Μετάνοια.
Μετάνοια.
§ 5. The Greeks especially used two words: μετάνοια and μεταμέλεια. Μετανοεῑν is “to think after the deed,” “to change mind and intent for the better,” “to return to a sound mind.” It is opposed to προνοεῑν [“think beforehand”]. For this reason, some think that it is so called from ἄνοια (“madness”) and μετά (“after”), as if it were the correction of madness and foolishness; among the Latins the word resipiscentia corresponds to this, which indicates “a correction of the mind,” “a coming back to one’s senses,” and “a change of the mind,” as is taught by Tertullian (Adv. Marcion., bk. 2, p. 212) and Lactantius (Divin. instit., bk. 6, ch. 24), where he writes:
He who repents what he has done understands his first error. Therefore the Greeks say μετάνοια better and with greater meaning than we can say resipiscentia, for he who is ashamed of what he has done wrong recovers his senses and takes his mind back from madness, so to speak. He chastises himself for his madness and strengthens his intent to live more uprightly. Then he is careful of that very thing, lest he again be drawn into the same snares.
** Flacius (Clavis, part 1, col. 905) gives three explanations of its etymology or composition. (1) It means “to understand after the fact” or to notice or consider and think about a mistake. (2) It means “to turn over a deed by thinking,” as the preposition μετά sometimes has the same meaning as “across” or “again—for instance: μεταμορφοῡν, “to transform”; μεταποιεῑν, “to do a work over again”; and thus μετανοεῑν, “to think and consider again and in another way than which you thought before (ἐνόησας),” or with the mind to “recook” it, so to speak, and pour it back into another form or to break it open again. (3) The preposition means the same thing as “with,” and thus μετανοεῑν is “to reckon something with the mind,” just as the Latins, too, say “to consider something with one’s own mind,” “not to do something rashly and without thought,” as one had done before in sinning. Each of these reasons makes the nature of repentance very clear. For it is: (a) the knowledge of an error and wisdom after it has been done; (b) a hatred of that which is known conjoined with the wish that it had happened otherwise; (c) a change of mind; etc. **
Among the Hebrews the word ּתְׁשּובָה (“return” and “turning back”) corresponds to it. Luther writes (Letter ad Staupit., vol. 1, Jena Latin, f. 74):
By effort and the favor of the very learned men who have so dutifully taught us Greek and Hebrew, I have learned that the Greek word μετάνοια [“repentance”] comes from μετά and νοεῑν—that is, from “after” and “mind”—so that “repentance” or μετάνοια is “change of mind” [resipiscentia], with an understanding of one’s evil both after a loss has been suffered and an error recognized, something which is impossible without a change of affection and of love. Finally, I have gone on to see that μετάνοια can be drawn not only from “after” and “mind” but also from “across” and “mind” (but that does some violence [to the word]), so that μετάνοια would mean “a changing across of mind and affection,” which seems to breathe not only a “change of affection” but also the means of the change, that is, the grace of God. For this “passing over of the mind,” that is, true repentance, occurs very frequently in Holy Writ—for example, the ancient Passover once signified it; Christ presented it; and long before that, Abraham also was the figure of it, when he began to be called “the one who passes across,” that is, a “Hebrew,” one who had crossed into Mesopotamia, as Burgensis is correct in teaching.5