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441 GATE T HAT which is eternal had become configuration in the truth. And truth is nothing other than the countenance of this configuration. Truth alone is its countenance. And take much care, for the sake of your souls: “No figure have you seen, speech only have you heard,”—so it is said in the world of Revelation with and around us. But the word grows silent in the afterworld and supra-world, in the redeemed world, which the blessing said at the right time and in the right place, full of higher power, forces hither. Of it, complete and at peace, it is said: “May he let his countenance shine upon you.” This shining of the divine face alone is truth. It is not a configuration freely moving for itself, but only God’s countenance lighting up. But for whomever he lets his face shine, toward him he also turns his face. As he turns his face toward us, so may we know him. And this knowing does indeed know in a real sense. It knows truth as it is, namely as it is in God: as his countenance and part. Truth surely does not turn into non-real truth by the fact that this countenance turned toward us, that God’s share falls to our share; for even as real and most real truth it would be nothing other than—part and countenance. In the Star of Redemption in which we saw the divine truth become configuration , nothing else lights up than the countenance that God turned shining toward us. We shall now recognize in the divine face the Star of Redemption itself as it now finally became clear for us as configuration. And only in this recognition is its cognition perfected. For as long as we knew only its path without as yet seeing its configuration, just so long was the order of the original elements not yet fixed. Certainly the perhaps, boundlessly fluttering to and fro, sank away powerless long ago; God world man had reciprocally acquiesced in the sure order; in the path their order came to them; through the succession of the three hours of the day of God, their immovable relationship to one another was indicated for the elements of the All; so the path was recognized as a path of the star to which those elements of the path belonged. But when the Star was beheld like this, it seemed still to be able to spin around itself, hence that now world and man, within the already solidly fixed lapse of the three times of God’s Day, seemed to experience their own day that simply did not coincide with that one. Only for God was Redemption really the last. But for man, even his creation in the image of God, and for the world, RETROSPECTIVE : THE FACE OF THE CONFIGURATION GOD’S COUNTENANCE THE DAY OF GOD GATE 442 even God’s descent in Revelation, meant the being-redeemed to just any possible completion. There the three hours seemed to be only hours of God’s day; the day of man and the day of the world would be a different one. In dealing with what is eternal of the supra-world, it was the whole task of Part Three to show that it is not like this. That apparent possibility of substitution was itself here riveted to the spot in configurations that received their fixed place in the eternal truth of the day of God. In eternal life, certainly Redemption was anticipated already in Revelation in which of course everything is there; in the Revelation to the one people eternal life, itself no longer changing, was planted; that eternal life will one day return in the fruit of Redemption, just as it was once planted; hence, here in the world, the visible world, really a piece of Redemption is placed, and it becomes true that, seen from the world, Revelation is actually already Redemption. And on the other side is really begun again in the eternal way with man’s innate image of God in him; Redemption takes place here through the new Adam, without sin and not fallen, and is already there in him; therefore, here, man, inspired man, when he appropriates this being newly created again in God’s image with the miraculous birth of the second Adam, is already heritage of Redemption, of a redeemed-ness that belongs to him from the very beginning, from Creation and...
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