The post-war liberal order was premised on the idea of the open society: that Western democracies would demonstrate their superiority by their commitment to openness, transparency, and the free exchange of information and ideas. Yet at present, we are witnessing a great closing of the very societies that once prided themselves on the free exchange of ideas. These regimes, which still see themselves as opposing totalitarianism and censorship, are falling prey to soft and hard forms of both.

New examples seem to emerge almost weekly. To name but a few:

• In the United Kingdom, pro-life advocates have been arrested and convicted of violating “buffer zone” laws for offering a consensual conversation, holding a sign, or silently praying outside abortion facilities.
• In Ireland, a teacher was arrested for refusing to use a student’s opposite-sex pronouns. In the United States, public schools punished several teachers for using biologically correct pronouns and forbade a 12-year-old student from wearing a t-shirt that said, “There are only two genders.”
• In Finland, a longtime member of parliament, Paivi Räsänen, is on trial at the nation’s highest court for merely expressing her Christian beliefs on marriage.
• According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the US government actively pressured social media companies to censor dissenting voices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Months later, Zuckerberg acknowledged that Meta’s content moderators had been guilty of letting political biases influence their content moderation decisions.
• In August 2024, ahead of a planned X interview with then-candidate Donald Trump, the European Commission publicly warned Elon Musk to police content on X that “may incite violence, hate and racism.” The Commission vowed to “make full use of our toolbox” under the Digital Services Act, a 2022 EU law that enables online censorship.
• In the media, it is not uncommon to see mainstream outlets like The New York Times or Washington Post run headlines questioning robust free speech protections—for example, “The First Amendment Is Out of Control” and “Why America Needs a Hate Speech Law.”

Famed writer Walter Kirn, by no means a conservative, observed in September 2024,

The last few days have seen an almost symphonic surge of attacks on our most fundamental rights, by officials, newspapers, politicians, celebrities, & academics. It’s not rhetoric anymore, it’s an organized massing of institutional forces prior to big moves which seem imminent.¹Walter Kirn (@walterkirn), X, 1 September 2024, https://x.com/walterkirn/status/1830375671279038572.

Americans often take for granted the value of free speech, viewing it not just as beneficial but essential to our political order. Meanwhile, a growing number of right-leaning thinkers are calling for increased restrictions on speech. But what does Christianity have to say on the matter? Do Christians, as Christians, have anything distinct to contribute to the conversation on free speech?

While Christian reflection on free speech as such has been admittedly thin, we contend that Christianity offers a rich foundation for grounding a modern concept of free speech.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the connections between Christian theology and free speech.²The authors wish to stress that their aim is not to demonstrate the compatibility of free speech with Christian theology but to begin with Christian theology and to mine its vast resources for how Scripture, theology, and tradition bear on the subject of free speech. Our thesis is that human beings, as rational agents made in God’s image, are made to be truth-seekers and truth-speakers. These dual realities of man’s nature and purpose ground a Christian theology of free speech. Obtaining the truth by receiving it through speech acts—and supremely, the speech act of God as revealed in Scripture—compels the Christian to speak faithfully in accordance with the truth. We will also consider the effects of sin on society and its institutions, and how ideas like human fallibility and eschatology should caution us against granting the government too much authority over the boundaries of speech.

Our central task is to develop a “theology of free speech.”³Free speech is ultimately cabined and intelligible in view of religious freedom. But religious freedom is not the subject of this paper; rather, speech itself is the focus. The attentive reader should, however, never stray too far in their mind from associating speech with freedom of conscience and its broader conceptual category, namely, religious liberty. We do so by exploring (1) the relationship between the image of God and the purpose of freedom; (2) the purpose of human speech in Scripture; (3) the purpose of civil government and the jurisdictions it can claim rightful authority over; and (4) a Christian understanding of human rights. Once those areas are explored, a fifth section ties these reflections together to posit a theology of free speech. In this final section, we give sustained attention to defining free speech theologically in the context of human rights while considering the proper scope of free speech in the law.

1. Freedom and the Image of God

A central tenet of Christian theology is that human beings are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26–28). The Christian tradition has offered a rich and profound evaluation of the ontological worth of human beings. While theologians have differed on the precise meaning and scope of the imago Dei, there is broad agreement that bearing God’s image involves at least three essential aspects: rationality, self-constitution (or agency), and freedom.

The first element, rationality, refers to the notion that God has made human beings unique in our cognitive powers. Unlike the rest of creation, we can deliberate and make choices. In addition, we can speak—that is, create meaning with the sounds of our mouths or the writing of our hands to reflect the deliberative judgments of human cognition. In this, we reflect our Creator, whose words correspond to his mind, will, and action.⁴This paper focuses on spoken and written speech. However, the law should and does protect forms of human communication that are neither spoken nor written, including, but not limited to, abstract painting, drawing, sculpture, cake design, and flower arrangement. These acts of human creativity express and communicate messages and are due the highest standard of legal protection from government interference. Indeed, we cannot overlook the significance of God’s creative agency in what the Bible refers to as the “Word,” identified as Jesus Christ in John 1. The “Word” and “words” share a coterminous origin in creative and purposeful agency.

The second element, self-constitution, refers to human beings’ capacity to live authentically according to the settled judgments of their conscience. How humans communicate is an emanation of our own willful choice to order our lives how we see fit. Humans exercise a God-like agency in their ability to create and name (Gen 1:3; 2:19). Indeed, central to the task of exercising dominion is “vice-regency”—a call to rule and reign on behalf of God—and this includes speaking as a constitutive element of being human.

A third element of bearing God’s image is the freedom we possess. God grants us ontological freedom, ensuring that we are not automatons. We also possess moral freedom in how we choose to order our lives. Though constrained by the effects of sin, rationality and self-constitution require a corresponding catalyst for their fulfillment: freedom. Yet freedom, in the Christian view, is not merely a lack of constraint upon human decision-making. Rather, certain human choices will align with God’s created order and purpose, and freedom exists precisely for this end.

Without freedom, a rational agent’s self-constituting dynamism is extinguished, reducing him to a kind of robotic slavery or servitude. In Christian nomenclature, freedom is not merely the ability to pursue whatever desires well up inside us; freedom is constrained by the reality of order and purpose. Freedom as wants versus oughts is the decisive factor in understanding Christian liberty. Christian liberty, properly understood, is not synonymous with using one’s agency however one wishes. Instead, true liberty is the ability for the moral agent to order his or her actions in conformity with God’s will for creation. Speech is an essential property, corollary, and outworking of our rationality and agency that seeks outward propulsion in bringing order to God’s world.

2. The Biblical Purpose of Speech

Scripture is rich with moral instruction on the purpose of our speech. In Matthew 15, Jesus says that the character of our speech reflects the state of our relationship with God (Matt 15:17–19). It has a life-giving and preservative element (Col 4:6). Speech is assumed to be both the platform and method of interaction and coordination between individuals and entire societies. It is no exaggeration to say that the drama of Scripture unfolds primarily through speech acts.

Scripture implies that speech is creative, arising from a conscientious declaration of settled judgments (Gen 1:3, 2:19; Rom 14:5). Speech is likened to sustenance that nourishes (Prov 10:21). We are called to honor God in every area of life, including with our speech (1 Cor 10:31). Speech is a form of intellectual interrogation and expression through which to contend for Christianity’s truthfulness (Col 2:8). Speech is critical to preaching and evangelism (Matt 28:19–20; Acts 17; 22–26; Eph 6:19–20). Indeed, if there is a meta-telos of free speech, we might locate it in 1 Thess 2:15–16. These verses highlight both the imperative of proclaiming the gospel and the severe consequences of losing free speech. Those who censor the gospel are described as “hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved.”

In general, Scripture depicts speech as a powerful tool capable of bringing about great harm or great good (Jas 3:2–12). Words are likened to spears, swords, and arrows in their ability to affect emotional states (Ps 57:4; 64:3; Jer 9:8). There are also biblical injunctions on speech. Scripture forbids falsehood, obscenity, slander, and corrupting talk (Exod 20:7, 16; Lev 19:11; Eph 4:15, 25, 29; Col 3:8–9; Titus 3:2). Above all, we are called to “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15).

This paper focuses on “speech” through verbal and written utterances. Speech by itself is an instrumental good that serves the pursuit of moral goods. The value of any particular utterance will vary based on its content, but the human faculty to speak such utterances always reflects the creative agency of God as inscribed on the human being as made in God’s image. Moral goods are self-evident and valuable ends of human action, reflecting human excellence by fulfilling our nature as human beings. Among these goods are life, play, practical reasonableness, knowledge, family, friendship, beauty, and religion.⁵John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 85–89.

While the freedom to speak is an inherent, pre-political right, government recognizes this right by enshrining freedom of speech as a “negative” political and legal right, thus limiting state coercion in matters of expression. This negative right is intrinsically good because it safeguards the faculty of truth-seeking.

Fundamentally, utterances and expressions are not ends in themselves. A general “freedom of speech,” taken out of its political context and understood as an absolute theological right to say whatever one wishes, is alien to Scripture. In Scripture, truth and virtue condition our speech toward the highest virtue of love (Eph 4:15). Yet “freedom of speech,” as a negative political right, protects the faculty of truth-seeking. It is therefore a necessary means of securing an intrinsic human good.

3. Speech and the Purpose of Government

Scripture and the overwhelming testimony of church history affirm a positive role for government within God’s created order. For example, Romans 13:1–7 and 1 Peter 2:13–17 establish the government’s authority, mandate, and competency to maintain order and administer justice in political communities. Government exists to punish evil and protect the creational context in which the dominion mandate can unfold. Since Scripture does not grant government unlimited authority, it follows that its authority is inherently limited.

Throughout history, Christians have debated the precise spheres in which government is competent to exercise its authority.⁶For example, Christian theology is nearly unanimous in affirming government’s authority to arrest persons who commit physical violence. It is not clear whether government should deliver healthcare. A helpful way to determine the proper scope of government authority and judgment is to consider three interrelated questions:⁷Richard Mouw, “Carl Henry Was Right,” Christianity Today, 27 January 2010, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/january/25.30.html.

tIn Christian theology, the government’s authority to judge has traditionally been limited to external arenas and physical interactions, given the difficulty of discerning what lies within a person’s heart and mind. Theologians have found in Matthew 22:15–22 a foundation for a broad distinction between man’s interior life (private and subject to God) and exterior life (public and subject to governing authorities).⁸See, for example, John Calvin’s commentary on Matthew 22, as well as Thomas Aquinas’s statement that “human beings can judge only sensibly perceptible external acts, not hidden internal movements,” Summa Theologica I–II.91.4. This distinction is reflected in international law, which distinguishes between the forum internum (“internal dimension of a person’s religious or belief related conviction”), which receives absolute protection from state regulation, and forum externum (“worship, observance, practice and teaching”), which may be subject to limited and narrowly defined state regulation. See Article 18 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, United Nations General Assembly, 16 December 1966, https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights. Admittedly, it is not always clear to which category speech belongs. While speech originates in the heart, it impinges on public order, which is doubtlessly within the purview of the government’s interest. Compounding the difficulty of speech’s exact domain, speech is a non-physical action that springs from an internal forum. Yet determining when and how speech-related issues may warrant government intervention is a highly volatile question, and Scripture gives no definitive guidance on the matter. On the surface, Scripture does not appear to grant the government explicit authority over speech. This absence is significant, especially given how deeply speech is tied to the interior life of the person. To place speech under government control, then, would be to cede tremendous authority over a fundamental liberty that implicates the soul.⁹The authors wish to clearly stipulate not that government is foreclosed from judging arenas on which speech touches or implicates, but only that Scripture places a high hurdle for government to clear for it to justifiably intrude into speech-related domains. For example: It is reasonable to conclude that it would not be permissible from Scripture for government to prohibit a citizen from saying scandalous things in the privacy of their own home. Once the scandalous language becomes public, though, a series of diagnostic questions would then arise as to whether the speech leads to threatening outcomes that invite the government’s intervention to some prudential degree.

4. Christianity and Human Rights

“Rights” discourse always risks running afoul of the Bible’s language, since “rights-talk” is ladened with modern concepts of individualism that are foreign to Scripture. Indeed, rights-talk is now so pervasive in the West that it is used to justify both goods and evils alike.¹⁰On the obsession and abuse of rights talk, see Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008). Still, Christian thought has reflected deeply on the relationship between Christian theology and natural political rights.¹¹See, for example, the influence of Christian thought on the Founders of the United States or on the drafting of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In particular, see Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy, and The Rights of Man and Natural Law, trans. Doris C. Anson (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996). A consensus has emerged that “rights,” as we know them, originate from moral duties that God commands of human subjects. Carl F. H. Henry states, “The Bible has a doctrine of divinely imposed duties; what moderns call human rights are the contingent flipside of those duties.”¹²Carl F. H. Henry, Twilight of a Great Civilization: The Drift Toward Neo-Paganism (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1988), 148. The Roman Catholic Church’s 1963 Pacem in Terris also grounds rights in duties:

The natural rights of which We have so far been speaking are inextricably bound up with as many duties, all applying to one and the same person. These rights and duties derive their origin, their sustenance, and their indestructibility from the natural law, which in conferring the one imposes the other.¹³John XXIII, Pacem in Terris [Encyclical of Pope John XXIII on Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty], The Holy See, 11 April 1963, sec. 28, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html.

The encyclical explicitly cites free speech as a right: “The right to be free to seek out the truth [involves] the duty to devote oneself to an ever deeper and wider search for it.”¹⁴John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, sec. 29.

The moral logic of rights is as follows: A duty—for example, to speak truthfully—requires the ability to exercise the moral power of speech. If human beings are morally obligated to use their speech rightly—and if, in this case, that obligation includes seeking God with all one’s heart, soul, strength, mind, and, by implication, with one’s speech—then the ability to fulfill that duty is intrinsically tied to human dignity and rational capacity as created beings. It is in that sense that a “right” to speech can be said to correspond to the fulfillment of that obligation.

To fulfill these duties, people must have a protective horizon (of law) offering reasonable assurance that they can indeed speak. According to J. Daryl Charles, “rights and duties are reciprocal in nature. If I have a fundamental right to something, others have the duty to guard and protect that right.”¹⁵J. Daryl Charles, Natural Law and Religious Freedom: The Role of Moral First Things in Grounding and Protecting the First Freedom (New York: Routledge, 2018), 162. That is where legal codification becomes essential. Human rights are “pre-legal moral entitlements” that accord with the nature God has given us as his image-bearers.¹⁶P. A. Marshall, “Human Rights,” in New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, ed. David J. Atkinson et al. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1995), 747.

We could deduce an intrinsic and natural right to free speech from the third and ninth commandments: If there is a negative duty not to misuse one’s speech, there is also a positive duty—which would require a right—to seek to use one’s speech correctly.

In sum, rights exist to protect the ability of individuals to fulfill moral duties consistent with a God-given human nature and God-defined human flourishing. Rights do not protect moral evil for its own sake. Giving space for humans to err in the pursuit of their moral duties should not be construed as suggesting that “error has rights,” but rather that error may roam without coercion up to certain limits. Determining where those “limits” are is admittedly fact-specific and context-dependent. Those who err have a degree of immunity in proportion to the nature of their offending speech.

5. A Theology of Free Speech

In developing a theology of free speech, the first principle to note is that Scripture does not explicitly posit a theology of free speech. We should be cautious not to conform the Bible anachronistically to our modern notions of liberal democracy. The Bible posits a duty to speak truthfully as rational agents made in God’s image. This duty is the foundation for developing a theology of free speech.

A Christian perspective on speech honors human beings’ rational, relational, affective, psychosocial, and creative agency. Speech is an instrumental good in that speech helps realize human goods through acts of communication and coordination that require liberty for their attainment and expression.

Speech emanates from the wellspring of settled judgment through the individual conscience’s grasp of truth. Speech is the instrumental good that allows human beings and political communities to search for the truth, utter the truth, correct falsehood, and refine truth with greater precision. The common good thus requires that members of society enjoy a right to use their speech in ways that allow them to order themselves, and the whole of society, toward truth.

The Lord commands us to use our speech to honor him and his creatures. The duty to fulfill this calling must be seen as a principle of justice tied to human nature’s fulfillment. As such, it must come with some natural right of justice enacted through legal protection. Protecting one’s moral faculties to pursue moral goods by law ensures human beings and communities reach their proper end, which is consistent with the idea of the common good in Christian social teaching. From this perspective, free speech is a matter of political justice, since speech allows us as created beings and citizens to obtain the goods necessary for our flourishing.

The government, therefore, has a rightful but limited role to play in protecting and facilitating the realization of truth through speech. This is why the Founding Fathers enshrined freedom of speech in the First Amendment and why the United Nations enshrined “freedom of opinion and expression” in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

5.1. The Purpose of Free Speech

A concern for freedom is not a grant for licentiousness. The possibility of a theology of free speech requires an even deeper question: What is freedom for? According to Christian thought, freedom is the ability to exercise one’s total agency (will, conduct, and speech) toward a due and proper end. Free speech entails elements of moral freedom and political freedom. Paul Helm confirms this idea: “Two freedom-themes are given great prominence in the New Testament: the fact that Christ makes his people free, and the fact that freedom is not lawlessness but results in conformity to moral law.”¹⁷Paul Helm, “Freedom,” in New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, ed. David J. Atkinson et al. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1995), 394. Christians are to use their speech in joyful conformity to God’s moral law. To advocate a theology of free speech entails both a positive and negative dimension: (1) A positive freedom to do one’s duty to speak truthfully, and (2) a negative liberty to be unmolested by arbitrary government infringement.

5.2. The Scope and Limits of Free Speech

Like any political right, free speech is not absolute. Limits on speech will be set against the explicit or implicit moral goods of a society. As Stanley Fish writes, “Speech, in short, is never a value in and of itself but is always produced within the precincts of some assumed conception of the good.”¹⁸Stanley Fish, There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 104. Defining the nature of those goods—and working to procure and secure them—is the essence of good and effective government.

As a general master principle, when speech violates the creation-order principles of the dominion mandate of Genesis 1–2 or natural law,¹⁹Space prevents further discussion on creation order and natural law. The authors have in view here threats to physical livelihood, family life, and public order. Those categories are admittedly broad, which reinforces the moral point of our analysis that, at some prudentially-decided point, restrictions will necessarily enter into discussion. the government’s interest at least heightens, and questions of restrictions become valid considerations. In general, when human goods are harmed (and defining “goods” and “harm” is critically important both in ethics and law), restrictions on speech become plausible, though not actionable without sufficient discernment. To give perhaps the clearest example: When speech rises to the level of imminent incitement to physical violence, virtually all recognize that government should be able to restrict that speech.

In general, speech enters a “danger zone” when people abandon the pursuit and expression of truth, allowing prurient (valueless), scandalous, malicious, and inciteful (physically animating) speech to predominate.²⁰It should be noted for reasons of audience and scope that the categories within purview are categories derived from American law. Traditional “time, place, and manner” restrictions on speech are inherently prudential and require legislative discernment.²¹Thomas Aquinas argues in Summa Theologica I–II q.96 a.2 that law is best left to the domains that violate only the physical or material safety of other persons (violence) and the community (stealing). The discerning of speech’s value must be viewed in light of Scripture’s command for the government to “punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Pet 2:14). The ability to distinguish between the two is a function of natural law (Rom 2:14–15).

In today’s context, one of the principal threats to free speech stems from governments adopting a misguided notion of harm, one that includes social stigma or feelings of offense as harms that government must remedy. This notion of harm, referred to in legal circles as “dignitary harm,” is premised not on intrinsic dignity as an inherent reality of the imago Dei but on dignity as a social status conferred by the community. Hence, the goal of Europe’s “hate speech” laws is to enforce social recognition of group identities, including self-constructed identities.²²In the United States, certain courts have penalized creative professionals who conscientiously object to same-sex marriage and gender transition efforts for having caused “dignitary harm.” Notably, such rulings fail to see that such penalties create their own stigma and offense to those who are penalized. When the law requires “dignity as recognition,” it protects some viewpoints and punishes others, twisting dignity into a mechanism for injustice.

Most recently, transgender-identifying individuals have claimed to suffer “dignitary harm” when others refuse to use their desired pronouns. This way of conceiving of harm has led to free-speech violations around the globe. In Mexico, for instance, when former congressman and presidential candidate Gabriel Quadri posted tweets on Twitter/X using biologically accurate pronouns for a transgender-identifying member of Congress, he was convicted of committing “gender-based political violence.”²³“International Body to Decide Case of Mexican Politician Censored for Gender Comments on ‘X,’” ADF International, 16 May 2025, https://tinyurl.com/33kneewx

Cases like these highlight the danger of expanding the definition of “harm” to justify government restrictions on expression. Protecting individuals from offense or disagreement cannot come at the cost of eroding the basic freedom to speak truthfully. Regulation of speech, when permissible, should always involve both government restraint and prudence. Not all sinful speech should invite government regulation. A Christian account of free speech must therefore account for forms of speech that are inherently valueless but may not be illegal. This raises the question: May sinful speech be restricted by anyone else besides the government?

At this point, the concept of “sphere sovereignty” is helpful in assessing the various spheres of authority that may restrict speech in ways appropriate to their moral jurisdictions. Because the family, church, and state have different moral purposes and legitimate realms of authority by God’s design, these different authorities can restrict or punish speech in ways appropriate to their jurisdictions. Parents, for instance, will monitor the speech of their children with far greater authority than the government. A church may restrict the teaching of heresy or moral error in its midst. A ministry may hire employees based on a Christian code of conduct that includes speech provisions—and it may dismiss employees for not upholding such conduct.

But what of the government sphere? When sinful or erroneous speech escapes the rightful jurisdiction of other restraining authorities, such as the family or church, does government have any rightful restraining role?

The answer is that given the goods attendant to God’s purpose for human speech, speech should enjoy the presumption of liberty. This will ensure human beings and political communities are not arbitrarily restricted from realizing the good.

To be sure, human beings are not morally entitled to intentionally speak falsehood—and when such speech creates direct and quantifiable harm to others (as in the case of false advertising, libel, etc.), governments may (and do) restrict it. But intentionally lying is different from earnestly stating what one thinks to be true but is not. For questions of government evaluation, the criterion should not be motive-seeking but criteria based on quantifiable and outward consequences on the common good.

We can adduce that human beings have a primary theological moral duty to use one’s speech to honor God and advance truth. They have a secondary political and legal right to allow falsehood—not for falsehood’s own sake, but because some error is inevitable as people misperceive and misunderstand in the search for truth. We allow false speech as a political concession in service of a deeper moral and theological right—the right to seek and speak the truth.²⁴The Roman Catholic Church arrives at the same conclusion. According to Libertas, “God Himself in His providence, though infinitely good and powerful, permits evil to exist in the world, partly that greater good may not be impeded, and partly that greater evil may not ensue.… But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability.” Leo XIII, Libertas [Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on the Nature of Human Liberty], The Holy See, 20 June 1888, sec. 33, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_20061888_libertas.html.

The scope of free speech protections has no precise biblical formula. It is, therefore, an issue of “adiaphora” and subject to prudential determinations. As previously mentioned, it is within the purview of the natural law for non-Christians to recognizably discern good speech from evil speech (1 Pet 2:14). There could be, in other words, a natural law reason to restrict the sorts of speech that breach the political community’s self-understanding of its purpose. Prudential determinations on how best to do this ensure that even Christians of goodwill are apt to disagree on how best to secure the moral goods of their society. George Will argues to the same effect that good government rests on the ability of its decision-makers (and the country’s citizens) to make critical distinctions, especially on matters of speech. He states,

All government takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are “up to a point.” Are we in favor of free speech? Of course–up to a point.²⁵George F. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 93.

We should also consider the nature of words when deliberating about restricting speech. Because words are immaterial by nature, determining appropriate penalties for harmful speech is inherently more complex. Penology around theft is clear and concrete: If you steal someone’s property, you will be incarcerated. Yet there are no clear, objective ways to measure offensiveness in speech that would automatically warrant a certain punishment. Given that censorship tends to expand once introduced, any penalties that restrict speech should be held to a significantly higher threshold.

Evil speech may condemn someone to perdition. Whether it should send them to jail or be restricted (and to what degree) is a question that Scripture does not directly address. Where the limits are drawn in what is deemed genuinely harmful for the common good is the very sum and substance of wise government. Legislators need deliberative space to make clear distinctions in speech that threaten the common good since there are no clear, biblically defined lines.

A political community may determine there are prudentially good reasons to permit undesirable speech. Such reasons may include the concern that allowing speech restrictions would empower bureaucrats to become invasive busybodies.²⁶This has become increasingly common in the United Kingdom, where an entire segment of the police force now spends its time scouring social media for speech deemed offensive (Sky News [@SkyNews], Twitter/X, 7 August 2024, https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1821178852397477984). Americans are uniquely wary of government’s tendency to abuse its power if it can make decisions about what speech is permitted. As a result, the First Amendment protects speech that is morally reprehensible.²⁷For example, in National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie (1977), the US Supreme Court upheld free-speech rights of participants in a Nazi parade through a town of Holocaust survivors. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “The proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom ‘to express the thought that we hate.’”²⁸Id. at 246 (quoting United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644, 655 [1929] [Holmes, J., dissenting]).

Another strong prudential reason for permitting some erroneous speech is that it ultimately serves the cause of truth-seeking. As a general rule, protecting the rights of others to express their settled judgments peacefully allows for the exchange of ideas, the interrogation of falsehood, the refinement of truth, and a firmer grasp of one’s own convictions. Policing speech risks reducing our access to better understanding. In a fallen world, people will disagree about what is true. Free speech is a pragmatic necessity that is comparable to common grace. It helps de-escalate political tensions without immediate recourse to violence. For this reason, in the interest of reducing the prospect of arbitrary infringement, it is prudent to have an open society in which speech has a vast space to make its case and err for the sake of the greater good of truth.

As described earlier, almost all Western countries have adopted some form of “hate speech” laws that punish “dignitary harm.” The United States has thus far resisted this move. Such laws are dangerous because: (1) it is virtually impossible to create objective standards that distinguish between “hate speech” and legitimate speech; (2) governments are not competent to draw these lines; and (3) if they attempt to do so, there is a high probability that government actors will play favorites.²⁹Michael Farris and Paul Coleman, “First Principles on Human Rights: Freedom of Speech,” The Heritage Foundation, 17 July 2020, https://www.heritage.org/civil-rights/report/first-principles-human-rights-freedom-speech. Examples from Europe show increasingly expansive “hate speech” prohibitions.³⁰See Jonathan Turley in US Congress, House, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media, 117th Cong., 1st sess., 2021, 24–47. Indeed, efforts to combat the spread of “hate” or “misinformation” through censorship create far greater problems than they solve. The best response to bad speech is almost always more speech. Limits on free speech should be based on measurable harms that can be objectively defined.

5.3. Free Speech as a Shield from Government Coercion

Scripture prescribes a positive yet limited role for the state. And history confirms that the temptation of governments is toward tyranny, not atrophy.

Freedom of speech, then, should be understood as part of a broader constitutional design aimed at limiting government overreach and preserving individual liberty.³¹Wayne Grudem, Politics according to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 484–85. Limiting the power of government regarding speech does not mean legislators should be agnostic about truth or indifferent to valueless speech. It stems from a simple recognition, borne out through history, that it is dangerous to make government the arbiter of truth and error in one’s speech. Even still, this can be taken to absurd conclusions: Would we want the government to be unable to say that incitement to imminent violence is not within its purview to police all because we take a posture that the government must be totally agnostic to the truth? Of course not. Moral minimums of the natural law must guide the government’s deliberations. In other words, we need the government to know the truth in certain circumstances.

5.4. Eschatology and Pluralism

We now come to a significant point in this paper’s argument that deals with the storyline of redemptive history.

As we await the final consummation of history, we live in an interim period where Scripture assumes that assaults on truth will occur. In Revelation 22:11, Christ says, “Let the evildoer still do evil … and the righteous still do right.” Similarly, in the parable of the weeds (Matt 13:24–30), he says we should let both good and evil continue, “lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.” Instead, we should “let both grow together until the harvest.” Nowhere in the New Testament is there a command for either Christians or the government to police, punish, or expel all degrees of error and wrongdoing in this age. Of course, evil and error do not have unchecked reign. Free speech is a principle that finds expression in legal and political safeguards. We lament the misuse of speech and summon its adherents to repentance, but such abuses are to be expected in this fallen age.

Moreover, Christians have strong biblical reasons to believe free speech will lead to truth. God promises that the proclamation of his Word will achieve its goals (Isa 55:11) and that his sheep, who hear his voice, “will listen” (John 10:27; Acts 28:28). This promise gives the proclamation of the gospel an advantage in the marketplace of ideas. Indeed, God never makes any similar promise to bless government-backed coercion. This divine promise to bless even a needle of truth in a haystack of error offers a powerful rebuttal to those who say government must put its thumb on the scale by censoring lies. Free speech may not guarantee a consensus in favor of the truth, but God providentially uses truthful speech to accomplish his purposes.

Isaiah Berlin captures one of the most significant challenges and opportunities for liberal democracy, since its foundation assumes “the fact that human goals are many, not all of them commensurable, and in perpetual conflict with one another.”³²Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 171. Rather than something to be overcome, this essay expects deeply incommensurable goals of society to remain in conflict until the consummation of history. Such conflict, then, is a tension alongside our insistence of conforming to God’s natural law and awakens Christianity to the need for its own social space to persuade, preach, and proclaim. The liberty we want for ourselves is the same liberty we must impart to others.

In the end, everyone’s future hinges on speech. The truth of Christ’s kingship will finally be established when God judges every word we have spoken: “for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt 12:37). Free speech is not absolute in the eternal state.

5.5. Epistemic Considerations

There is also an argument from fallibility for a theology of free speech. We should note here that fallibility is not a posture of skepticism. It is a posture of humility. Because human beings err and misperceive, it seems wise to create atmospheres of open debate and dialogue where interrogating one’s ideas can refine one’s grasp of the truth. As humans (and human institutions) are fallible, epistemic humility should call us to recognize the possibility of error and the need for others to challenge entrenched viewpoints.³³One can imagine, for example, in the antebellum South, the need for Christians who were in favor of slave-holding due to certain biblical passages to be exposed to arguments and counter-interpretations of Scripture that advocate for human freedom. At the same time, the Christian posture toward speech is not agnosticism about truth (as with the secular version of free speech) but openness to truth’s refinement. Theologian Wayne Grudem expresses a similar insight in this regard:

To protect the ability of individuals to think and decide issues for themselves … the Bible places a high value on respecting human freedom of choice. But protecting people’s ability to think and decide issues freely for themselves means that they must be able to have access to arguments on all sides of an issue. This can only happen if freedom of speech is permitted in a society and if all the different viewpoints on an issue are able to be freely expressed.³⁴Grudem, Politics according to the Bible, 485.

Even if we are dogmatically certain of our convictions, it is beneficial for an arena of public exchange to exist to challenge others and, in turn, to refine the community’s grasp of truth with greater clarity.

6. Conclusion

First, positively framed, truth-seeking and truth-speaking are moral and human goods related to human personality and human knowledge. In other words, speech is fundamental to our self-constitution. Truth-seeking and truth-speaking require freedom and, therefore, political rights for each natural right to be secured. The exercises of citizenship and capacities of human nature that free speech reflects are valuable not simply because we are citizens in a democracy. They are valuable because we are rational creatures made in the image of God, who is himself the ground for truth.

Second, negatively framed, all humans and human institutions are fallible and need to be reminded of their fallibility for fear of unchecked infallibility turning into authoritarianism and totalitarianism. In this sinful age, eradicating all vestiges of erroneous viewpoints is impossible and inconsistent with God’s purpose for human government. However, applying that basic principle will be prudential and based on context and fact-specific realities. The burden should not be on citizens to prove their right to free speech. The burden should be on the government to prove under what conditions it could ever censor or compel speech.

Is this a blank check for all viewpoints to roam free under the rubric of absolute freedom? Of course not. Lines must be drawn everywhere, and the task of political theology aims to help us correctly draw those lines in concert with Scripture’s storyline amid the inescapable reality of fallen social orders. There is no idyllic political community without moral strife. A utopian political theology that believes it can remediate all error according to its infallibility has its own problem: It paves over the very real and ineradicable effects of the fall in Genesis 3.

Political theology must accommodate the reality of Genesis 3’s understanding of moral fracture within this age but do so without falling into moral relativism, while at the same time working to lessen the devastation of Genesis 3 without slipping into the equal and opposite error of tyranny. There is no perfect formula to do so, but moral relativism toward what constitutes the good and concentrated authoritarianism has a history of collateral damage, proving just how unworkable both are. To be sure, liberal democracy cannot prevent every evil and requires a moral system underneath it to make it work. No earthly system can or will ignore the ruins of Genesis 3, but free speech under our constitutional regime still affords mechanisms for the rule of law, the proper balance of freedom and restraint, and due process that are all preferable to inquisitions that censor, compel, banish, imprison, and kill.

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