The True Race Part II: Reality, Appearances, Humility, and the Primacy of Love

In yesterday’s post, I argued that a broader measure of athletic excellence is necessary. Philosophic reflection and theological insight both suggest that an accurate assessment of arete must be done against an eternal horizon. Dante’s Paradise is particularly valuable in revealing that horizon. In short, in light of eternity, our loves – both inside sport and out – all fall into their proper place.

In Cantos 19 and 20 of the Paradiso Dante learns about divine justice. He learns that worldly prestige, fame, or success have very little to do with where we stand in God’s eyes and that among the elect are found many who, in their earthly lives, garnered neither notice nor renown. Just as he saw many of worldly fame and achievement among the condemned in hell,¹

Dante now sees those of humble origins and achievements among the saved.² The lesson for sport is blunt: Victory is fleeting, can save no one from the grave, and will justify no one in the eyes of God. As such, hyperbolic claims to “sporting immortality” made by members of the sports media via an athlete’s procurement of records, championships, trophies or enshrinement in a hall of fame are the height of vanity.³ As Boethius put it:

What good would these records do, when Time has obscured both the men and their chroniclers?… If you should ponder the infinite stretches of eternity, what reason would you have for delighting in the longevity of your name? Although it’s only a fragment of time, even a moment can be compared with ten thousand years, since there is a certain likeness in things that are finite. But there can never be a similarity between the finite and the infinite. For that reason a fame that lasts however long you wish, if it should be compared with inexhaustible eternity, would seem not simply small but nonexistent.⁴

Though excellent performance is good as far as it goes, and can be evidence of human flourishing and skill, it is the disposition of the heart, not appearances, fame, or worldly praise that endures. Understanding this reality situates rather than eliminates the value of winning and losing in sport. Wins and losses have significance, but they do not, in and of themselves, have eternal significance.⁵

In the same manner, even declarations of faith and outward expressions of piety or fidelity can be misleading. In Canto 19, we again hear, in an echo of the parable of the Sheep and the Goats, that faith, or perhaps better put, fidelity, is not primarily about what one says but rather what one does.⁶

But here, behold: many now cry, ‘Christ, Christ!’
Who’ll be less near to Him on Judgment Day
than will be the one who never knew of Christ.
Such Christians the Ethiopian will decry
at the division of the flocks that brings
man to eternal wealth or poverty.⁷ 

For athletes, this reinforces the previous point. No one will find salvation in sporting success. Nor will anyone find condemnation in sporting weakness, failure, or decline. Or put more bluntly, the dividing line between the sheep and the goats will not be an “end zone,” or “time trial,” or “medal podium,” or “goal line.”

Again, things are not always what they seem.⁸ As Christ insists, the “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16, NIV). Dante makes the same point in Canto 20 of the Paradiso. There he places Ripheus, a minor character in the Aeneid, in heaven. This is noteworthy for several reasons, the least of which is Dante’s creative imagination. First, Ripheus, though described by Virgil as “a man devoted to all that is right,”⁹ is a pagan, born centuries before the birth of Christ. Second, his role in the Aeneid is brief. In fact, he is killed in the very beginning of the poem during the sack of Troy. Aeneas is the hero of the tale, Ripheus doesn’t even rise to the level of a minor character. How then can he be worthy of salvation, while Aeneas languishes among the virtuous unbaptized in the first circle of Hell? Dante uses the smallest of seeds, Virgil’s brief description of Rapheus’ love of justice, to demonstrate the power of God’s grace and the inscrutable depth of Divine Providence.

As Paradise translator Anthony Esolen explains: “There is the story we think we see, a story in which even for his own people Ripheus plays a very small part, and then there is the story as it really is, disjunct but not wholly unlike the first.”¹⁰ Dante the pilgrim describes his astonishment at seeing Ripheus in the circle of the just in Paradise this way:

Who would believe, down in the world that errs,
That Ripheus the Trojan in this round
Would be the fifth among the holy flares?¹¹ 

What Dante’s account reveals is how little we see of the “whole picture,” or of the “big picture.” In the eyes of the world, Ripheus was of no importance, but in the eyes of God, his embryonic faith, no bigger than a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20), could be worthy of redemption. For God’s grace:

Showers from a spring so deep
no creature’s sight can penetrate into its first upswelling wave,¹²

 How quaint then, that anyone would think their sporting successes or failures and the honors, trophies, and renown they generate, have any direct bearing on Divine Providence or our standing before God. As St. Augustine saw, it is the orientation of our hearts, whether full of pride or humility, not wins or losses, which ultimately matters. The man full of pride, curved in upon himself,¹³ is given what he most desires, eternity with himself. Of course, the complete absence of God means that such a self-absorbed eternity is hell. The humble man, in contrast, admits his faults and thereby can put the gift of God’s grace to work. As Pope Benedict XVI understood, “faith is nothing but reaching that point in love at which we recognize that we, too, need to be given something.”¹⁴ Humility is therefore absolutely vital, for humility allows for the flowering of faith, hope, and love (Matthew 23:12).

In the City of God, St. Augustine insisted that, “when Peter wept and reproached himself, he was in a far healthier condition than when he boasted and was satisfied with himself.”¹⁵ In the same manner Bobby Thomson demonstrated far more arete in his 2001 confession of cheating, than was ever manifest in his 1951 home run.¹⁶ Athletic virtues such as strength, speed, and skill, are good, but are of tertiary importance when seen in the light of eternity.  Paradoxically, losing, frailty and admissions of weakness in sport can also be good for us, at least insofar as they encourage the cultivation of humility.

Humility also demands a recognition of Christ’s saving action on the cross. For the Christian, we are saved by God’s loving and self-sacrificial action in the world. God’s love is not notional but tangible. It is embodied. The world is set right through the Incarnation, healing, preaching, suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. This means that embodiment is not trivial to human beings, in this life or in the next. Interestingly, both theology and sport make this clear. Again, salvation is not notional. It requires bodies, first via the physical birth, death, and resurrection of Christ on the cross, and second through the resurrection of the dead. In Canto 14, Dante explains the centrality of embodiment to human well-being this way:

When, blessed and glorified,
The flesh is robed about us once again,
We shall be lovelier for being whole,¹⁷ 

The implication for sport is this: the universal human instinct to run, jump, kick, throw, dance, exercise, and the like, is anything but a triviality. Of course, this inherent drive to move well and move often is not reducible to competitive success. As I have argued elsewhere:

Room must be made for understanding competence and average skill as worthy achievements, even if competent players won’t usually be breaking records, winning championships, or securing scholarships. Skill mastery—even absent competitive superiority—must be recognized as a form of arete. Personal excellence is not antithetical to nor dependent upon competitive excellence.¹⁸

We move skillfully because embodiment is a central aspect of the self. Skillful movement has ontological importance.¹⁹ For instance, walking and running, working and playing, sex and love, birth and death are not Platonic, but fundamentally embodied realities. As such, no salvation worthy of the name could ignore the body.

In the same way, excellent sport, that is, a sporting life of arete, in the full sense of the term, is a prolepsis, a foretaste of the fruit to come. If only for a moment, the transitory joys of sport intimate that our future glory will be a fully human, that is, embodied glory. In short, such experiences in sport give us hope.²⁰ As St. Paul asserts:

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body (1st Corinthians 15:42-43, NIV).²¹ 

In fact, such a transformation and restoration is itself a function of arete, the theological virtue of love. The Incarnation, passion, and resurrection of Christ confirm not only the centrality of embodiment but also the primacy of love. The arete of love is not about emotional affection, but rather self-giving. It is, as one theologian put it, “willing the good of the other.”²² The presence of this love in our lives is made possible by grace and then made manifest by our actions. Pope Benedict XVI described the implications of the primacy of love as a function of the first article of the Creed, “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Since “God is love” (1 John 4:8, NIV), all creation and all creatures are maintained by and grounded in love: “What is so striking here is, of course, the fact that this whole ground of being is, at the same time, a relationship, not less than I, who know, think, feel, and love, but rather more than I, so that I can know only because I am known, love only because I am already loved.”²³ There is, as Josef Pieper pointed out, no contradiction here. Grace grants the capacity to love, but our choices and actions are still our own: “If you row your boat the same direction as the wind is driving it – how are you to distinguish between the motion that is caused by your own efforts and what is caused by the wind?”²⁴ Love is the beginning and end of all things.²⁵

At the end of the Paradiso, in Cantos 32 and 33, Dante sees this reality, not “through a glass darkly” but rather “face to face” (1^st Corinthians 13:12, KJV). He is prepared to behold “the face of God” by first contemplating Mary. The face of Mary confirms the reality of the Incarnation, for Christ took on flesh by being born of his mother. ²⁶ Dante explains the idea this way:

Into that face that most resembles Christ
now look for by her radiance only she
can render you prepared for seeing Christ.²⁷

Dante then moves higher still, from the mother to the Son, and from the Son to the Holy Trinity. Here, words fail Dante. He can behold the Beatific Vision but struggles to articulate his experience. It is as if trying to describe a half-remembered dream upon waking:²⁸

Here ceased the powers of my high fantasy
Already were all my will and my desires
turned – as a wheel in equal balance – by
The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.²⁹

Sporting excellence which neglects the primacy of love, or which is ignorant of or antagonistic to the arete to be found in the love of God and neighbor, will not endure. All such victories, all such praise, all such honors are built on sand (Matthew 7:26). Worse yet, such foolishness corrupts one’s soul as well, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21, NIV).

To Be Concluded…

1. 1. For a stark example – Popes in Hell – see: Dante Alighieri, Inferno. Trans. Anthony Esolen. (New York: Random House, 2002), Canto XIX.
2. Dante Alighieri, Paradise. Trans. Anthony Esolen. (New York: Random House, 2004), Cantos XIX and XX.
3. For one of many possible examples of this see: https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ranking-the-all-time-goats-where-tom-brady-lands-among-greatest-players-in-all-4-major-north-american-sports/
4. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2012), 57-58.
5. As St. Paul recognized, “time is short” and “this world in its present form is passing away” (1^st Corinthians, 7:29;31, NIV).
6. The parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32) and James 2:18 are valuable here as well.
7. Dante, Paradise, Canto XIX, 106-111.
8. One is reminded of the “chariots of fire”, in 2 Kings 6:15-17, where Elisha’s prayer reveals the truth of what seems a hopeless situation. “When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. ‘Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?’ the servant asked. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’ And Elisha prayed, ‘Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (NIV).
9. Virgil, Aeneid, Trans. Michael Oakley. (Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth, 2002), Book II, 426–8.
10. Anthony Esolen, Introduction, in Dante Alighieri, Inferno. Trans. Anthony Esolen. (New York: Random House, 2002), xli.
11. Dante, Paradise, Canto XX, 67-69.
12. Dante, Paradise, Canto XX, 118-120.
13. The Latin here, tracing back to St. Augustine is “Homo Incurvatus in Se”, that is, “man curved in on himself”.
14. Pope Benedict XVI, Credo for Today: What Christians Believe, (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2009), 12. The same point can be made this way. Grace, that is, “underserved love,” is fundamentally incongruent with pride.
15. St. Augustine, City of God, Trans. Gerald G. Walsh, Demetrius B. Zema, Grace Monahan and Daniel J. Honan. (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1958),14.13.
16. Joshua Prager, “A Final Twist in an Epic Baseball Swindle”, WSJ.com, December 26, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-final-twist-in-an-epic-baseball-swindle-11577377811
17. Dante, Paradise, Canto XIV, 43-45.
18. Twietmeyer and Johnson, “Aristotle’s Conception of Arete”, 235.
19. Gregg Twietmeyer. “Kinesis and the Nature of the Human Person.” Quest, 2010, 62:2: 135-154, https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2010.10483638.
20. Gregg Twietmeyer, “Hope & Kinesiology: The Hopelessness of Health-Centered Kinesiology”, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2018, 12:1, 4-19, https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2017.1291712.
21. “The ‘kingdom of God’ realizes itself nowhere other than in the very midst of this historical world. It is true, of course, that nobody can have an idea of what is concretely meant by ‘resurrection’ and ‘a New Earth’ as images of hope; but what else could those possibly imply if not this: that not one iota will ever be futile, or lost, of whatever is good in earthly history – good, just, true, beautiful, fine, and sound.” Josef Pieper, Hope and History, (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994), 108.
22. “Love is willing the good of the other…and then doing something concrete about it.  It’s not an emotion, it’s not an attitude.  It’s a move of the will.  To want the good of the other, and do something about it.  That’s love.” Fr. Robert Barron, “Fr. Robert Barron on Faith, Hope, and Love”, www.wordonfire.org, January 31, 2013, http://www.wordonfire.org/resources/video/faith-hope-and-
23. Benedict XVI, Credo, 29.
24. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1997), 242.
25. One might push back here and point out a seeming contradiction – or at least a tension – between “grace granting the capacity to love” and Love being the “beginning and end of all things”. How can love be “potential” via grace, while also being “actual” as the beginning and end of all things? Several thoughts are worth brief consideration. First, God, the prime cause, the “unmoved mover,” is Love. The potential to love God that we express via grace is a gift of that more primal actuality. Yet, as a gift, rather than an imposition, it does not annihilate our freedom. Second, God is a Trinity of Love. As traditionally put, the Father is the lover, the Son is the beloved and the Holy Spirit is the love between them. We are called via grace to participate in this Love. Moreover, this is why the Logos, the ordering principle of all reality took on flesh and “dwelt among us,” (John 1:14, KJV) so that we too, who had gone astray, could be called back, like the Prodigal Son, to communion with God – who is a Triune community of Love. We are not compelled to Love but are called to Love (Isaiah 43:1). St. Augustine is useful here: “Again, if we were stones or waves, winds or flames, or anything of this sort which is without sensation and life, we would nevertheless be endowed with a kind of attraction for our proper place in the order of nature. The specific gravity of a body is, as it were, its love…For a body is borne by gravity as a spirit is by love, whichever way it is moved…When, therefore, we contemplate His image in our very selves, let us, like the younger son in the Gospel, return to ourselves, rise and seek Him from whom we have departed by sin”. Augustine, City of God, 11.28.
26. This further confirms the Incarnation. God is Emmanuel, he is, in taking on flesh, “with us”. Nor is this a uniquely Catholic insight. Consider, for instance, Luther: “God did not derive his divinity from Mary; but it does not follow that it is therefore wrong to say that God was born of Mary, that God is Mary’s Son, and that Mary is God’s mother…She is the true mother of God and bearer of God…Mary suckled God, rocked God to sleep, prepared broth and soup for God, etc. For God and man are one person, one Christ, one Son, one Jesus”. Martin Luther, “On the Councils and the Church”, in: T. Tappert (ed.), Selected Writings of Martin Luther. 1529-1546, vol. 4, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1967), 291-292.
27. Dante, Paradise, Canto XXXII, 85-87.
28. Dante, Paradise, Canto XXXIII,58-60.
29. Dante, Paradise, Canto XXXIII, 142-145.