In prior articles we reviewed a few key words in the Creed and certain Liturgical hymns from the point of view of linguistics.
We saw that eschatological presupposition have changed the original meaning of these words and they have come to be understood today differently. We reviewed that grasping the original meaning of these words would allow us to look at eschatology in a different manner.
Pursuant to the above let us now analyze the Creed’s final phrase in Slavonic, Greek, Latin and English. It states in the language of King James:
…and the life of the world to come.
One of the subject words here, world, is paralleled earlier in the Creed when referring to our Lord:
…begotten of the Father, before all worlds.
The Slavonic version uses in both these instances the word век (vek), which is the same in all modern Slavic languages, and means exclusively age, as in time frame, a long time frame, up to infinity.
This is a faithful rendering of its Greek source, which in both cases uses forms of G165 αἰών (aion), from which we get the word eon, a time term that means the same as in the Slavic languages, a synonym of which is age.
…
Faithful it is also the Latin version:
…et vitam ventúri sǽculi.
And
…et ex Patre natum ante ómnia sǽcula.
The Latin sǽculum had several meanings, most of which were understood as time terms, such as generations, lifetime, age, time, the times, era, century.
The word entered unchanged into English as a learned borrowing meaning:
A length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a human being or, equivalently, the complete renewal of a human population.
It entered into all the modern Romance languages (and many others) meaning century, age, eon, always a time term, never as world:
Italian: secolo
French: siecle
Spanish: siglo
Portuguese: século
Romanian: secol
Nevertheless, many dictionaries have entries similar to this:
Seculum is also the world itself, especially (Christian language) as regarding profane things, not pertaining to the gods; hence the usual use of the word “secular.”
One of the secondary meanings of the word was spirit of the age, the worldview of a particular (human) generation. These are abstract concepts, not spatial, but allegorically could refer to the physical world. Under the influence of a futurist Christian worldview, this nuance of the Latin, got expanded exponentially and saeculum became more than in the original, world, worldly. Well into the Middle Ages, when Latin became divorced from daily life and had come to be spelled as seculum, world had become its primary meaning as defined by the church. It is important to note that this happened only in the Roman Catholic West. Anywhere else, the original time term was preserved.
In any case, when created, the Latin Creed meant age, not world, and was a faithful rendering of the original Greek. The Romans could have chosen mundus (world), but they didn’t. A better translation would read:
…and the life of the age to come.
..
Strong’s Concordance defines our Greek subject word clearly as a time term, just as the Slavs and the Latins did, but ads the following:
by implication, the world; specially (Jewish) a Messianic period (present or future)
In the Hebrew Bible, the equivalent of aion is H5769 עוֹלָם (olam). In the KJV it is found 272 times from which 262 times it is translated as a time term and only four times as world. The Jews of the second temple period understood the age to come in a way as a world, however they were not unanimous as to what this world will be or meant. The dominant view at the Temple was that this new world will be worldly, but there were other views, such as those in Qumran, that expected a heavenly new world, or some kind of merger of both. This diversity still remains today. Theology, under certain context, affected the meaning of the word from a time term, age, eternity, to a space term, world. Nevertheless, those Jews retained the time term, as everyone agreed the time for the change was future, but the nature of the change was left to the eye of the beholder.

Christians were naturally influenced by Jewish theological presuppositions and because the Christian majority in many ways adopted the dominant materialistic view of the Jews concerning eschatology, over time the West began to over emphasize the world, worldly nuance of seculum, secular. After the Reformation, many churches began directly translate seculus and aion as world. In the KJV NT, out of 128 times, 38 it was rendered as world, the rest under different time terms. However in the OT it was almost always translated as a time term. Isn’t this an indication of theological bias?
Most modern translations, with the intent to get closer to the original, have began a process of translating the word as a time term, just as it used to be, and still is with ancient liturgical languages. For example the Apostolic Bible Polyglot (ABP) translated every single case in both the OT and NT as either eon or age.
The End of the Age, or the Age to Come, is not the same as the End of the World or the World to Come. Neither it is being Created before all Ages the same as being Created before All Worlds. End of the World communicates that space will end, and with it time. End of the Age doesn’t. It telegraphs that time, and space, will continue, that only a phase of it ends, another comes.
We can have theological conceptions concerning a word, and assume a different meaning defined by context, but it is not right to arbitrarily change that word in sacred scripture or liturgical texts. The Jews, the Greeks, the Latins, the Slavs, had their preconceptions, but they never dared to changed the term; they kept olam, aion, seculus, vek. As we in the West abandoned our liturgical languages and the devolution of the seculars accelerated, we began to freely translate certain terms under the dominant theological paradigm, forgetting the original meaning and intent.
Aion, seculum, olam became world. Of the Age, became “secular” or worldly.
This in turn, in a circular way, helped reinforcing the idea that the physical world will be destroyed.


The other subject word to come, будущаго (budushchago) in Slavonic, is rendered with a term that in all modern Slavic languages has come to mean colloquially future and is considered an adjective, despite the fact that its structure is that of a participle. The spelling of the word has essentially not changed, so most Slavs reading it in their own language or directly in the Slavonic, would understand it thus:
…and the life of the future age.
This would not be an accurate rendering of the Greek μέλλοντος (mellontos), where the word is a Present Active Participle, not and adjective. It is an inflected form of G3195 μέλλω (mello), which it Strong’s defines as primarily meaning:
… (through the idea of expectation); to intend, i.e. be about to be
And the Blue Letter Bible Outline of Biblical Usage lists:
1. to be about
2. to be on the point of doing or suffering something
3. to intend, have in mind, think to
The Slavic equivalent discussed above (budushchii), despite its popular understanding as meaning future, especially in the Creedal context, in Russian it is formally defined as:
1. that which follows the current, forthcoming (where forthcoming is a present active participle as in the Greek)
2. future (будущность budushnost‘, a noun created in the 19the century, and has become the primary meaning today)
Furthermore, budushii is considered a synonym of griadushchii, a present active participle, that we analyzed in the prior article as meaning coming or about to come.
So the Russian still preserves a sense of immediacy as the primary meaning of our word and the Creed could be literally expressed as:
….and the life of the forthcoming age.
The older Slavonic будущiй (budushchii), which for practical purposes is spelled exactly the same as in modern Russian, is defined as:
- having to be (next, subsequently, afterward, thereafter)
- becoming
where the word is a present participle of the verb budu, the future tense of the verb bit (to be). The sense of immediacy or connection to the present is clear and the key to it is that it is a present participle, rather than a verb in the future tense or an adjective conveying futurity to the noun age . This is in line with the Greek as presented in the concordances and literally translated would sound:
…and the life of the having to be age or …and the life of the becoming age.
This rendering, of course, is awkward in English, so a better way to express it would be “…and the life of the age about to be.“
Mello is a peculiar verbal form that no other language can convey accurately in one single word or term. Sometimes more than one word are needed, sometimes different terms, depending on the context, especially if using modern vernaculars. In Slavonic most of the time it is not translated using the word used in the Slavonic Creed discussed above, but rather as the synonym have (having), but mostly as want (wanting). However, if we confine ourselves to the specific inflection used in the Creed, mellontos (see table below), every time the word is translated using a Present Active Participle, preserving always in different contexts, a sense of imminence or action taking place in the present. So another possible literalistic translation could be:
…and the life of the wanting (to be) age.
Want as a word that conveys intent, usually with imminence attached to it, in a way finds its equivalency in English in phrases such as He wants to come. If we understand want as a synonym of will, we can see that He will come can, and used to, mean He wants to come. That the participial construction He is willing (wanting) to come would not make sense if millennia are involved. But these are parallel examples. In any case we must construe phrases such as about to or being about to to accurately convey the meaning of the Greek, and this is what most modern versions have been doing in the last century. This is the way the word is mostly translated in no-religious literature. Therefore the proper translation should have been:
…and the life of the age about to be.
Our current English translation …to come, is technically accurate as it carries certain sense of imminence, however …about to come or being about to come, conveys it much more accurately.
In Greek the about to be sense is built into the word, but not in English, that is why we must add it. This built-in sense is present in the Slavonic, although less, and they sometimes must add the word to be. It seems to me that their choice of the word want or wanting is an attempt to convey the meaning using the parallel English example above. Maybe this was good enough back then to the Slavs, but such translation tends to not be viable in Modern Slavic languages, where now the translation is usually determined by theology, and the participle is replaced with adjectives or future tense verbs. See the table below of all six examples of mellontos found in the NT (Slavic transliterated, English translation including the subject):
Verse | Slavonic | Translation | Russian | Translation |
Act 18:14 | hotyashchu | wanting (to open) | hotyel | wanted (to open) |
Act 24:25 | hotyashchem biti | wanting to be (judgment) | budushchem | future (judgment) |
Rom 5:14 | budushchago | (figure) about to be | budushchego | future (figure) |
2 Ti 4:1 | hotyashchim | wanting (to judge) | kotory budet | which will (judge) |
Heb 6:5 | gryadushchago | coming (age) | budushchego | future (age) |
Heb 10:27 | hotyashchago | wanting (to devour) | gotovogo | ready (to devour) |
The older Slavonic renders all examples, save one, as wanting, wanting to be or coming conveying a proper sense of imminence of whatever the affected subject word is. Even though the choice of verbal form is not always the same, the inflection is always Present Active Participle. The modern Russian only keeps the sense of imminence in two non-eschatological examples. The other four, where eschatology is involved, they change the translation to future or to will. None were participles.
In the Latin we have a similar situation:
verses | Vulgate | Grammar | Translation |
Act 18:14 | incipiente | present participle | beginning to |
Act 24:25 | (judicio) futuro | future participle | (judgment) about to be |
Rom 5:14 | (forma) futuri | future participle | (figure) about to be |
2 Ti 4:1 | judicaturus est | future participle | about to judge is |
Heb 6:5 | (seculi) venturi | future participle | (age) about to come |
Heb 10:27 | consumptura est | future participle | about to consume is |
Different terms are used to translate Mellontos, but in every instance using participles that convey a sense of imminence with connection to the present. The Latins instead of using the Present Active Participle as did the Greeks and the Slavs, chose the Future Active. However the sense of imminence and the connection to the present remains. In some of the examples the rules of the Latin demanded that they create a compound verb by adding to the Participle the Present Tense verb est (is).
Notice the two instances with particples futuri and futuro, from which root we got our English future, futurity, futurist, only as nouns or adjectives, never as verbs or participles, which limits our understanding of the nuances of the original. After a millennia waiting, the participles futuro, futuri, from about to be devolved into the the adjective future. Willing (wanting) to come, became will come. Since imminence no longer made sense, the understanding was now only in the unknown future, so translators began to step in and make adjustments.
In English we get this picture:
verse | KJV | DRC | CPDV |
Act 18:14 | was now about to | was beginning to | was beginning to |
Act 24:25 | to come | to come | future |
Rom 5:14 | was to come | was to come | was to come |
2 Ti 4:1 | shall | shall | shall |
Heb 6:5 | to come | to come | future |
Heb 10:27 | shall | shall | shall |
The King James Version (KJV) and the Catholic Douai-Rheims (DRC) still preserve a clear sense of imminence in one non-eschatological instance (was now about to, was beginning to), in three instances it preserves some of it (to come), in two others, none (shall). Something that is about to be, cannot be in that process for two millennia. Even to come does not adequately correspond to such a long time frame. That is why some versions felt the need to correct it to future. Notice how the more modern Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV) updated to come into future, dropping any possible sense of imminence.
Nevertheless, all Bible translations conveyed mellontos and its root mello, much closer to the original Greek that the Creeds. With the rise of Protestant scholarship, the West began a process of correction in translations, and mellontos (and many other words) began to be rendered as intended by the Greek. Bellow are two such examples, the Literal Standard version and the Apostolic Bible Polyglot:
verse | LSV | ABP |
Act 18:14 | being about to | being about to |
Act 24:25 | is about to be | about to come |
Rom 5:14 | is coming | being about to come |
2 Ti 4:1 | is about to | being about to |
Heb 6:5 | coming | about to be |
Heb 10:27 | about to | being about to |
If we were to recite the Creed according to the Apostolic Bible Polyglot it would read:
…and the life of the age being about (to be).
Unfortunately, such corrections have not been passed unto the Creeds. Because the Creeds are defined expressly by theology and theology is futurist, and it intends to remain futurist until the material world is destroyed and time is ended.


Our eschatological language comes directly from the NT, from our Lord and His apostles. The end was stated as coming soon, at the door, during that first century generation. The apostles believed and expected exactly that. They expected to witness and participate in the life of the age being about to be. Subsequent generations assumed a delay has taken place, but they retained the expectation, for a few centuries never thinking that it would take millennia. This was the condition of the church when the creeds were composed. They faithfully retained the inherited terminology, they truly believed in the life of the age about come.
After the whole (Roman) world was Christianized and as centuries passed, the church settled for the fact that no one knew when He would come and that practically speaking, the end may not be, and had not been, at the door. Since the physical world hasn’t been destroyed, it was unthinkable to assume The End may have already come. Rather than to adjust the nature of The End and that of the Age to Come, it was easier to keep delaying, hide behind a thousand years is for the Lord like one day.
God has been patient and merciful with us. For two millennia He allowed us to increase, expand, to attain and retain power. This is no longer the case and we are loosing ground every day, at an ever increasing pace. Our “credit line” is at its end. The End of the World plays right into the hands of the antichrists, no wonder they actively promote it.
Isn’t it time to consider that maybe, just maybe, we missed something? Isn’t it time to contemplate the possibility that some adjustments, only a few, may be due?
I think it is. I think they are. I think our “credit line” is meant to last forever.
But it may need to be slightly “modified,” gently “refied.”
May the Lord be with us.

This website and articles herein are exactly what I’ve been seeking for years. Thank you for sharing your scholarship. My burning question is this: how do we recite the portion of the Creed which affirms, [Jesus] will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead….”?
Hi John, sorry for the delay, my business has taken a turn that required all my attention. I hope to start blogging again in a month or two, hopefully in YouTube as well. In answer to your question, I believe the correct way to recite the Creed would be “and He CAME again with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom HAS no end.” We could also add before it “and SAT at the right hand of the father.” to keep the past tense consistent, although this wouldn’t be essential, because the Son now siteth up there anyways. As shown in my last articles, the latter part (Whose Kingdom HAS no end) was and is official in many jurisdictions of Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, as well as in the Church of the East. The above would be the path of least change, which is the best path in my opinion.