Inspirational Quotes by Karl Barth

“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[.]”

“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.”

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

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

“To be pilgrims means that men must perpetually return to the starting-point of that naked humanity which is absolute poverty and utter insecurity. God must not be sought as though he sat enthroned upon the summit of religious attainment. He is to be found on the plain where men suffer and sin. The veritable pinnacle of religious achievement is attained when men are thrust down into the company of those who lie in the depths. The true faith is the "faith of Abraham which he had in uncircumcision"; the true children of Abraham are thy whom God is able to raise up "of these stones". Where this is overlooked, the first must become the last, for only the last can be first.”

“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,”

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

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

“Of Myself and of Death’ (pp. 287–300).”

“Two points, which are at once gateways and ends, determine and characterize, according to Overbeck, the being of man and of humanity. With the term ‘Super-History’ (Urgeschichte) or ‘creation-history’,”

“Two points, which are at once gateways and ends, determine and characterize, according to Overbeck, the being of man and of humanity. With the term ‘Super-History’ (Urgeschichte) or ‘creation-history’, he designates the one; with the term ‘death’, the other.”

“What lies between these two ends, these ‘last things’, is the world, our world, the comprehensible world which has been given us.”

“For ‘historical’ means ‘subject to time’ (p. 242).”

“whatever is subject to time is limited, is relative, and is made manifest as world by the ‘last things’ of which we are now cognizant, whether we will or not. ‘It is in no way possible to concede to the Pharisees a kingdom of God already appearing among them, wholly on this side of the end’ (on Luke 17:20–1, p.”

“If we cannot defend the things of this world and if none of the relationships in which we walk the earth can withstand the criticism which reduces the whole to relativity, we can still love them and we need take the criticism no more seriously than it deserves (pp. 29, 248).”

“the concrete actuality of God’s revelation in Word and Act.”

“The Word ought to be exposed in the words”

“Concerning the Investigation of Super-History’ (Urgeschichte) (pp. 20–8)”

“the irreconcilable antitheses of death and life, the world and the kingdom of heaven, and then again to see them both as one, before he can evaluate the concealed power of this unique spirit. For ‘this was a man and to be a man means to be a fighter’.”