Metamorphosis vs Metanoia

Those who say you have to repent of your sins to be saved will sometimes go back to the Greek and look at the word for repentance — metanoia — and comment that it is similar to metamorphosis. They will look at a metamorphosis and say, see, a tadpole turning into a frog or a caterpillar turning into a butterfly makes a massive change and is completely different from before. And metanoia, they say, has that same root of meta, so repentance must mean the same kind of radical transformation.

Now personally I do not like going back to the Greek because I believe the English Bible itself can actually tell you what things mean. But let us just go back to the Greek and look at this on their own terms.

Yes, metamorphosis and metanoia have those same first four letters — meta. And what meta actually means is to change. So metanoia is about a change, and metamorphosis is about a change. But that does not tell you what you are changing. Metamorphosis is about your form or your shape — you morph into something else. A tadpole completely changes as it turns into a frog, a completely different form, and a caterpillar into a butterfly. But the second part of metanoia — the noia part — means thought or mind.

So metamorphosis is a change of form or shape, but metanoia is a change of thought or mind. If you want to go back to the Greek, then going back to the Greek actually shows you that metanoia simply means a change of mind.

Pastor Matthew Stucky