HISTORY OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES
As summarized in by Albert Mohler during his Monday, August 12, 2024 podcast of The Briefing
First of all, we have the ancient Olympic Games in Greece. Now, those were games about which there’s a great deal of mythology, including who came up with the idea and how the games got started, but if you were to compare the Olympics then and the Olympics now, well, let’s just say that when you are looking at the ancient Olympic Games associated with Ancient Greece, it was only young men who were participating and they were participating at least in terms of many of the events you would consider such as running, they were competing naked and there were no women allowed even to be present, much less as competitors.
And a part of this has to do with what you will be reminded of just if you remember going to an art gallery and seeing Ancient Greek sculptures from the same period, Ancient Greek art, it was a celebration of the body, a celebration of order, a celebration of performance, a celebration of virility, a celebration of young masculinity. Some of this played right into some of the moral confusions of the age, but in a more general sense, it was about the Greek civilization, which prided itself at that point as being the apex civilization. This was a demonstration of excellence to which the Greeks had committed themselves, and nothing appeared to be more measurably excellent than when you are looking at competitive games. But there was a long period in which there were no games, and in the Ancient Greek context, there was already a premium upon such things as the marathon coming from the Greek culture itself and all kinds of races and endurance, and well, you look at it and you recognize, we know a little bit of what was taking place, and it’s even referenced in the Bible.
The Apostle Paul speaks about the Olympiad, the Greek tradition, even in terms of honoring the one who races according to the rules. In the New Testament, the Ancient Greek metaphor of the race, a race that should be run with endurance also shows up, and that’s just a sign that even as the Romans gained military supremacy, and were the successor as they saw themselves to the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire allowed the games to go on. But that was only for a time. For some reason, the Emperor Theodosius called an end to the Greek Olympic Games, and those games may have ceased as early as 393 AD. That historical date is not absolutely certain, but almost for certain the games were over according to the Theodosian decree by 426 AD. But as you look at the ancient games in Greece, only males, and for a long period at that time, only male citizens of certain Greek city-states. The Greek empire having been expanded, included some others who were from outside those city-states.
Still, it was a very limited set of games. But what a powerful metaphor. Again, even as found in Scripture. You fast-forward and for a lot of centuries there were no Olympics at all. There was no Olympic competition. But then what you might call the recovery of an Olympic idea really came in the 17th Century in England, and what was known as the Cotswold Olympick Games, Olympic spelled O-L-I-M-P-I-C-K. Again, it was phonetic, they had heard it, it was transliterated. In this case, it was wrongly transliterated from the Greek in that way, but nonetheless, they got the sound just about right. Now, this is where things get interesting and where the worldview implications become pretty interesting and clear and intense. After the French Revolution, there was an attempt to bring some kind of formalized Olympic Games harkening back to the classical era in French culture. And this was simply known as the Olympiad of the Republic. That’s dated about the end of the 18th century, 1796 to 1798.
And it is not at all clear exactly how those Olympic Games worked, but it was an effort, at least in the early modern age, to try to bring something like the classical Olympics back. But that was pretty much a French experiment. Hold that thought because, after all, the ’24 Summer Olympics were held in Paris France. In the middle of the 19th century, there was a British attempt to try to recreate something like the Olympic Games, and Olympian Games, as sponsored by the Wenlock Olympian Society began just about the same time. And then another effort at something like the Olympics was started in Liverpool, but again, very local. This was not an international effort, but it did catch attention and a part of the attention that it caught was the attention of the Greeks, and after all, they felt a little proprietary. They felt a little possessive about this.
After all, it was Ancient Greek culture. And so after the Greek War of Independence in which Greece separated itself from the Ottoman Empire in 1821, there was an effort to bring back something like the Olympic Games. And in 1859, there was an effort to hold an international Olympiad of a sort, but all of that’s just background for the fact that the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, he’s the one who came up with the idea of the modern Olympic Games. You recognize this is a French Baron, and so putting all of those experimental recoveries into one pot, de Coubertin basically said, “Let’s start a new Olympic cycle. Let’s do it every four years, and let’s make it a grand occasion of international competition to bring out the virtues which need to be celebrated amongst the Congress of Nations.” Now, the worldview issue here that’s so important is that this was late 19th century internationalism and that did become basically a religion.
Now, remember this brought together the League of Nations that later took the shape of the United Nations. By the way, even though many people don’t want to acknowledge this, we’re going to talk about a specific instance of which this becomes important later this week. But many of the institutions that were in the League of Nations, the United States did not join, were basically continued in the United Nations, as established not only with the cooperation of the United States, but largely by the sponsorship of the United States in the aftermath of World War Two. But remember that motto that de Coubertin had indicated Citius, Altius, Fortius, that is “Faster, higher, stronger,” the idea that de Coubertin had about the games was that it would be a revival of an international spirit. And one of the interesting things is that, as you look back at the ancient Greek games, they were deeply saturated in Ancient Greek mythology, and that meant to the extent the Greeks had a theology, that Ancient Greek theology and an awful lot of that, even with neo-supernatural kinds of effects and extensions got really extended to this idea of the modern Olympics.
It was to bring about an age of world peace. There were other things that were going on. De Coubertin, who was French, was largely inspired by the athletic competition between the elite British boys schools, and looking at those schools, Eaton, Rugby, Harrow, just go down the list, he saw how there was an effort to try to create in the young men of Great Britain, particularly in the 19th century, a sense of competition that could be translated into a sense of unity. The boys would play against each other in team games and all kinds of competitions, but then they would be a part of one great school, and then there’d be competition between the schools, and then there would be the cooperation in one great nation of which these boys are going to be the leaders, and this was a very elite set of schools, but after all, we are talking about a French Baron.
Well, the other idea is that, of course, there would be a unity, a piece that would emerge, and so you’d have the representatives of so many different nations and these nations would send their athletes, and the athletes would compete fairly. They would compete without cheating, they would compete without all kinds of things that are now very much a part of our modern obsession. When you think about the Olympics, you have to think about all kinds of opportunities to cheat, and thus the need for chemical tests, and as we see even for some level of genetic tests in order to understand exactly what in the world we’re even talking about when we talk about a modern Olympiad, a modern event such as the Olympic Games. De Coubertin, by the way, once again, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, he referred to the Olympics as driven by a vision of Olympism, and there is no doubt he infused that with theological elements or at least saw it as something of a secular replacement for a dying Christianity, a receding level of religious belief.
