NOTES for Eze 18:20
In ancient times, the idea that a whole group was responsible for a crime committed by one person was widespread everywhere. Indeed, it is not so rare even today. Yet, speaking in God's name, the prophet rejects this idea—completely and unequivocally. To a large extent, of course, this is because collective responsibility can hardly be considered inherently just. The belief that children must answer for the crimes of their fathers—and, more broadly, that the members of one large patriarchal clan bear responsibility for one another's actions—arose when the clan was seen as a single whole living a single life, so that it was impossible to identify and distinguish the individuals within it. Today, however, there is little need to dwell on the fact that this is, at the very least, not always true.
But injustice is not the only issue. Collectivism is frightening not only because it can bring punishment upon someone who may have had no direct connection at all with the crime. It is frightening because there is no place in the collective for the unique and unrepeatable human person. There are no separate “I”s within it, only one great “we.” Yet the one who always stands before God is not a collective but a concrete human being in all their uniqueness and singularity. Therefore, God has no need for anything that draws a person backward into a collective of any kind. He wishes to deal neither with a mass nor with a crowd, but with the individual person.