Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof - New Leaven

course pursued; and (4) a change of conduct for the future, springing from all the preceding.
It might indicate a change for the worse as well as for the better, however, and did not
necessarily include a resipiscentia — a becoming wise again. In the New Testament,
however, its meaning is deepened, and it denotes primarily a change of mind, taking a
wiser view of the past, including regret for the ill then done, and leading to a change of
life for the better. Here the element of resipiscentia is present. Walden in his work on The
Great Meaning of Metanoia comes to the conclusion that it conveys the idea of “a general
change of mind, which becomes in its fullest development an intellectual and moral
regeneration.” 60 While maintaining that the word denotes primarily a change of mind,
we should not lose sight of the fact that its meaning is not limited to the intellectual,
theoretical consciousness, but also includes the moral consciousness, the conscience.
Both the mind and the conscience are defiled, Tit. 1:15, and when a person’s nous is
changed, he not only receives new knowledge, but the direction of his conscious life, its
moral quality, is also changed. To become more particular, the change indicated by his
word has reference, (1) to the intellectual life, II Tim. 2:25, to a better knowledge of God
and His truth, and a saving acceptance of it (identical with the action of faith); (2) to the
conscious volitional life, Acts 8:22, to a turning from self to God (thus again including an
action of faith); and (3) to the emotional life, in so far as this change is accompanied with
godly sorrow, II Cor. 7:10, and opens new fields of enjoyment for the sinner. In all these
respects metanoia includes a conscious opposition to the former condition. This is an
essential element in it, and therefore deserves careful attention. To be converted, is not
merely to pass from one conscious direction to another, but to do it with a clearly
perceived aversion to the former direction. In other words metanoia has not only a
positive but also a negative side; it looks backward as well as forward. The converted
person becomes conscious of his ignorance and error, his wilfulness and folly. His
conversion includes both faith and repentance. Sad to say, the Church gradually lost
sight of the original meaning of metanoia. In Latin theology Lactantius rendered it
“resipiscentia,” a becoming-wise-again, as if the word were derived from meta and anoia,
and denoted a return from madness or folly. The majority of Latin writers, however,
preferred to render it “poenitentia,” a word that denotes the sorrow and regret which
follows when one has made a mistake or has committed an error of any kind. This word
passed into the Vulgate as the rendering of metanoia, and, under the influence of the
Vulgate, the English translators rendered the Greek word by “repentance,” thus
stressing the emotional element and making metanoia equivalent to metameleia. In some
cases the deterioration went even farther. The Roman Catholic Church externalized the
60 p. 107.
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