The Creed as we know it, the one we normally call the Nicene Creed, states concerning our Lord:
…and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.
All clear, indisputably with the key verbs come and have in the future tense. However, when we look at the more ancient Slavonic version, it reads transliterated:
…i paki griadushchago so slavoyu suditi zhivim I mertvim jegozhe tsarstviyu ne budet kontsa.
The more modern Russian translation is virtually identical, with all verbs in the same tense. What calls the attention is the fact that the two key verbs have different tenses. The second verb, budet or shall have, is in the future, however the first one is not. It is the present active imperfective participle of gryasti (to come, to approach) and the closest literal translation would be coming, approaching. A full reading would be:
…and He (is) coming again with glory to judge the living and dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.
There is a difference. The first phrase is in a form of the present tense. Even though it conveys an action that has not been completed and its completion lies in the future, it clearly states it as happening now. Normally things don’t take 2,000 years to be completed, that is why modern translators felt the need to “correct” the phrase to the future tense, even though that is not what the original text said. The original, believed to be transmitted since apostolic times, was made during a time when the Lord’s return was considered imminent, near, at the door, at hand. Under such a presupposition, it makes all sense of the world to use a form of the present tense. But after over a millennium, it becomes awkward and it is probably better to make adjustments.
The Slavonic was translated from the Greek around the 9th century and I started with it simply because I understand it, whereas I don’t the Greek. But thanks to technology anyone can conclude that it is a faithful translation of the original, which reads transliterated in its first half (so I don’t have to deal with non-pertinent translation details):
…kaí pálin erchómenon metá dóxisor
or as per Google Translate
…and again coming with glory…
Where the key verbal form is G2064, a participle in present tense, as per blueletterbible.com (in Mat 16:28 click ἐρχόμενον).
…
Latin, which is more intelligible to English readers, supports the same conclusion. It reads in its first half:
…et íterum ventúrus est cum glória…
or literally
…and again about to come is with glory…
The Latins chose to use the main verbal form as the future active participle venturus, which carries a clear sense of imminence. To properly convey the idea as they understood it, they inserted after venturus, the present tense verb est (is), just as it would be required in English. In short, the action is now, about to happen, but because it hasn’t happened yet, its result lies in the future. This is essentially the case for all the three examples analyzed.
The conclusion is inescapable. The apostles clearly believed the Lord was about to come, He was coming, in their lifetimes, during that generation. The post 70 AD church faithfully inherited this tradition and continued to use the same words as received from the apostles, assuming at first a short delay had occurred, then realizing it had extended longer than assumed, finally settling for infinity. As time passed and languages evolved, those key verbs became archaic (Slavonic) or fell out of use (Latin) and theological assumptions ended up determining the meaning of those words. Thus the Slavonic gryadushchi is today often translated into Russian as “future” and the dead Latin venturus began to be freely translated into all modern languages as shall come.
Tradition is important, that is why the forces of evil want to divorce us from tradition. One way of divorcing us from tradition is to induce us to forget the language of our ancestors, preserved unchanged in the traditional liturgies. What we now call liturgical languages were once vernaculars and if kept in use, they would have acted as a restrainer in the evolution, or rather devolution, of languages, they would have kept the “lost in translation” problem to a minimum. Nations, thus, could have remained closer to their roots.
On the other hand, tradition should never take precedence over Scripture. We know Scripture is God breathed, but we don’t have the same certainty with ALL tradition.
