Reflections about a concept of time on christian middle age

Abstract

According to Mircea Eliade, there were two different ways for understanding the concept of time in the Antiquity. On one hand, there was a linear concept; on the other hand, there was a cyclic one. Each one represents a kind of situations: the profane-linear time regulates dayly activities and the sacred or cylic time revitalizes a ritual ceremonical action. Both conceptions were present inside the ancient eastern Cosmogoniae and also they could be applicated to Greek and Roman worlds.
Meanwhile, for Christian eschatology, time runs in a straight line, since the beggining of creation until the end of times with the second arrival of the Messiah, without any cycle. Thus, Men live in a terrenal time in wich some day they could reach the eternity where God resides. Eternity is like a starry background, distant and motionless, but reachable for a man who has faith. Linear time gives a breath of hope to the believer because, at the end of the long stairway of time, it always will carry him to the top of the deserved eternity. For the Christian faith, the man is a trascendental being meanwhile life is nothing more than a passing moment, because Christian life is escentially a pilgrimage.