The Meaning of Metanoia in a Modern Age
How did you happen on this Web site? There are a number of possibilities. I might have asked you here, a friend of Metanoia Ministries may have invited you here, or you may have simply entered “repentance” or “metanoia” as one of the terms in your favorite search engine and we came up among the results.

If you’ve examined many of your search results you’ve probably discovered a number of meanings or ideas concerning repentance—and even more for metanoia. In searches I’ve conducted I’ve found authors who talk about the current lack of the “preaching of repentance,” others who write about repentance as a “commandment of Christ,” even some that call it a “special baptism.” One author I admire—whose early works have greatly impacted my own thinking and whom I often use as a resource—discounts it as a neccessary element of our Christian walk entirely because it “doesn’t appear in John’s Gospel even once . . . and only minimally from Luke to Revelation.” He further claims to have undergone a fourth “change of mind about repentance.”

One New Age site declares, “Metanoia is a word in Biblical Greek which has been translated incorrectly as ‘Repent’ or ‘Repentance’ but actually means ‘Going beyond the mind . . .’” and then proceeds to promote New Age philosophy. A second site reveals the use of metanoia as a name of a software application that comes close to “artificial intelligence” (I’m still trying to figure out how they claim a registered trademark on the word). Still another is a psychology based treatment center, another a homosexual support group—even a website design firm, and alternative Rock group.

It’s a great example of the variety of translations and ideas there are concerning metanoia, or repentance. So how do we find the meaning of repentance as it was intended in the New Testament?