Sport, Christianity and Social Justice? Considering a Theological Foundation

ABSTRACT

Following recent debates on the relationship between “God,” “ethics,” and issues of “social justice” within sporting locales, this article contends that Christian ethics and the biblical mandate of social justice have important contributions to make to broader understandings of sport and sport ethics. The aim of the article is to: (a) map the emergence of the concept of social justice within academic, social, and political discourse; (b) examine the metaphysical anchors of sport ethics; (c) explore how a Christian framework of metaphysics might be understood within sport and sport ethics; and (d) highlight how key dimensions of the sporting experience, i.e., play and embodiment, might impact theological understandings of ethics and social justice. The article concludes by suggesting that a Christian metaphysical vision has much to offer in reforming sport by grounding it within a Trinitarian theology, borne out of a biblical description of a perfectly “just,” Creator God.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport ethics
• theological ethics
• Christian metaphysics
• social justice

Notes

1. Examples of journal special editions from the Congress include (under construction): Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Sport and Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, the International Journal of the History of Sport, and Practical Theology.

2. Practical theology boasts several specialist refereed journals, e.g., International Journal of Public Theology, International Journal of Practical Theology.

3. Rightly ordered love, St. Augustine (1997) insisted, must recognize that “every human being, qua human being, should be loved on God’s account; and God should be loved for himself” (p. 21). Every other good must be understood in reference to these twin realities.

4. For an even-handed account of this debate, see (Sowell, 2007).

5. “And if the work of a human being is a being-at-work of the soul in accordance with reason … [then] we set down that the work of a human being is a certain sort of life, while this life consists of a being-at-work of the soul and actions that go along with reason, and it belongs to a man of serious stature to do these things well and beautifully … the human good comes to be disclosed as a being-at-work of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if the virtues are more than one, in accordance with the best and most complete virtue”(Aristotle, 2002, 1098a10–20).

6. It is worth emphasizing that “first” should not be understood in the sense of a temporal chain, “but rather in the sense of being that on which every member of the series depends for its causal power” (Feser, 2009, p. 89).

7. See (Feser, 2009; Twietmeyer, 2015).

8. “For the classical theist, what the doctrine of God Incarnate entails is that that which is subsistent being itself, pure actuality, and absolutely simple or non-composite, that in which all things participate but which itself participates in nothing, that which thereby sustains all things in being—that that ‘became flesh and dwelt among us’” (Feser, 2014, para. 8).

9. “Plato’s error lay precisely in treating the soul of the human being as its constitutive essence, as a complete specific nature on its own, so rendering the body at best incidental to what it means to be human” (Cooper, 2008, p. 92).

10. Here is but one example: “Wash and make yourselves clean./Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong./Learn to do right; seek justice./Defend the oppressed./Take up the cause of the fatherless;/plead the case of the widow./‘Come now, let us settle the matter,/ says the Lord./ ‘Though your sins are like scarlet,/ they shall be as white as snow;/though they are red as crimson,/they shall be like wool” (Isaiah, 1:16–18, NIV).

11. Dante (2004b) made this point well in the Purgatory:Your fame is like the color of the grass:it comes, it goes, and it turns brown and dryin the same sun that made its seedlings green (p. 121).

12. Moreover, because Christ is true God and true man, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15, NIV).

13. “In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised…. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization-these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours” (Lewis, 1949, pp. 37,49).

14. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:14-17, NRSV).