

Personal Responsibility and Generational Sin

 

How can Ezekiel’s prophetic pronouncement—that each person will be judged for his own sin and not for the sins of his parents—be reconciled with passages in the Old Testament that seem to say the opposite? For example, right in the midst of the giving of the Ten Commandments we find this passage: “I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exod 20:5-6). It seems that the passage is saying that three and even four generations of descendants will be punished for the sins of their fathers. Passages in the historical books would seem to confirm this understanding. In 2 Kings 24:3-4, the author concludes that disaster befell Judah “for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done.” And the author of Lamentations boldly claims: “Our fathers sinned, and are no more; / and we bear their iniquities” (Lam 5:7).

 

Many commentators—ancient and modern—have concluded that Ezekiel is reversing an earlier practice and annulling the teaching of Moses, by moving away from an era of corporate responsibility and punishment to one in which individual responsibility holds sway. But the picture is more complex than this. In Deuteronomy, Moses declares that each one will be punished only for his or her own sin: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor shall the children be put to death for the fathers; every man shall be put to death for his own sin” (Deut 24:16). Ezekiel’s teaching is in full accord with this law. Further, both 2 Kings and Lamentations acknowledge that the generation that was punished was also itself guilty of the sins of their fathers. In other words, it appears that punishment befell the people because they themselves continued the same pattern of sins that their fathers had committed. This is how some Church Fathers and Jewish rabbis reconcile Exod 20:5-6 with Ezekiel: punishment continued to the third and fourth generation only when those generations also sinned against the Lord as their fathers had done. In any case, Ezekiel certainly underlines personal responsibility for sin and, in the Lord’s name, rejects the notion that God punishes someone solely on account of another’s sin.

 

But Ezekiel maintains a corporate sense of responsibility as well: sin impacts the entire family and community, and this can include future generations. For example, those born in the exile in Babylon suffer this fate because of the sins of their parents, but God will rescue them and bring them all back to the land (Ezek 39:28), also prophesies a general judgment on the whole people, even as some (a remnant) are marked out by God for deliverance (see 9:4). In Ezekiel, each person bears responsibility only for his or her own sin, but the Lord still continues to relate Israel as a family—a people—who are the recipients of his judgment and his deliverance. (Daniel A. Keating, Ezekiel [Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2024], 138-39)

 

 


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