The Things of God and the Things of Humanity

When Jesus rebukes Peter in Mark 8:33 (“Get behind me, Satan!”) for embracing “the things of anthropon” in contrast to “the things of Theou,” we have to be careful how we understand these seemingly competing concepts. Ta ton anthropon appears to be the domain of Satan, which ta ton Theou appears to be the desirable state of being. Accessing the latter appears to be dependent on a hard denial of the former, which Mark says in the immediately following verse: “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself [aparnesastho heauton] and take up the cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). It is clear here that desire and denial seem to be working together. The desire to follow Jesus to ta ton Theou requires a negation of ta ton anthopon. But is it necessary to read it that way?

The aparnesastho heauton called for here is not necessarily a negation of “the things of anthopon” that leads to “the things of Theou.” This would be contradictory to the overall message of Mark’s gospel, which is summarized in 1:15:

“Peplerotai ho kairos, kai engiken he basileia tou Theou; metanoeite kai pisteuete en to evangelio.” (Mark 1:15)

“The time [kairos] is fulfilled [peplerotai] and the kingdom [basileia] of God is coming near [engiken]. Repent [metanoeite, attend to] and believe in [pisteuete en] the announcement [evangelio].”

As always, poor translations have treated various forms of the verb metanoeo as repent. This comes from the fourth-century Vulgate substitution of poenitentiam for metanoeo. Repentance has a different temporality than metanoeo. The former starts as a denigrating look at one’s past in order to perceive a truth in the past as lack of conformity. This yields a commitment in the future to conform to the acknowledged retrospective truth. If we treat metanoeo as repentance, then this would be a plausible reading of 8:33-4. To pick up one’s cross would be to actively deny ta ton anthropon in order to access ta ton Theou.

This is the wrong reading. Aparnesastho heauton is simply the activation of metanoia that names ta ton anthropon so as to turn the attention to ta ton Theou. Throughout, Mark has made clear that the ta ton Theou are not easily understood (idosin). In fact, if we turn our attention back to the verses following 1:15, we find a very specific example of what it means to aparnesastho heauton (deny oneself) in order to duete opiso (come after) Jesus. When Jesus calls Simon and Andrew, he says, “Come after me [duete opiso] and I will make you fishers of men” (1:17). The call here does not require a hard negation of their status as fishermen. Rather, it simply requires a release of that status to follow a different path. We must be more clear, however. Jesus says to the fishermen (halieis) that he will make them fishers of men (halieis anthropon). Jesus suspends the given meaning of halieis to offer a metaphorical meaning that does not completely negate or deny the given meaning. It simply suspends it long enough to open the given meaning to a new one without providing a definitive replacement. Coming on the heals of the metanoeite command, here we have a clear example of the suspension of meaning that looks forward to a truth to be perceived later — the very definition of metanoeo. As a concrete example of aparnesastho heauton, we are under no obligation to understand Jesus to be asking Simon and Andrew to denigrate and despise being fishermen. He doesn’t say, “Your lives are being wasted in this stupid profession. Follow me, and I will save you from this fate.” Nor is there a specific problem embedded within being fishermen that requires the denial to be aggressive and ongoing. Aparnesastho heauton is a simple release of a given identity to follow a different path that is not yet fully understood.

To deny onself (aparnesastho heauton) and make the turn toward something else need not be understood as the ongoing negation of the starting point. In fact, it needs to be understood as fundamentally temporal. It is like when a second baseman turns a double play. When done well, it is all a single fluid motion that involves the planting of the right leg to drive the pivot that turns the force of the body making the throw in the direction of first base. The planting that affects the pivot is not the play itself, but it is crucial to the success of the throw that is happening elsewhere in the body. However, if the right foot remains rooted to the ground the pivot will be unsuccessful. The right foot has to release for the force of the throw to be effective. So the pivot is dependent on a momentary flow that plants the foot, turns the body, and releases the foot so that the throw can be made.

Similarly, messianic metanoia does not require a permanent rootedness in negation as its starting point. It simply requires a mode of “denial” that is less violent and less determined to destroy that from which it starts. It plants, turns, and then releases the momentum built up in the turn. Thus, the Greek word aparnesastho need not be translated as denial, though Christianity’s fixation with repentance and penitence leads us to see no other option. Aparnesastho can equally mean softer forms of negation in the sense of releasing oneself from further obligations to something. To release something is not necessarily to destroy it, but simply to suspend and release our obligations to it.

To be concerned with ta ton Theou is the turn that suspends the given connection between experience and meaning. It is not spatial in the sense of seeking emptiness as Reality. It is simply opening one’s attention in the flow of dureé to the possibility of revelation. This is not the denial of Human Nature, but the suspension of the power of prior expectations to have any definitive hold on our experience. Aparnesastho heauton is the minimal turn that one needs to make for metanoia to be activated. Mark will make clear how hard this is going to be when he uses a form of the verb again at 14:72 where Jesus tells Peter that he will deny him (aparnese) three times. The force of the verbs aparnesastho heauton and aparnese is to show us how hard this opening of metanoia will be and the suffering that it is likely to incur as we suspend (i.e., deny, renounce, release) the given expectations to let in new meanings.

All this should make clear the necessity of revelation to metanoia. Nothing leads us in Mark’s Gospel to contemplation as the inward turn to ourselves. Aparnesastho heauton is not an inward turn but a call-to-turn that comes to us purely from the outside. “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Everything important in Mark’s Gospel comes from outside the self as either a call or a revelation. Even Jesus’ realization of being special in the eyes of God is not an internal realization. It happens in an instant, and comes from God at the moment of his baptism: “And a voice came out of the sky, ‘You are my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased” (1:11). Before this, Jesus knows nothing of his status. It is not even clear in 1:11 that he is told that he is the messiah — just a Son of God. There is no inward turn that reveals this. It is purely and completely a voice that “came out of the sky.” Upon this revelation, he heads to the wilderness to confront the wholly Other of Satan. This is not the introspective anachoresis of a medieval monk. It is the movement of a self that is not internally oriented but simply following the revelation of a calling that it did not create through its own act of will.

To summarize: metanoia calls us from outside our stable selves to recognize the primacy of temporality and dureé to who and how we are in the world. As such, messianic metanoia suspends not only any definitive answer to who we are, but it radically suspends the need to make the question of who we are and what the world is (questions of Being) the starting point and ground on which we must begin. We must proceed cautiously from here, however. Messianic metanoia, as dureé, does not offer a new worldview that replaces the old Being with a new Being underwriting our experience. Metanoia calls us to recognize the false problems and false choices about meaning or emptiness as original states of the world that we must pause to recognize retrospectively. Once we see (bleposin) and understand (idosin) the calling to metanoia as dureé (as irreducible to spatial and stabilized selves), we recognize the conventionality of all truths and that our only encounter with them is in dureé. It calls us to see (bleposin) and to understand (idosin) that received truths are both real and non-essential, that we can therefore suspend the given not by asserting a fundamental emptiness but by suspending the given as a practice of time. The message is universal, but not because we are all of the same Human Nature. No new foundation is revealed in Mark’s messianic metanoia. Only time as the never-ending movement of experience from the given to the possible is revealed, and that time-as-suspension is kairos-as-engiken — the imminent immanence of transcendence.