Church Dogmatics, vol. 2,  tr. G.W. Bromiley, pp. 10-12

[...] For what else does this mean but that He gives Himself to man in His Word as a real object ? He makes man accessible for Himself. He lets Himself be considered and conceived by man. Man cannot and must not know himself apart from God, but together with God as his “ opposite.” Again, the objectivity of God is not restricted by the fact that we have to understand God Himself as the real and primarily acting Subject of all real knowledge of God, so that the self-knowledge of God is the real and primary essence of all knowledge of God. That God is originally and really object to Himself does not alter the fact that in a very different way He is also object to man. And the fact that God knows Himself immediately is not neutralised by the fact that man knows Him on the basis of His revelation and hence mediately, and only mediately, and therefore as an object. The reality of our knowledge of God stands or falls with the fact that in His revelation God is present to man in a medium. He is therefore objectively present in a double sense. In His Word He comes as an object before man the subject. And by the Holy Spirit He makes the human subject accessible to Himself, capable of considering and conceiving Himself as object. The real knowledge of God is concerned with God in His relationship to man, but also in His distinction from him. We therefore separate ourselves from all those ideas of the knowledge of God which understand it as the union of man with God, and which do not regard it as an objective knowledge but leave out the distinction between the knower and the known. It is not as if we can arrive at the real knowledge of God on this view. On the contrary, this view can help us only by making clear what it means if man is not yet or no longer engaged in fulfilling the knowledge of God.

We are vividly reminded of one of the most beautiful but also most dangerous passages in the Confessions (IX, 10) of Augustine—the conversation between Augustine and his mother Monica at the garden window at Ostia. They were talking about the vita aeterna sanctorum, quam nec oculus vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascendit (I Cor. 2.9). Augustine tells how his mother and himself, leaving behind them the contemplation of even the highest delectatio that could be mediated through the senses, mounted together in idipsum (Ps. 4.9 Vulg.—In pace in idipsum dormiam et requiescam ...). They wandered step by step through all the corporeal world, including the heavens and all their constellations. Climbing yet higher in wondering review of the works of God they arrived at the spirit of man and then passed beyond even this,

And then they said : If the tumultes carnis could be silenced in man, and all the images (phantasiae) of the earth, sea and air, and even the soul itself

—if everything was silent, listening to God Himself

—  if all else ceased, if all other sights vanished

The beginning and end of the passage show that Augustine wishes to speak of the eternal vision of God at the end of time, and we are not now concerned with the specifically eschatological side of the problem. But Augustine does not speak only of a future, eternal vision, but very definitely of an experience on that day at the garden window at Ostia. Here for a little while everything became silent ; here he aspired to that idipsum and here also he found it ; here the timeless Wisdom met him in time ; here he saw and heard God without concepts, without an image, without a word, without a sign—God Himself speaking, not through something else, but through Himself, ipsum sine his, so that the One seen is already about to take up into Himself the one who sees : “ Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.^” However it may be with the reality and contents of this experience, it is certain that the reality of the knowledge of God is not reached by way of the image of such a timeless and non-objective seeing and hearing. In this context reference may be made to the fact that elsewhere (De civ. Dei XXII, 29) Augustine himself described the eternal vision of God quite differently:

In the knowledge of God in His Word here and now we are definitely concerned with such a mediate, objective knowledge. What Augustine describes in Cont. IX, to is, according to his own account, the consequence of an ascendere and transcendere of all the limitations and restrictions of man’s existence and situation. Whether that is a possible beginning we will not pursue further. But it is certain that this ascendere and transcendere means abandoning, or at any rate wanting to abandon, the place where God encounters man in His revelation and where He gives Himself to be heard and seen by man. But on the other hand Augustine himself has said the right word about this arbitrary procedure : Optimus minister tuus est, qui non magis intuetur hoc a te audire quod ipse uoluerit, sed potius hoc uelle quod a te audierit.[ Your best servant is he who looks not so much to hear of you what he himself should wish to, but instead to desire that which he hears from You. (Confessions 21.10, chap. 26, 37)] If we really soar up into these heights, and really reduce all concepts, images, words and signs to silence, and really think we can enter into the idipsum, it simply means that we wilfully hurry past God, who descends in His revelation into this world of ours. Instead of finding Him where He Himself has sought us—namely, in His objectivity—we seek Him where He is not to be found, since He on His side seeks us in His Word. It is really not the case, therefore, that if we have a knowledge of God in the form of that experience, we have reached a higher or the highest step on a way which began with an objective perceiving, viewing and conceiving of God, as though that were only an early and sensuous mode of thought. It is not the case that in the non-objective we are dealing with the real and truc knowledge of God but in the objective with a deceptive appearance. Just the reverse. If we regard ourselves as bound by God’s Word we shall certainly find a deceptive appearance in that ascendere and transcendere so far as what happens there—whatever else it may be —claims to be knowledge of God. For how can it make this claim except where the fulfilment of the real knowledge of God in God’s Word has either not yet begun or has ceased again ? Where it is being fulfilled, the hasty by-passing of God’s revelation or the flight into non-objectivity cannot possibly occur. Where it is being fulfilled, knowledge is bound to the objectivity of God just as it is bound to this definite object who is the God who gives Himself to be known in His Word. And it is bound to the fact that His very revelation consists in His making Himself object to us, and so in His making a flight into non‑ objectivity not only superfluous but impossible. Thus the straight and proper way in this matter can never be from objectivity into non-objectivity, but only from non-objectivity back into objectivity.

The fact that man stands before the God who gives Himself to be known in His Word, and therefore to be known mediately, definitely means that we have to understand man’s knowledge of God as the knowledge of faith. In this consists its reality and necessity, which are not and cannot be attacked from without. And from this God as the knowledge of faith. In this consists its reality and necessity, which are not and cannot be attacked from without. And from this follow all determinations of the mode of its fulfilment. We must now discuss the assertion that the knowledge of God is the knowledge of faith.

In the first instance, it is simply a confirmation of the fact that the knowledge of God is bound to the object set before it by God’s Word and to this object in its irrevocable objectivity. Faith is the total positive relationship of man to the God who gives Himself to be known in His Word. It is man’s act of turning to God, of opening up his life to Him and of surrendering to Him. It is the Yes which he pronounces in his heart when confronted by this God, because he knows himself to be bound and fully bound. It is the obligation in which, before God, and in the light of the clarity that God is God

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