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This month saw a government report on higher education entitled ‘Free Speech and Academic Freedom’, quoting an earlier paper by the think tank ‘Policy Exchange’. I don’t suppose I am the only reader ‘in the business’ who sees confusion around proposals that on the one hand claim to cherish responsible and free speech, yet on the other declare legislation to be the way forward. I also note, (with some dismay), that the Policy Exchange report chooses to word a question, ‘Are academics brainwashing students?’ (The answer, according to the data, is a robust ‘no’, but that’s in the small print).

‘Freedom’ and ‘Speech’ are such precious and powerful ideas in themselves, that it’s a pity that their combination (in our public chatter) can boil down to issues of a nasty tweet or whether to book a speaker or not.

‘Choose Life!’ pleads God to the people of Israel through Moses, after setting out the covenant commands of living in love and obedience. The paradoxical implication is that humans are most truly free when we freely choose the limits of service and love. To God, ‘in whose service is perfect freedom’, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it.

The discovery of truly fruitful freedom within carefully-chosen constraints is a recognized necessity to all creativity. Composer Igor Stravinski experienced it in music making: ‘The more constraints one imposes,’ he wrote, ‘the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.’ The production of the myriad species of life on our planet through evolution and natural selection is a marvellous material illustration of the creative power of freedom within constraint.

‘Speech’ has an equally powerful story to tell. For me the most sublime passage of the New Testament is the opening of St. John’s Gospel, which identifies speech with the first act of creation: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God … through Him everything was made that has been made.’ The biblical insight that the world was spoken into being isn’t light years away from our scientific understanding that the creation of information – word - is as important as matter in making a universe. And if there is truth that humans are made in God’s image, then our words also carry creative power.

Speech, words – create, but they can also destroy. The invitation to enact Freedom of Speech is an invitation to enact the greatest expression of human responsibility. Perhaps the freest of all speech is that which freely chooses to limit itself, so that it becomes life-giving.

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