In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Jimmy Akin to discuss the necessity of penance in Catholicism versus Protestant beliefs. Akin addresses the claim that the Council of Trent altered the meaning of penance and clarifies the original Greek terms involved. Tune in for a deep dive into this contentious topic!
Transcript:
Caller: I was talking to a friend about penance. Protestants say that we don’t have to do penance. He said that we change the words for penance in the Council of Trent to justify our doctrine.
Jimmy Akin: This is a charge that surfaces in various forms. The claim is that St. Jerome made the change because when he translated the Vulgate, or common version of the Bible into Latin, he had to find a way to represent Greek terms with Latin equivalents. And the Greek term that’s used for repentance is metanoia. It’s based on some Greek roots that mean to change your mind. But what it’s used functionally to mean is to repent not just a change of mind, but a change of mind away from sin. And not just a change of mind, but also a change of life, a change of behavior. And the argument is that St. Joseph translated metanoia with the word penitentia, which in Latin means repentance, or it means penance or due penance. And so the idea by this claim is that St. Jerome mistranslated the word for repentance as penance, and that later shaped Catholic practice. Now, there are some problems with that. One of them is there’s always a difficulty in finding exact equivalents from one language to another. There are certain words that just cannot be translated with a single direct equivalent from the source language in the. In the target language, for example, in English. And this is easy to illustrate with idioms. So I’ll give you an example of an idiom rather than a single word. But in English, we have an idiom that goes roll out the red carpet. So, psychellett, if I said, we’ve got a dignitary coming to visit us tomorrow, we better roll out the red carpet, you would know that based on that idiom, that it means we need to take great pains for this, you know, for this visiting dignitary so that everything goes right and we make a good impression on the dignitary. But if I translated roll out the red carpet literally in Spanish, which they speak in Argentina, it wouldn’t mean anything. At least that’s my understanding. Adrian, you can correct me if I’m wrong. What I’ve been told is the Spanish equivalent of roll out the red carpet is throw the house out the window. So if you got a visiting dignitary coming and you want to communicate that we need to take great pains to make sure everything goes right and we make a good impression, you might say, we’ve got this dignitary coming, we better throw the house out the Wind. Is that the way that. Would that idiom be used in the Spanish that’s spoken in your area of Argentina, Adrian?
Caller: Yes. Yeah, we tend to throw a lot of things out the window.
Caller: Yeah.
Caller: Okay.
Caller: Okay, Good to know, Adrian.
Caller: We’ll be careful out on the street.
Jimmy Akin: Yeah. But you can see how just a direct translation of roll out the red carpet would not mean anything in Spanish. And the same thing is true not just of idioms, but of wor. There’s frequently a mismatch between what a word or phrase means in one language and what you would get if you tried to find a direct equivalent. And so what translators have to do is look at the concept that’s being expressed in the source language, which in this case is Greek, and try to figure out the best equivalent that we can find in the target language, which in this case is Latin. And I’d have to do further research on this, but I don’t know that 5th century Latin or 6th century Latin, when Jerome was writing, he was kind of on the cusp. I don’t know that when Jerome was writing, that Latin had a direct equivalent of metanoia. And so that matched up really well to it. And so penitentia may have been the best term available for trying to translate it. Also, penitentia, even though it can be understood as due penance or as penance rather than repentance, my understanding is penitentia has a. And I’m going to have to use a fancy word here, but it has a broader semantic range. A semantic range is the set of concepts that a word can cover. And so my understanding is penitentia can. Can cover both penance and repentance. And the word itself doesn’t automatically tell you which is in view. So that’s a second aspect of the word, at least based on looking into this question that I’ve done. Furthermore, I would point out that repentance has an impact on a person’s life. If you really repent, that’s going to result in you doing acts of penance. That was standard in ancient Israel. When people repented of their sins, there were things they did to express their repentance. Like they would fast and they would pray and they would offer sacrifices and things like that. So penance, conceived of as actions undertaken to express repentance, is a natural thing. It’s something humans do in every culture. If someone repents in any culture, whether they’re Christian or not, they’re going to try to find ways to express the fact, hey, what I did was wrong. I’ve changed my mind. Let me do something to signify that. That I’m serious about this. I’ve really changed. And that’s going to result in them doing acts of penance. Even if the conte. It isn’t religion at all. If you break someone’s window accidentally or on purpose, and then you conclude what you did was wrong, you’re going to try to make it up to that person. So penance is a natural consequence of repentance. And therefore, I would say that even if you want to quibble about was there a better translation Jerome had used, it is still an impulse that God built into humans to express their repentance with acts of penance. And it is a mistake in the Protestant community to try to short circuit that impulse. God built it into us. It’s there for a reason, and God wants us to do these things. And we even see evidence of that in the New Testament because one of the practices that Jesus recommends is prayer for our sins. And another practice that Jesus recommends is fasting. And there are other similar acts of penance that early Christians performed and that are recommended in the New Testament. And we shouldn’t try to short circuit this process. So when we confess our sins and thus signify our repentance, it’s natural for us to do acts that reflect that. In fact, we even see this in the accounts of John the Baptist in Matthew and in Luke, where the various scribes and Pharisees come to John and he tells them, hey, don’t just think you can say, I repent, but bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance. So the idea that we need to have fruit that displays our repentance is a thoroughly biblical principle. And Catholics have always understood that and incorporated it as part of the sacrament of confession.
Cy Kellett: Adrian. How’s that? Adrian? That all makes sense to you?
Caller: Yes, it does. I’m going to make my friend watch this part of the video, okay?
Caller: Very good.
Caller: Really, Jimmy can say it better than me.
Cy Kellett: Listen, Adrian, we’re so grateful that you called from Argentina and we have a wonderful donor who said he wants to support us sending books internationally. So I’m going to. If you would like, we’ll send you any Jimmy Akin book you want that we’ve got. You just got to tell Edgar which one you want because you were such a good. I guess we really want to throw the house out the window for you.
Caller: So.
Caller: Hang on, Adrian.