521. Hereditary evil, my friend, comes from no other source but one's parents. And it is not real evil that one actually commits, but a tendency to it. That is something anyone would acknowledge, provided he applied his powers of reasoning to his experiences. Everyone knows that sons have by birth a general likeness to their parents, in their faces, their behaviour and their characters; and grandchildren and great-grandchildren too show the same resemblance to their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Many people can tell families apart by this, and even races; Africans can be distinguished from Europeans, Neapolitans from Germans, Englishmen from Frenchmen, and so on. Anyone can recognise a Jew by his face, his eyes, his speech and gestures. And if you were able to perceive the life-sphere radiating from anyone's inherent nature, you could likewise be convinced of the similarity of their temperaments and minds.
[2] It follows from this that what a person has by birth is not real evils, but only a tendency to evils, being more or less prone to particular evils. No one, therefore, after death is judged on his hereditary evil, but the actual evils he has himself committed. This is obvious too from the following rule of the Lord:
The father shall not die on account of the son, and the son shall not die on account of the father; each shall die as the result of his own sin. Deut. 24:16.
This was proved to me in the spiritual world from the case of those who die as children; they merely have a tendency towards evils, that is to say, they want to, but do not do them. For they are brought up under the Lord's guidance and are saved. [3] This tendency and proneness to evils just mentioned, which is transmitted from parents to their children and descendants, can only be broken down by a person being born anew by the Lord's help, a process called regeneration. Without this not only does the tendency remain unbroken, but it is reinforced by a succession of parents, becoming more prone to evils, and eventually to every kind of evil. That is why the Jews are still copies of their ancestor Judah, who married a Canaanite wife, and fathered three lines of descent by adultery with Tamar, his daughter-in-law. This heredity has become so amplified in the course of time that the Jews are unable to embrace the Christian religion and believe it in their hearts. I say they are unable, because the inner will in their minds resists, and it is this will which creates the impossibility.
This page is part of 
© 2000-2001 The Academy of the New Church