Thread by @dukekwondc

To all who repeatedly cite Ezekiel 18:20 as if it were the scriptural deathblow to all things reparations:

Stop it. 😉

A Christian account of reparations isn't grounded in the imputation of a predecessor's personal guilt to an innocent party.

Rather, it is grounded, in part, in an old Christian ethical tradition that reads Numbers 5:8 as requiring stolen goods to be returned to descendants of the originally injured party, i.e., heirs whose rightful possession those good would have been had they not been stolen.

See, e.g., Aquinas (1456), Robert Some (1562), John Wemyss (1632), William Fenner (1648), Watson (1668), Baxter (1673), Ezekiel Hopkins (1692), William Beveridge (1711), Randolph Ford (1711), White Kennett (1719), Thomas Boston (1773), Thomas Ridgley (1814), William Plumer (1864)

The same moral logic is applied to the responsibility of the "innocent" descendants of thieves. Consider Thomas Watson's explanation (1668): "Mark what I say: if there be any who have estates left them and they know that the parties who left their estates had defrauded others and

died with that guilt upon, then the heirs or executors who possess those estates are bound in conscience to make restitution, otherwise they entail the curse of God upon their family."

So, no more Ezekiel 18 prooftexting, please! Nothing "vanishes" with this single verse. 😏