Inspirational Quotes by Karl Barth

“It is in full unity with Himself that He is also – and especially and above all – in Christ, that he becomes a creature, man, flesh, that He enters into our being in contradiction, that He takes upon Himself its consequences. If we think that this is impossible it is because our concept of God is too narrow, too arbitrary, too human – far too human. Who God is and what it is to be divine is something we have to learn where God has revealed Himself and His nature, the essence of the divine. And if He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ as the God who does this, it is not for us to be wiser than He and to say that it is in contradiction with the divine essence. We have to be ready to be taught by Him that we have been too small and perverted in our thinking about Him within the framework of a false idea about God. It is not for us to speak of a contradiction and rift in the being of God, but to learn to correct our notions of the being of God, to constitute them in the light of the fact that He does this. We may believe that God can and must only be absolute in contrast to all that is relative, exalted in contrast to all that is lowly, active in contrast to all suffering, inviolable in contrast to all temptation, transcendent in contrast to all immanence, and therefore divine in contrast to everything human, in short that He can and must be the “Wholly Other.” But such beliefs are shown to be quite untenable, and corrupt and pagan, by the fact that God does in fact be and do this in Jesus Christ. We cannot make them the standard by which to measure what God can or cannot do, or the basis of the judgement that in doing this He brings Himself into self-contradiction. By doing this God proves to us that He can do it, that to do it is within His nature. And He Himself to be more great and rich and sovereign than we had ever imagined. And our ideas of His nature must be guided by this, and not vice versa.”

“Exactly halfway between exegesis and practical theology stands dogmatics,”

“Whatever kind of object … we are at any time conscious of, we are always at the same time conscious of our own nature[.]”

“[M]an [has] the power of abstraction from himself[.]”

“No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.”

“Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. … [S]peculations and controversies concerning the personality or impersonality of God are therefore fruitless, idle, uncritical … ; … they in truth speculate only concerning themselves, only in the interest of their own instinct of self-preservation[.]”

“In the Credo the Church bows before that God Whom we did not seek and find—Who rather has sought and found us. Now”

“The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time.”

“The church speaks finally in that it prays for the world.”

“Wherever this idea, that the religious predicates are only anthropomorphisms, has taken possession of man, there has doubt, has unbelief, obtained mastery of faith.”

“[T]he present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original[.]”

“[S]o much worth … a man has, so much and no more has his God. Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. By his God thou knowest the man, and by the man, his God; the two are identical.”

“Agape is related to Eros, as Mozart to Beethoven. How could they possibly be confused? Agape”

“[T]o a limited being its limited understanding is not felt to be a limitation; on the contrary, it is perfectly happy and contented with this understanding[.]”

“There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis, because it guarantees a complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost canonical status in Protestant theology. But now we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical.”

“Man cannot get beyond his true nature. He may indeed by means of the imagination conceive individuals of another so-called higher kind, but he can never get loose from his species, his nature; the conditions of being, the positive final predicates which he gives to these other individuals, are always determinations or qualities drawn from his own nature – qualities in which he in truth only images and projects himself.”

“Agape is related to Eros, as Mozart to Beethoven. How could they possibly be confused?”

“God transcends even the undertakings of evangelical theologians.”

“Thou shalt make no image, no abstraction, including none of THE American, THE Swiss, THE German.”

“The author says that theologian operates with windows open to the interest of the world, but also with a skylight that allows full awareness of prayer.”