The True Race Part I

These posts conclude a series – done over several years – which examines how Dante’s Divine Comedy sheds light on the world of sport. The first post used the Inferno to illuminate the nature and place of courage in sport. The second post used Dante to examine the doctrine of Purgatory and the implications it has for how athletes should understand their talents. That is, as temporary gifts from God, to whom we “must give account” (Hebrews 4:13, NIV). The third post, building off the second, examined Purgatory and athletic gifts through the lens of three of Christ’s parables. Here, in three final posts, the focus is on Paradise and the implications eternity has for a proper assessment of our temporal sporting affairs.

“Things are happening, even now and without our apprehension…”¹

What is sporting excellence? Why does it matter? In ancient Greek sport (and society at large), arete, that is “excellence” or “virtue,” was a central concern. In fact, in Greek sport, the only unambiguous demonstration of arete came via the procurement of athletic victory.² In contemporary society, we see much the same. The culture and media of sport are inundated with discussions of who the greatest athletes are, driven by conceptions of excellence that are measured by winning and championships.³ A result of this ethos is the ceaseless drive to continually improve performance. Yet, do such measures accurately gauge excellence? If so, how so? If not, why not?

The truth is that such measures never capture everything of importance and are therefore always incomplete. This is true on two levels. First, such measures, due to the inherent limitations of data, never capture all the relevant facts or information about an event, game, or person. That is, they cannot reveal the whole picture. How, for instance, can such quantitative myopia make sense of Bobby Thomson’s 1951 “Shot Heard Round the World”? In the moment, his pennant-winning home run seemed to embody sporting excellence. After all, his game-winning home run off the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ralph Branca had catapulted the New York Giants to the National League pennant and the World Series. The data seemed unambiguous. Thomson had excelled, while Branca was a failure. It was only decades later that the full truth came to light. The New York Giants had been stealing signs, and Thomson’s home run had been hit with the help of illegally knowing what pitch was coming. Simply put, the data did not reveal the whole picture. What seemed like excellence was not. The win had been bought at the price of cheating. The data had accurately revealed the score of the game, but it had not accurately revealed the character, the arete, of the athletes involved.

This, in turn, leads to the second level. Data, though real and valuable, cannot reveal the whole picture. Nor can data reveal the big picture. That is, it cannot reveal the existential, providential, eternal, or spiritual reality of a situation. Statistics never allow us a God’s-eye view and perhaps more importantly, they never indicate our spiritual situation. Grace, virtue, sin, remorse and repentance are not lines in the box score, nor could they be. Consider the following two examples. First, the spiritual anguish of someone like Andre Agassi, who could say, at the top of his game, “I hate tennis.”⁴ Second, the humility of someone like former National Football League offensive lineman, Jason Brown, who walked away from professional football to be a farmer. When Brown was asked about the relative insignificance of farming as compared to being a professional athlete, he professed his faith in God, and then insisted that, “when I think about a life of greatness, I think about a life of service.”⁵

Simply put, things are not always what they seem. Or, in our consumerist, “post-truth” society, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that things are not always as they are “sold” or “spun.”  Despite all of the noise, bluster, and hubris of the modern sports-industrial complex, which encourages us to ignore reality, the stubborn fact remains that competitive success can hide deep spiritual vice, sickness, and poverty. Similarly, the seemingly insignificant and humble can be raised to glory, if not in this life, then in the next. This means that though our worldly concerns are not unimportant, they pale in comparison to our standing in the eyes of God. As Christ warns his disciples:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (Matthew 7:21-23, NIV)

 Victories matter, but the love of God and neighbor, and the grace which makes them possible, matter far more (Matthew 25:21). In short, a broader and deeper conception of excellence is needed. One way to broaden such a discussion of excellence would be philosophical. For instance, Aristotle’s⁶  examination of arete is about far more than competitive contests. As I have insisted elsewhere: “To the Greeks, to be good or to generate beautiful action in the world, cannot simply be a function of the quantifiable. To be good is about the active expression of human excellence. As a result, arete must be recognized, not merely counted, formulated, or prescribed.”⁷

A second way to broaden the discussion would be theological, that is seeing arete through a spiritual lens. From this point of view, arete is not only about the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and moderation. It is also about the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. One could, for instance, examine St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where he challenges his readers to pursue “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is arete or praiseworthy—think about such things” (4:8, NIV).

Here, however, I want to take a slightly different tack by examining sporting excellence in light of Dante’s Divine Comedy, with a particular focus on the Paradiso, that is, Dante’s journey through the spheres of heaven. Dante’s journey clarifies several important questions. What does excellence look like in light of eternity? How might the Christian emphases on humility, grace, conversion, and love enrich our understanding of sporting excellence? How does our passion for sport reinforce the importance of embodiment in the plan of salvation? How might the “four last things” (death, judgment, heaven, and hell), as well as the possibility of the beatific vision, temper our lust for the fame, riches and power procured by sporting success? In shedding light on all these questions, the Paradiso thereby reminds athletes, coaches and fans that “the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7, NKJV).

To Be Continued…

1. Ephraim Radner, “Unseen Worlds”, firstthings.com, February 2023, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/02/unseen-worlds, para. 3.
2. Stephen Miller, Ancient Greek Athletics. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
3. See for instance: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/34302023/greatest-nfl-players-ever-every-offensive-position-picking-goat-quarterback-running-back-receiver-offensive-tackle.
4. Andre Agassi, Open, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2009), 3.
5. Steve Hartman, “Why a star football player traded NFL career for a tractor”, cbsnews.com, December 26, 2014, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-nfl-player-farms-for-good/, para. 14.
6. See especially Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics.
7. Gregg Twietmeyer and Tyler Johnson, “Aristotle’s Conception of Arete and the Meaning of Records in Sport”, Kinesiology Review, 2022, 11, 231.https://doi.org/10.1123/kr.2021-0053