[Principal Peter] Personal Responsibility & Inherited Guilt

From the Bible to British Law

By Principal Peter Abram, MISSION INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL CAMBODIA. Sunday November 9, 2025

‘Reparations for slavery’ ‘Collective guilt for your colonial past’

Throughout history, societies have wrestled with the question of whether children should suffer for the sins of their parents. The powerful idea that each person stands responsible before God for their own actions came first from the Bible and later shaped British law and moral thought.

Biblical Origins

In the Old Testament, the prophet Ezekiel declared:

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father…” (Ezekiel 18:20)

This teaching was revolutionary for its time. In ancient tribal cultures, punishment often fell upon entire families or clans when one member committed a wrong. Ezekiel’s words broke that pattern and established the principle of personal moral responsibility — that every individual is accountable, not to a new generation of self-appointed judge, jury & executioner, but to God for their own actions.

British and Legal Development

During the early Middle Ages, if a man committed treason, his family could lose their property or titles — a practice known as ‘corruption of blood.’ However, over the centuries this changed. When Christianity spread through Britain, this idea gradually influenced law and justice.

During the Reformation, Protestant thinkers emphasised individual conscience and personal accountability before God. Later, in the Enlightenment period, philosophers like John Locke and jurist William Blackstone argued that justice must apply only to the guilty person, not to their descendants. 

By 1814, English law formally abolished the punishment of a family for the crimes of a relative. This shift helped bring an end to cycles of vengeance and blood feuds that once divided families and tribes. It paved the way for a society governed by laws rather than revenge, and for moral teaching that emphasised forgiveness and individual responsibility.

Summary Timeline

Period	Development	Context
c. 600 BCE	Ezekiel’s teaching on individual guilt	Old Testament prophetic ethics
11th–13th centuries	Collective punishment in early English law	Feudal loyalty and 'corruption of blood'
16th century	Reformation revival of personal responsibility	Protestant emphasis on conscience
17th–18th centuries	Enlightenment & Common Law reforms	Locke, Blackstone – individual rights
1814	Abolition of hereditary punishment	Modern legal principle: no guilt by birth

Today, this philosophy remains a foundation of modern morality and law: we are each responsible for our own actions, and forgiveness — not inherited blame — lies at the heart of justice and faith. So, what then are demands for reparations for slavery? What should we make of the insistence of Western progressives that we should share in collective guilt for our colonial past? A quick check of reality can easily expose the one-sided lunacy of these demands. Four hundred thousand Americans died fighting slavery in the American Civil War. Five thousand British Royal Navy sailors died at sea in Britain’s noble and extensive efforts to eradicate slavery internationally. Do today’s descendants of those who made the ultimate sacrifice get reparations? Should the cheque for reparations in the Empire be accompanied by a bill for the power grid, public transport, engineering, education, written language, medicine, courts of law and every other science & sophistication the Europeans brought with them?

Such demands in 2025, are so frequently espoused by upper-middle class young people under the tutelage of disgruntled Baby Boomers. They have only ever experienced a sanitary existence & the safety of affluence in the leafy lanes of suburbia—before making the perilous voyage from Mom & Dad’s basement to the College Dormitories. No one working in the mines or toiling in a sewerage treatment plant ever went home & wept publicly online for hours over the suffering of others in the colonial past. 

The ramblings of the Woke reflect a deep-seated desire to return to a Medieval Pagan culture, devoid of responsibility & with the promise of the freedom to morally & sexually degenerate without judgement or consequence. This is not a depraved collective mindset to be beaten down in bloody warfare. That would be not only ironic, but hypocritical. The answer lies in Christendom. Under the re-establishment of Christian Patriarchies, embracing everything that made Western Civilization great, the ridiculous concept of visiting the sins of the father on the son will wither and die.