What is the difference between the first and second objectivity of Karl Barth's theology?

The first objectivity is God in His 'totally other' self. We will never reach or experience Him of our own volition - you will only know God because God makes himself known through the second objectivity. The second objectivity is Jesus Christ. The person of Christ is the hypostatic union (combination of perfect divinity and humanity in one; fully God and fully man in tension) and because we can relate to him in some way, for we have the knowledge of what it is to be human, we are able to come to know him in a way that we cannot with God.

Karl Barth believes that after we die, we will have a two-way experience with the second objectivity but there will remain an epistemic distance between man and God - it is almost as though there is a line which we can never cross. However as an exclusivist, Karl Barth would say that for someone to experience God after death, they would have to be within the church themselves

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Answered by Siobhan T. Religious Studies tutor

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