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Jan 17 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963:
"Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws." (1/9)
"One may well ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?' The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws." (2/)
"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'" (3/)
"Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law." (4/)
"To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." (5/)
"All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority." (6/)
"Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an 'I-it' relationship for an 'I-thou' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation...is morally wrong and sinful." (7/)
"Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness?" (8/)
"Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong." (9/9)
#mlk #MLKDay
Postscript: For more about the natural law so eloquently invoked by Dr. King, see this article: catholic.com/magazine/print…

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Jan 19
"If God has a plan, prayer is pointless."

This is true if our prayer is an attempt to make God change his mind or his will. That's contrary to sound philosophy and biblical faith: “I the Lord do not change” (Mal 3:6). So what IS the goal of intercessory prayer?🧵
A correct understanding of the nature of prayer teaches us that prayer does not change God’s will but accomplishes it. We might say that prayer attempts to fulfill the conditions of God’s will by which he has ordained that certain goods be given to us.
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Jul 20, 2021
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Jul 19, 2021
There is better historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ than there is for Plato, Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great. If you doubt the existence of Jesus because "the New Testament was written decades after he existed," you also have to doubt the other three.
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Apr 5, 2021
"Easter is a pagan holiday. Its timing is based on the full moon and the spring equinox, and it’s named after the goddess Ishtar."

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Feb 18, 2021
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Feb 1, 2021
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