Abstract
The issue of eschatology is an independent and comprehensive component of the theological work of Pope Benedict XVI. In this article, the author attempts to clarify the specific relationship between eschatology in the religious, Christian sense, and eschatology of the profane sphere represented by various political ideologies.
Emphasis is placed on the factor of time, which is crucial to the distinction between the two different basic understandings of the concept of history, namely the linear conception, and the cyclical one. The Christian concept of time and man is captured by a linear conception, as advocated by Aurelius Augustinus.
The author seeks to show that neither the cyclic understanding of history as presented by Thomas Aquinas is not contradictory to Christianity, which is evidenced by the work of Joseph Ratzinger. The evidence is based mainly on the analysis of the concepts of "exitus" and of "reditus", of the exit and of the return.
The element of hope plays a fundamental part in any design, including the cycle. In the article, the author points out that hope is a fundamental particle of both the religious concept and the political one.
The key function of hope in both cases is the anticipation of a perfect human order, which, in the Christian concept, rests in the Kingdom of God installed by God's decision upon the Last Judgement; and in the case of utopian political ideologies of an egalitarian and fair commonalty, achievable only through human effort, using policy instruments such as revolution or open struggle.