Blackwell Reference Online

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In Orthodox thought repentance is the blessed mourning of a person and longing for God ( penthos) following after a sense of having moved away from him. It is a conversion to God and, as a result, is what scripture describes as radical change of mind or heart ( metanoia , see Mk. 1.15). Christ came to save sinners having called them to repentance and belief in his gospel (Mt. 9.13). The parable of the prodigal son (Lk. 15.11) outlines the stages of how Orthodox understand the process of repentance: contrition, aversion from sin, repudiation of evil, confession, reconciliation with God and one's neighbor. The words from the apostle about the impossibility of repentance for those who, by sinning, crucify Christ again (Heb. 6.4-6) reflect a dilemma of the early church; for in the 3rd and 4th centuries the Novatianists and Donatists permanently excluded from Eucharistic communion those who were guilty of serious sins. The greater church would not accept this rigorist approach, having prescribed in its canons various terms of abstinence from the Eucharist on account of grave sins; but no transgressor was ever to be deprived of the Eucharist at the time of their death (Nicea 1. Canon 13). There are no sins that may prevent a person from entering into the dedicated life of repentance which is monasticism (Quinisext Council. Canon 43). Repentance has been called in Orthodoxy the “second ... log in or subscribe to read full text