Metanoia

Colossians 2:8

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

Metanoia is a change of heart or a spiritual conversion. Or at least that's how it's referred to in our modern secular view, which can feel a bit dry and lifeless unless we really think about it what is actually happening. Closer approximations in modern vernacular might be something "that blew my mind" or a "raising of consciousness" amongst the new age folks who like to read Carl Jung. But really nothing in our modern speech comes close to the true meaning of metanoia.

The etymology points to the Greek, meta- meaning change, and -noia from nous which is best understood as the faculty of mind that determines what is true or real. Thus it is a change of mind in the deepest possible sense, not just what you think is true, but a change to the very faculty of how you know what is true.

Perhaps the closest we have today is in movies like the matrix or any state of waking up from a false worldview into something irrefutably true, where the old worldview dissolves like a bad dream.

Think of a dream that seemed completely real, and only later, when you wake up for real do you finally come to your senses -- such an experience is metanoia. It is radical transformation from one worldview into another. To get the beam out of your own eye, that is metanoia.

Ancient Christians (and modern orthodox Christians) use this word to describe conversion. And this is because conversion to Christianity involves a radical change in one's heart, soul, and mind. One's nous opens into a relationship with the creator of the universe , the sprit of truth, which is Christ, and one develops an orthodox Christian phronema, the first step to theosis, of becoming like Christ.

One of the most interesting uses of metanoia is the words of John the Baptist, where "metanoeite" is translated as "repent".

John the Baptist

Μετανοεῖτε· ἤγγικεν γὰρ ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

One cannot repent while in a relativistic worldview. The conditions for repentance, for metanoia, require objectively knowable truth, universal morality, as well as the ability to discern good from evil.

In fact, Orthodox Christianity is unlike any other religion or worldview in that it is a continuously deepening repentance, a continuous metanoia.

axiom

first principles

root cause

necessarily taken on faith, for if there was a cause of a first principle, that cause would be the first principle

Jonathan Swift

Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired

Or as it's usually paraphrased,

You Cannot Reason People Out of Something They Were Not Reasoned Into

We can see here a clear example of the enlightenment mistake, the unquestioned belief in reason itself as a first principle. To put it succinctly, ones belief in reason cannot be reasoned into (thus people will abandon reason, without good reason).

Schopenhauer provides a more refined example of this mistake,

Schopenhauer

Founders of religion and philosophers come into the world to shake them out of their lethargy and to point out the lofty meaning of existence; philosophers for the few, the exempt; founders of religion for the many, for humanity on a large scale. For ‘it is impossible for the broad masses to be philosophically educated’, as even your Plato said, and you should not forget. Religion is the metaphysics of the people, which we must absolutely allow them and therefore outwardly respect; for to discredit it means to deprive them of it.

Notice the Satanic presuppositions here, common in academic philosophy, that they are "the few", the philosopher kings that "allow" the broad masses to have their religion, that the philosopher kings should "outwardly respect" these religions even though they could discredit them. Apparently Christianity only survived because academic philosophers allowed it. What pride!

This remains a common view amongst overly educated academics, who believe they have discovered a deeper truth, something more true, more fundamental than the layman who fumbles with his crude religion.

Yet ask the enlightened philosopher, the so-called lover of wisdom, what is the meaning and purpose of existence?

They will flounder and flail, wandering away from Christ, in a pitiable and predictable nihilistic path towards relativism. Once you see it you cannot unsee it. The entire field of philosophy as we understand it comes crashing down.

This is because they have no deeper truth, no first principle as a cause for their belief in reason, knowledge, and even truth itself. They must accept all these secondary causes as primary, and somehow attempt to weave multiple axioms into a unified principle: ethics, epistemology, mathematics, beauty, art, ..., the list goes on.

Reason is not self justifying, and can provide no defensible epistemology, let alone an ethic.

Faith in reason is a form of self worship, imagining ourselves as unbiased observers of an objectively knowable existence and that we can reason our way to knowledge and truth. That we and our capacity to reason and observe evidence is the source of all knowledge, morality, beauty, etc.

To connect to a deeper first principle is metanoia, the revelation of such a first cause. This cause will become the new first principle.

And in terms of reason, from where does it arise? Where does reason come from?

And what about morality? Or even mathematics? Or beauty?

Are these all first principles that we must accept on faith? Or is there a deeper and unifying first principle? A unified first principle? A first principle that when accepted will be the final moment of metanoia.

For just as there must be faith in first principles, there is necessarily a final unified first principle. It is that which we take on faith and which is the causal source of knowledge, morality, beauty, truth, mathematics, and even reason itself.

We all necessarily have faith in a unified first principle, that which (we believe) gives rise to knowledge, morality, beauty, truth, etc. We attempt to answer with nothingness in our modern view, that is, a worship of nothingness.

Christ shows us otherwise. And we must repent, continually in an ever deepening metanoia -- in order to commune with Him.