Inspirational Quotes by Karl Barth

“The lifting up of themselves for which he gives them freedom is not a movement which is formless, or to which they themselves have to give the necessary form. It takes place in a definite form and direction. Similarly, their looking to Jesus as their Lord is not an idle gaping. It is a vision that stimulates those to whom it is given to a definite action.”

“Karl Barth's writings had a deep impact on the theology of the twentieth century. But his vast Church Dogmatics stands as his foundational work. The present volume is a brief excerpt from Church Dogmatics (vol. 4, pt. 2).”

“Describing the relationship between the biblical witnesses and the theologians who come after, the author challenges that the theologian is not to correct the notebooks of the biblical writers like some high school teacher. Instead, our theology is always subject to what THEY say, as we willingly submit our notebooks for their approval.”

“Religion may be a private affair, but the woik and word of God are the reconciliation of the world with God, as it was performed in Jesus Christ.”

“On observing 1963 America for the first time, the author says that organization and standardization to a certain degree compete with divine providence.”

“When theology recognizes one thing properly, it mis-recognizes something else all the more thoroughly.”

“Evangelical theology is modest theology, because it is determined to be so by its object, that is, by him who is its subject.”

“To wish to withstand the Holy Spirit would be the one unforgivable sin.”

“Godlessness is not… a possibility, but an ontological impossibility for man. Man is not without, but with God. This is not to say, of course, that godless men do not exist. Sin is undoubtedly committed and exists. Yet sin itself is not a possibility but an ontological impossibility for man. We are actually with Jesus, i.e., with God. this means that our being does not include but excludes sin. To be in sin, in godlessness, is a mode of being contrary to our humanity. For the man who is with Jesus… is with God. If he denies God, he denies himself… He chooses his own impossibility”

“No one, however, can be content at this point to be a mere " layman," to be indolent, to be no more than a passive spectator or reader. No one is excused the task of asking questions or the more difficult task of providing and assessing answers. Preaching in the congregation, and the theology which serves its preparation, can be faithful to its theme and therefore relevant and adapted to the circumstances and edifying to the community, only if it is surrounded, sustained and constantly stimulated and fructified by the questions and answers of the community. With his own questions and answers in matters of right understanding and doctrine, each individual Christian thus participates in what the community is commanded to do. If he holds aloof, or slackens, or allows himself to sleep, or wanders into speculation and error, he must not be surprised if sooner or later the same will have to be said about the community as such and particularly about its more responsible members. How many complaints about the "Church" would never be made if only those who make them were to realise that we ourselves are the Church, so that what it has or has not to say stands or falls with us. There can be no doubt that all the great errors which have overtaken the preaching and theology of the community in the course of its history have had their true origin, not so much in the studies of the well-known errorists and heretics who have merely blabbed them out, but rather in the secret inattention and neglect, the private drowsing and wandering and erring, of innumerable nameless Christians who were not prepared to regard the listening of the community to the Word as their own concern, who wanted privacy in their thinking, and who thus created the atmosphere in which heresy and error became possible and even inevitable in the community.”

“The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.”

“In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.”

“No one can be saved - in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved - in virtue of what God can do.”

“It is always the case that when the Christian looks back, he is looking at the forgiveness of sins.”

“Only through his fellow does man become clear to himself and self-conscious; … A man existing absolutely alone would lose himself without any sense of his individuality in the ocean of Nature; he would neither comprehend himself as man nor Nature as Nature.”

“He who makes God act humanly, declares human activity to be divine[.]”

“God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, but he shows himself as that which he is, as a human being.”

“[T]o think God is therefore to affirm what God is, to establish the being of God as an act. That God is thought, cognised, is essential; that this tree is thought, is to the tree accidental, unessential. … [H]ow is it possible that God – if he is to exist for us, to be an object to us – must necessarily be thought … ? … [I]t is not possible.”

“[T]hat which is the object of another being is dependent. … Thus the plant is dependent on air and light, that is, it is an object for air and light, not for itself. Physical life in general is nothing else than this perpetual interchange of the objective and subjective relation.”

“Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, a universe, a necessity.”