In Luke 13:5 Jesus said that if we don’t do penance we will perish.
The Catholic Church maintains that absent perfect contrition Sacramental Confession is required for salvation when one falls into grievous sin.
Protestants say that the Greek was translated wrong into Latin and then into English and that we need to only repent or else perish.
Did Jerome translate the Greek properly into Latin? Is the Douay Rheims translation of “Do Penance” an accurate one?
But specifically to the point–whether He said it in Hebrew or in Aramaic–did Jesus say that unless we “Do Penance” we will perish?
If He did then all Protestants who know what He said and refuse to “Do penance” will indeed perish.
On the other hand if Jesus didn’t say that we need to “Do Penance or else perish” then the Douay Rheims translation is wrong.
To be sure Jews throughout the Old Testament had done more than just renew their mind and make a turn for the better when they repented. Many times they would repent in sackcloth and ashes and other such penitential exercises.
Repentance wasn’t a singular event but was a process.
Did Jesus look at repentance as only a singular event as Martin Luther and the Protestants would maintain or did He actually say “Do Penance” and understood that to be an ongoing process?
What did Jesus really say?
If Jesus really said to “Do Penance” then the whole Reformation at its heart is disobedient to Jesus.
What’s the real deal ?
What did Jesus really say?
Main Entry:
Re-pent Etymology: Middle English, from Old French repentir, from re-+pentir to be sorry, from Latin paenitEre or PENITENT (Merriam-Webster,1999)
PENITENT \Pen"i*tent, n. 1, one under church censure, but admitted to penance; one undergoing penance. (Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1996)
There were several instances in the 16th Century where the traditional Latin vocabulary used by St. Jerome in the Vulgate was challenged based on the grammar and vocabulary in the Greek New Testament. Most of this were minor quibbles of no great import, but some were used by prots to question Catholic teaching and practice.
One of the important challenges were the following:
- The translation of “metanoeo” as "paenitentiam agite"
The Greek verb “
metanoeo" comes from two other Greek words: meta (change) & noos (mind). The most accurate rendering into English of the meaning of this word would be “to repent.” The implication was that at some point in **time someone **would change their mind about a past action and regret having done it. There was no simple Latin equivalent of this Greek term and so the Vulgate used the
phrase "paenitentiam agite"which in Latin means "do penance.” The idea of “penance” in Latin carried the connotation of regret and sorrow for past actions but went further in that it also implied the performing of acts of reparation and mortification. By having Jesus say that his followers had to “do penance and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15) it **implied that they needed to perform acts of mortification (fasting, self-denial, wearing a hair shirt, self flagellation) or reparation (restoring loss goods, compensating victims) , as conditions for the forgiveness of sins. **
The
prots in the 16th Century claimed that the word metanoeo carried no such implication and that all that was needed was a genuine sense of sorrow for sin. Certain radicals – typified today by some Dispensationalists – even stated that sorrow for sin was not needed. They claimed that repentance merely meant that you intellectually changed the way you thought from that moment forwards without any reference to past actions. Those were “covered over” by Christ and hence forgotten by God.
Technically, the prots were right. The words “metaneo” and "paenitentiam agite"are not exact equivalents. But they forgot that the NT uses Greek words in a distinctly Hebraic way and that they must be understood in the context of a Hebrew idiom. The word for
“repent” in OT Hebrew was "nacham" which has the following connotations according to Strong’s Concordance:
Nacham - to be sorry, console oneself, repent, regret, comfort, be comforted
a) (Niphal)
- to be sorry, be moved to pity, have compassion
- to be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent
- to comfort oneself, be comforted
- to comfort oneself, ease oneself
b) (Piel) to comfort, console
c) (Pual) to be comforted, be consoled
d) (Hithpael)
- to be sorry, have compassion
- to rue, repent of
- to comfort oneself, be comforted
- to ease oneself
As you can see, **the OT concept included sorrow, grief , compassion, and acts to comfort others and be comforted oneself. Repentance was not merely a passive act of regret nor merely a change of mind. As such, St. Jerome’s choice of "do penance"had the wider context of the OT meaning in mind and we need to appreciate that.
**
In later rabbinical theology, the term “teshuvah” (turning) would be used for repentance. It would be defined by the Talmud as a turning towards God and a turning away from one’s sins. It also meant a turning towards one’s sins as something to contemplate and regret: the opposite of moral denial. St. Thomas Aquinas was aware of this rabbinical teaching and in his Summa Theologiae he has the turnings towards God and towards/away from sin as two of the four results of the grace of justification. (The other two were the forgiveness of sin and the infusion of the new life of grace.)
The Rabbis were not heavily into acts of mortification. many of these practices were unique to Christians who wished to imitate their Lord in his suffering for mankind on the cross.
Nevertheless, repentance in “sack cloth and ashes” was a Jewish practice advocated in both Testaments(e.g., Daniel 9:3, Matthew 11:21Matt 11:21 they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. , Luke 10:13).
If one steals from someone, or damages another’s property willfully or neglectfully, is it enough to have true sorrow and resolve not to do it again? Or is something more required such as restitution!
In summary, the issue here was whether Greek grammar or the Biblical idiom should guide the translation. The prots opted for the former while St. Jerome and the Catholic Tradition opted for the latter.
