Metanoia

April 6th, 2019 | 1 Comment

In Leonard Cohen’s dark lament for “The Future,” he returns again and again to the refrain:

When they said,

‘Repent! Repent!’

I wonder what they meant.

Cohen cared enough about language, history, religion, and culture, to understand the importance of that question. It’s a profound question, and the heart of Christianity turns on the answer.

The English word “repent” is a judgmental word. It’s a power word—an order. It wants to force us to our knees with all we’ve done wrong. It tries to bully us into submission to an outside authority—some person or institution claiming to speak for God. The word “gospel” means “good news,” but where is the good news in the demand to repent? “Repent” has sent people streaming away from that version of Christianity, often with good reason.

“Repent” is also a poor translation of the Greek word attributed to Jesus. The Greek word, rendered into a version we can read in English, is metanoia. It’s a combination of meta, meaning beyond or greater (as in metaphysics, which considers reality beyond or above physical/material existence) and a form of nous, meaning the mind. A better translation would be something like, “go into your higher mind.”

Jesus spoke Aramaic. The gospels were written in Greek. Latin was long the language of the church, which resulted in yet another translation removed from the original. All of which mean that English bibles are at best twice-removed from Jesus’ urgent message, and sometimes even more.

When Jesus returned from his forty days in the wilderness the first thing he wanted to tell people was to go into their greater mind and believe the good news. He was inviting people into a new approach to life. It doesn’t make sense that huge crowds of people would show up, curious about a message that berated them for their past shortcomings. Rather, it was his lived experience of metanoia and the possibilities it opened up that drew them to hear his teaching.

The perennial mistranslation of metanoia, persistent as dandelions in spring, was seeded into the Christian faith with the early Latin translations of the Bible. Those early church fathers rendered metanoia into the Latin paenitentia, having to do with penance. Jerome retained paenitentia in his definitive translation, leading to the English translation of “repent.”

In our time, a kinder and gentler approach to “repent” has been to see it as meaning “to turn.” The sense of “turning” comes from some of the passages of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, where the original Hebrew was translated into the Greek metanoia. But the meaning of metanoia in those passages means a change of mind, and not turning away from sin, unless the latter meaning is carried by the context.

So even the less punitive understanding of “repent” as meaning “turn” misses the point. Metanoia is not about what you’ve done in the past. It’s about opening your mind and living from a higher perspective.  

Whenever I see the word “repent” in connection with what we’re supposed to be doing to grow in spirit, I translate it this way: Go into your higher mind. Become more connected to your Higher Self. Live from the spark of the Divine within, the wisdom that is always with you. Believe the good news—that this life is so much more than the striving ego would have us believe.

Walking that path is what the spiritual journey is all about. Living into that perspective is what faith communities help us with. Finding practices that support the journey is what we need.

I’m grateful to Fr. Hendree Harrison, rector of The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, for introducing me to the work of Ron Rolheiser. Rolheiser addresses the mistranslation of metanoia in this video, the first part of which you can see here.

And he contrasts metanoia with paranoia here.

This article explores the translation issues.

And this gives an overview of the history of metanoia and its translations.

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The Way of Remorse? or the Way of the Open Mind?

February 18th, 2013 | 6 Comments

When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant.

Leonard Cohen
from “The Future”

 

 

This afternoon two young men knocked on my door. They wanted to tell me about their church a couple of miles away, and to ask me if I was 100% sure that when I die I’ll go to heaven. I told them I wasn’t 100% sure about much of anything, but that I believed God would take care of us.

I wish I had asked them why they felt they needed to go around scaring people. “Gospel” means good news, but there are Christian evangelists who want to withhold any good news until they’ve first convinced folks of their utter wretchedness. Unfortunately, they get a lot of air time.

These visitors showed up on the same weekend I was studying on the word “repent,” and learning that it’s considered by some to be a mistranslation of the Greek word, metanoia. From what I can tell, putting the wrong word in Jesus’ mouth has helped give rise to a version of Christianity that sends nice young people out to harangue their neighbors.

Repentance is a word bound up with a sense of remorse and sorrow. It’s about rejecting a former way of life, turning away from the wrong path and setting out on the right one. And sometimes that’s exactly what we need to do. There’s nothing wrong with talking about repentance, though it’s not a good way to start a conversation.

In the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, the word translated as “repent” means something like “to return,” or especially “to return from exile.” It’s not hard to connect this idea with turning away from a misspent life. Certainly it implies moving from a sense of desolation to one of belonging, which is a hopeful message. But even this is different from what is taught in the New Testament.

In the New Testament, the word translated as “repent” is metanoia. Scholars of the ancient Koine Greek of the New Testament say that it means changing one’s mind, or having a change of heart. It means suddenly seeing things differently, making a new decision in the light of new information. This article by Robert N. Wilkin offers some insight.

Wilkin points out that when the context makes it clear that the change of mind is in regard to sinful practices, then it’s appropriate to associate that change—turning from one’s sins—with a sense of regret or remorse about what has gone before. But there is nothing within the word metanoia itself that carries a sense of remorse in other contexts. It’s possible to simply act in a new way based on a fuller understanding, to see the light and make better choices.

So how did a word that means to change one’s mind come to be rendered as “repent”? Apparently the first Latin translation of the Greek used paenitentia, or “do penance” in English—a strange and harsh translation. But it was preserved in the first English translations, which were made from the Latin, not the original Greek. Tyndale’s English translation in 1526 changed it to “repent” instead, which at the time was an improvement. The King James Version retained “repent” and the translation has endured.

Wilkin says, “Nearly a century ago, in The Great Meaning of Metanoia, Treadwell Walden decried the Latin and English translations of metanoia as being ‘extraordinary mistranslations.’ I would agree.”

How many messages of “Repent!” have been shouted from pulpits and soap boxes, or delivered with an unexpected knock at the door?  When all the while, the more authentic translation of Jesus’ words, and the message repeated in strong and loving churches, is more like:

“Keep an open mind!”

“Be willing to see things differently!”

“Encounter the world in a new way!”

“Don’t be limited by what your life has always been!”

“Consider a new perspective!”

“Open your heart to change!”

 

 

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