That the sins of the fathers are “imputed” to sons is, Grotius thinks, a clear teaching of Scripture ( Defensio Fidei Catholoicae: De Satisfactione Christi Adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem (1.25).
But why? Grotius gives this intriguing answer, reflecting on Jeremiah’s use of the theme from Exodus: “in order to magnify the misery of the people in those days, he says that the punishment of their own sins and the sins of their ancestors redounded upon them, and that on this account their parents’ lot was much easier than their own, since they, though equally guilty, had yet departed from life before those very bitter punishments, heaped together, as it were, in the treasury of divine wrath, were finally simultaneously poured forth.”
The explanation is concretely temporal/historical: The fathers sin, and God judges. When the sons appear, the situation has already deteriorated because of the sins of the fathers. Unless the sons repent, a worst judgment falls on them, worse because it is a the cumulative judgment that combines the judgment on earlier generations and on their own.
So, for instance: Sexual liberation left a legacy of cultural and social decay; since later generations didn’t repent, we have to reap the consequences not only of the sexual revolution but the consequences of our own sexual confusions.
