I think what Paz was referring to was a metaphysical conception of time, not the obvious empirical idea of history. The Christian cosmos so to speak as opposed to the Greek or Roman cosmos.
This leads to something I've never understood, and that is the problem of reconciling say evolutionary history with a Christian cosmos. These are not necessarily in conflict, unless you make the conflict a point of `truth' in some cosmic sense of the word. There doesn't necessarily have to be a one to one exact match between everyday events, say as in evolutionary sciences, and the larger metaphysical constructions of the world.
Anyway... lunch hour is short
CG