In developing a Christian exegesis of the Old Testament’s many expressions of God’s wrath against the impious and the wicked, St Augustine formulated numerous time the teaching that it was the duty of Christians to “hate the sin, but love the sinner”. Wickedness, in ourselves or others, was a proper target for scorn and wrath. But this was not to devolve either into despair for one own’s salvation, or into hatred for one’s fellow men and women. These remained, whatever evil they did, one’s brothers and sisters, and of course it is always an abomination to hate a sibling.
This dichotomy between sin and sinner may be useful in finding a way out of the current free speech impasse.
There is a tendency to suggest that, in order to return to more open debate, we need all interlocutors to moderate their expression. If everyone, it is argued, would speak and write with more nuance and civility, it would be possible for those who disagree to confront each other with fewer explosions.
Courtesy certainly facilitates fruitful conversation, and many problems are more complex and multi-faceted than the keenest debaters care to acknowledge. At the same time, insisting on moderation can amount to another sort of limit on free speech: all opinions deserve a hearing, but only on condition that they be watered down or smeared with honey.
Insisting on moderation can amount to another sort of limit on free speech.
To take an example—the Covid debacle was certainly made worse by a dearth of free conversation between those who supported and those who opposed the lockdown-till-vaccine response. Yet, as someone in the latter camp, I do not wish, when conversing on Covid, to be required to state that the problem was complicated and difficult, that there were good arguments both for and against cancelling society for a year, and making vaccination the price of re-opening it. I do not believe the arguments for doing this were good at all. If I am to speak openly, this must mean that I can describe the lockdown-till-vaccine response as evil and insane, rather than merely as misguided, as the less optimal of various bad options. In other words, I must be permitted to hate, rather than merely dislike, the sin.
If I am to speak openly, this must mean that I can describe the Covid response as evil and insane.
But the Covid case also shows the other side of the coin, the slippage from hating the sin to hating the sinner. On this, the promoters of lockdown-till-vaccine were perhaps the worst offenders. They often moved quickly from affirming the necessity and virtue of their proposed policy, to portraying its opponents as idiotic, greedy and bloodthirsty beasts. Inevitably, many on the other side followed suite, declaring lockdowners to be part of a reptilian overclass or its witless minions.
As is now almost de rigueur, accusations of “genocide” were traded back and forth enthusiastically over Covid. Now, if we are truly committed to honoring speech which expresses “hating the sin”, this must include even countenancing the liberal use of the term “genocide”, at least where we believe it is being deployed in good faith. But the corollary—“loving the sinner”—is that whoever wishes to speak of “genocide” must also endeavour to accept that those he is accusing of this crime are nevertheless his brothers and sisters, and have not degenerated into some species of monsters. One cannot converse with monsters.
So, even in this extreme case, we are to hate the genocide, but love those who commit it. As this shows, it is not at all easy to maintain the balance of love and hate taught by Augustine. We are in general driven to approve of the words and actions of those we love, and to hate those whose words and actions appall or disgust us. It is perhaps necessary to have a faith as great as Augustine’s to see that the balance is worth striving towards in every case. Yet if we abandon it, our so-called debates will be reduced either to tip-toeing hypocrisies or to snarling preparations for open war.
