I believe the two expresions do have similar meanings, which is why I can’t entirely agree with Maurice:
[The Word “Eternal” and the Punishment of the Wicked] I am sorry you spent so much time in seeking for this test, I would have told you at once, if you had asked me, that the word Eternal seemed to me a better equivalent for the word aiwnioV than Everlasting. Since aetas is the obvious translation for aiwn, the cognate Latin adjective seems peculiarly suitable to express the cognate Greek adjective. Since there is nothing that apparently corresponds to the Greek substantive in the Saxon adjective, it must, I should conceive, offer a less adequate substitute. The passages which you have collected to show how closely the use of aiwn is connected in the New Testament with the use of aiwnioV greatly favour this conclusion. I was so convinced on this ground of the superiority of the Latin derivative, that I ventured to complain of our translators for joining with it the word Everlasting in Matthew xxv. 46. My main objection, indeed, was to the ambiguity which arises from the use of two words for one; still I had no doubt which ought to have been chosen, which thrown aside. Two of the apologies which you offer for the translators I am sure they would indignantly have repudiated. They never would have dared to think about the “rhythm” of a passage in which our Lord declares what He will do when He shall sit upon the throne of His glory and before Him are gathered all nations. They could never have taken a word merely because an old translator from the Vulgate, in the infancy of our language, had found no better. Your other reason that they sought to connect the Saxon word with the Latin, offers a more valid–not, I think, a quite satisfactory–excuse for them. I conceive that they felt the value of the word Eternal; they shewed that they did by using it so frequently in spite of their fondness for Saxon. They were too well acquainted with the controversies of the fourth century, and with the history of theology, not to know how important it is that there should be a word expressing a permanent fixed state, not a succession of moments. The word aiwn, or aetas, served this purpose. Like our own word “Period,” it does not convey so much the impression of a line as of a circle. It does not suggest perpetual progress, but fixedness and completeness. The word "aiwnioV, or Æternus, derived from these, seemed to have been divinely contrived to raise us out of our Time notions,–to suggest the thought of One who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; to express those spiritual or heavenly things which are subject to no change or succession. The King James translators, therefore, hailed the word with which Tyndale or some one else had provided them, as a precious addition to the resources and powers of the language.
anglicanhistory.org/maurice/jelf_letter1854.html
I confess I’m somewhat baffled by the statement:
“Like our own word ‘Period,’ it does not convey so much the impression of a line as of a circle. It does not suggest perpetual progress, but fixedness and completeness.”
I assume he’s referring to the word “Period” as it’s used in “the Classical Period,” but this doesn’t convey “the impression of a circle” to my mind.
I would very much like to agree with Maurice (as it would eliminate any problem I might have with the Athanasian Creed), so if anyone understands what he’s saying here, please point it out to me.
What would “unto the period of periods” mean, would such an expression make any sense (and if it did, wouldn’t it mean more or less the same as “unto the age of ages”)?