Ethics of Competition

Davide Sciarabba

II Timothy 4:7 and the Ethics of Competition: a Biblical Perspective*

In II Timothy 4:6-8 the author uses a metaphor taken from the language of sports with the intention of persuading his disciple Timothy to take over Paul’s ministry and exhorting his readers to never forget the divine promises despite the difficulties on the way. For this purpose, the author employs the word group agon (“competition” or “fight”) twice. Although it is clear that his first intent was not to write about competition in sports, this text helps us to grasp an interesting ethical meaning of the concept of competition applied to other areas. Thus far, scholars have not paid much attention to the meaning of the word agon, even though it conveys a key concept in this statement.  In fact, verse 7 makes a positive affirmation about “competing” that cannot be overlooked, even if Christians regard the notion of fighting as evil. An analysis of the meaning of the word group agon in N.T. shows that the term is never related to a negative concept and its usage is associated with several positive concepts such as “full expenditure,” “temperance,” “fighting against obstacles,” “fighting until martyrdom,” and “fighting for the salvation of many.”  When Paul affirms “I have fought the good fight,” in II Timothy 4:7, he may refer to the quality or goodness of the fight to which God has called the apostle, compared to other negative types of fights or competitions. “The good fight” here describes the quality of the action and means “fighting well.” This being so, this passage adds an ethical significance to the way Christians fight their “good fights”. 

*Paper presented at the Student Religion Studies Conference at the Midwest Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, Olivet Nazarene University, Bourbonnais, IL Feb, 2012.