The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2
III. Setting and Circumstances of Application to 2300 Days
Cusa’s works fill a large volume. The title page of the standard Latin edition (1565) of the Opera is in the usual eulogistic strain of the times. But it is of interest, as it discloses the publisher’s evaluation. Translated, it reads: PFF2 129.2
“The Works of Doctor Nicolas of Cusa, Cardinal, Doctor of Each Law, a Man Unequalled in Every Philosophy. PFF2 129.3
“In which the very many mysteries of Theology, Unapproachable apart from the Spirit of God, already veiled and neglected for so many Centuries, are unveiled. Moreover there is no topic of ordinary Theology which is not handled. PFF2 129.4
“LIKEWISE “Many Difficulties in Philosophy, especially in Mathematics, which, as being beyond the capacity of the human mind, absolutely no one has dared to approach before this author, are explained and demonstrated. But the coniectura Domini Nicolai dc Cusa, dc Novissimis Diebus 26 (Conjecture Concerning the Last Days), though only a few pages in length, has aroused exceptional interest. PFF2 129.5
1. GIIMPSES 01- FUHJRE REVEALED THROUGH PROPHECY
An epitome of the opening paragraphs must suffice. Cusa first declares that the whole world depends upon the will of Almighty God; that the present belongs to us, but the future is known only to Him; that it is not for us to define what belongsonly to God; and that we are not to seek a knowledge of the future simply from curiosity. Nearly all, he says, who up to now have written on the calculation of times have been deceived by some erroneous conjecture. Nevertheless, it is our privilege to know something of the future. Yet he does not think it reprehensible to investigate the Scriptures with a spirit of meekness, to conjecture the future and thereby be strengthened and encouraged in our pilgrimage. It is our duty to seek the truth, although it is not possible to know the whole truth, for it is veiled in enigmatic figures. PFF2 130.1
2. JUBILEES OF CHURCH LIKE YEARS OF CHRIST’S LIFE
As christ is the source of knowledge concerning the future, it is therefore necessary to go back to Christ and His life—the church being the mystical body of Christ, which He left as His seed, and also His bride. After His work upon earth Christ ascended to heaven, and the church must ultimately follow Him there. As Eve was Adam’s bride, so the church is Christ’s bride, and must finally be united with Him in heaven, perfected by her wanderings through the earth. Cusa then presents the conjecture that out of the earthly life of Christ truth is to be read concerning the future of the church. Christ was Lord of the Sabbath, in whom we may find the key of the jubilee years—the Sabbath in which time will find its rest. Wrote Cusa: PFF2 130.2
“All time is unrolled in periods of seven, as seven days, seven years, seven times seven years, which are forty-nine. Hence the fiftieth year is after a wearisome revolution of time, a sabbath keeping in which all slavery ceases and returns to liberty.” 27 PFF2 130.3
As fifty years of the church comprise a jubilee, so one year of our Lord’s life may represent a jubilee period. Because Christ is the Sun of Righteousness, and the church is the follower of Him, so one “solar revolution” or year, so to speak, in the life of our Lord, may correspond to “one revolution in the journeying of the church.” Thus “more than fifty jubilees lead to the resurrection of the church.” Such was Cusa’s “Conjecture” as he calls it. In 1452, when he wrote it, he states that there were already twenty-nine jubilees in the past. (So, on the basis of this speculation, the end would come about 2502.) PFF2 131.1
3. LAST-TIME ELIJAH PREACHERS PARALLEL JOHN THEBAPTIST
Cusa suggests that as John the Baptist prepared the way for Christ’s first advent, so likewise men in the last days, arising in the spirit of Elijah, would prepare the way for the last things. Cusa’s words are impressive: PFF2 131.2
“Moreover there was then John the Baptist baptizing in the wilderness and washing by his teaching the filthiness of sinners, that he might prepare for the Lord a perfect people. For in the same spirit of Elijah, in which he [John] himself bore testimony to the light of truth, namely to Christ, we believe that next there ought to rise up disciples of the same spirit, and in them themselves Elijah will manifest himself in their teaching, who with his finger points out to the world Christ and the truth of life and righteousness. And they will wash the body of Christ, namely, the church, so that the spirit of God may descend upon it just as visibly as it descended above Christ in the form of dove-like simplicity.” 28 PFF2 131.3
4. PERSECUTION BY ANTICHRIST FOLLOWS WORLD-WIDEEVANGEL
Cusa then speaks of the persecution of the church, incited by the spirit of Antichrist, almost destroying the church, and separating the church from the world. He adds: PFF2 131.4
“Also the spirit of the firmness of Elijah will endure persecution among the foremost preachers themselves, as in the case of John, because the allurement of the harlot of this world, which was the cause of the death of John, will not suffer them to live. But the number of the faithful will be steadily increased, and will be successively enlarged by the light of the doctrine until the fortieth jubilee. And there will be made in the very signs and prodigies explanations of the life of Christ, handed down in the Gospels. And there will not be a dwelling in the world without the knowledge of Christ and of the faith. After this the satanic spirit of Antichrist will stir up persecution against the body of Christ which is the church, and there will be a final tribulation, than which there has never been another greater, which is explanatory of the story of the passion of Christ. And the church itself will seem to be extinguished, because of the holy apostles, the sowers of the word of God, will forsake them and flee. Neither will there remain a successor of Peter or of any apostle; all will undergo temptation.” 29 PFF2 131.5
But the church will rise again, and “the infidel Antichrists, seeing that the church has prevailed and that they are conquered, will submit to Christ as the victor, and all nations will return to him, so that the inheritance of Christ in the whole world will be one fold of one Shepherd.” Then comes this curiously interesting expression that is worth pondering: PFF2 132.1
“And Peter will weep bitterly, because he fled, and so the rest of the apostles, namely, the bishops and priests of the church, and place for repentance will be given them. And the glorious church turns by a glorious resurrection from the oppression of Antichrist, a show to all doubters, so that all who have been in doubt concerning the truth of the life which is in Christ, the bridegroom of the church, become witnesses of the glorious resurrection.” 30 PFF2 132.2
5. AFTER JUDGMENT, BRIDE TO REIGN IN ETERNAL GLORY
Finally will come “eternal peace,” with the church-bride in glory reigning with Christ. But that hour is not yet. So Cusa continues: PFF2 132.3
“But not yet is the end at hand, in order that the bride may be restored from every wrinkle and spot, worthy of the Bridegroom, who is the Lamb without spot. And then He will come to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire. And He will receive His bride in glory, to reign eternally with himself. Anyone will be able from the delineations of the evangelists to explain these conclusions more particularly, and hence it is enough now concerning this.” 31 PFF2 132.4
6. SECOND ADVENT IN 34ra JUBILEE, POSSIBLY BY 1734
On the basis of this analogy of the history of the church with the symbolic years of Christ’s life—and with the final events of Christ’s life likewise paralleled in the life of the church—Cusa applies his theory of the thirty-fourth jubilee as perhaps falling between 1700 and 1734. He stresses, however, that no one knows the exactness of the time: PFF2 132.5
“As the Christian considers this alone, apart from rash judgment, what is involved in those things which Christ did, and which were done concerning Christ, after the twenty-ninth year, even to the day of his resurrection from death, one year of the Lord, by extending into a jubilee, anyone will be able in a very similar way to for see what will happen in the church; so that thus in the thirty-fourth jubilee from the resurrection of Christ, Antichrist having been cast down, by the justice of God he will look for the victorious and glorious resurrection of the church. And this will be after the year 1700 of our Lord’s birth, and before the year 1734. Moreover after that time will be the ascension of the church, Christ the bridegroom coming to judgment, but when He will come no one will know. For that advent will be unknown beforehand to all, as to the exactness of the time; just as his [first] advent into the world was unknown to all as to the exactness of its time. Then the saints who know, that He will come and will not tarry, will pray that the Desire of all nations may come.” 32 PFF2 133.1
Then, all enemies having been put under the Lord’s footstool, and with all the earth as His possession, the faithful will say, “Come, Lord,” knowing that “the day of redemption draws near, which will come without a sign as a thief in the night; just as the flood came, so Christ discloses what the future will be.” 33 PFF2 133.2
7. GRIEVOUS OPPRESSION OF CHURCH PREDICTED BY DANIEL
After asserting the presence of Christ with the church “even to the consummation of the ages,” Cusa then turns to the bearing of Daniel’s prophecy, noted by Christ in these words: PFF2 133.3
“He [Christ] predicted that before its [the Church’s] glorious resurrection there would come in the last days an oppression of the church than which there has been none greater, as in the last days of his flesh it was done with him. And so he turned our attention to two things, namely to the similitude of the flood, and to the saying of Daniel the prophet.” 34 PFF2 133.4
8. 2300 YEARS FROM DANIEL’S VISION TO END BY 1750
Extending his conjectures based on speculative jubilee periods paralleling the thirty-four years of Christ’s life, and citing Philo on the flood of water coming in the thirty-fourth jubilee after the first Adam, Cusa conjectures the end of sin about 34 jubilees after Christ, and 2300 years from Daniel: PFF2 133.5
Picture 1: CUSA APPLIES YEAR-DAY PRINCIPLE TO-2300 DAYS
Pages from Cusa’s manuscript copy of a pseudo-joachim book (upper left and right); cusa Manuscript with signature at upper right (lower left); likeness of cusa made within year of Death (insert); title page of printed collection of Cusa’s writings (lower right); remarkable treatise containing his calculations on the 2300 year-days (insert)
Page 135
“So we conjecture that in the 34th jubilee after the second Adam will come the consuming of sin through the fire of the Holy Spirit. In the same way it was opened up to Daniel in what way the last curse would be after the sanctuary shall be cleansed and the vision fulfilled; and this after 2300 days from the hour of the going forth of the word. Whence in the third year of king Belshazzar this revelation was made to him, in the first year of Cyrus the king who, according to Jerome, Africanus, and Josephus, lived about 559 years before Christ, then it is established that the resurrection of the church according to the predicted number by resolving a day into a year, according to the unfolding made to the prophet Ezekiel, [will be] 1700 after Christ and before 1750; which agrees with what had been set forth.” 35 PFF2 135.1
Cusa dated it from the time when he understood the prophecy to have been given—in the last year of Babylon or the first year of Persia—which he believed to be about 559 B.C. Cusa looked for the “sanctuary,” which he understood to be the church, to be cleansed from error 2300 years after this time. Moreover, it is desirable to note that this view advanced by Cusa was consistently held by him over a period of years. There is no available evidence to indicate precisely when he reached that conclusion. It is first recorded in a sermon preached in 1440—a full decade before Cusa became a cardinal in 1450. It was put into formal or permanent form in 1452 in his Coniectura, appearing afterward in his Opera. And there is no record or suggestion of any repudiation or change of view in the twelve years remaining before his death in 1464, at the age of sixty-three. So the interpretation introduced was deliberate, consistent, and mature. Here is a sentence from that 1440 sermon, showing the year-day application and the beginning date, 559 B.C.: PFF2 135.2
“In like manner, he exactly agrees with Daniel, who held that the 2300 days-a day for a year-from the going forth of the word, are future, and [that] was 559 years before Christ.” 36 PFF2 135.3
9. SAYS DATING DERIVED INDEPENDENTLY
Cusa closes his treatise by referring to the recognied periods Irom Adam to the Flood, from the Flood to Moses, Moses to Christ, and Christ to the end-the last beginning with the resurrection of Christ, and frequently called the “end of the ages.” Cusa adds that there are different chronologies (Hebrew and Septuagint) and different interpretations of Daniel, over which “many have wearied themselves”—each having his opinion, and none agreeing with the other in the exposition of the prophetic “times.” But concerning the uniqueness of the exposition he has here propounded on the 2300 days, Cusa adds: “I have carefully followed the writings of these persons, and I have found nothing in them concerning the consideration advanced.” 37 The “writings of these persons” that he read must have included the prior exposition advanced by Arnold of Villanova. PFF2 136.1
10. LITTI E APLLICATION OF THE BEAST SYMBOIS RECORDED
So far as we know, Cusa did not apply the beast symbols of Daniel and John to the Papacy, and his only prophetic symbol reference of which we have record concerns the first beast of Revelation 13—which comes up out of the sea—with his number 666. With others, Cusa thought this might apply to Mohammed and his work, as it came into prominence about A.D. 666. 38 Cusa lived to see the conquests of the Turks and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, happenings which doubtless revived this old Catholic position in his mind. PFF2 136.2
The fall of Constantinople, which caused a large number of Greek scholars to take refuge in Italy, together with the newly discovered art of printing, helped to stimulate the revival of letters and art called the Renaissance. During the same time, however, the papal chair sank to new depths of iniquity. And Cusa, after sensing the failure of all reform councils, and fathoming the despotism and covetousness of the Papacy as the cause of the corruption, foresaw its still deeper degradation. 39 PFF2 136.3
But although Cusa refuted a number of errors in the Catholic Church and longed sincerely for a reform, he was one of the most prominent cardinals of his time and became, near the end of his life, the vicar general of the papal states. PFF2 137.1
Yet in the wide scope of his universal spirit he longed and worked for a union of all religions, in order that religious wars and persecution might cease. He expressed these thoughts in his De Pace send Concordantian Fidel (On Peace or the Harmony of Faith): “Thou, O Lord and King of the universe, Thou art sought under different forms in different religions. Thou art called by different names, because in Thy real being Thou art unknown and incomprehensible.” 40 PFF2 137.2