Karl Barth quotes

Karl Barth was a Swiss Reformed theologian, widely regarded as one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the twentieth century. His work initiated a renewed emphasis on the sovereignty of God and the centrality of Christ in theology. He shaped modern theology with his monumental writings, especially his multi-volume "Church Dogmatics." Here are 84 of his quotes:

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

Karl Barth

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

Karl Barth

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

Karl Barth

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

Karl Barth

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Karl Barth

Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is Himself the way.

Karl Barth

The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise.

Karl Barth

Where dogmatics exists at all, it exists only with the will to be a Church dogmatics, a dogmatics of the ecumenical Church.

Karl Barth

Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it.

Karl Barth

When I come before these men I do not have to explain that we are all sinners. They have committed every sin there is. All I have to tell them is that I, too, am a sinner.

Karl Barth

The enterprise of Adolf Hitler, with all its clatter and fireworks, and all its cunning and dynamic energy, is the enterprise of an evil spirit, which is apparently allowed its freedom for a time in order to test our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Karl Barth

Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo.

Karl Barth

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

Karl Barth

Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.

Karl Barth

Prayer without study would be empty. Study without prayer would be blind.

Karl Barth

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

Karl Barth

The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.

Karl Barth

It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.

Karl Barth

The theologian who labors without joy is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this field.

Karl Barth

While it is beyond our comprehension that eternity should meet us in time, yet it is true because in Jesus Christ eternity has become time.

Karl Barth

God, the pure limit and pure beginning of all that we are, have, and do, standing over in infinite qualitative difference to man and all that is human, nowhere and never identical with that which we call God, experience, surmise, and pray to as God, the unconditioned Halt as opposed to all human rest, the Yes in our No and the No in our Yes, the first and last and as such unknown, but nowhere and never a magnitude amongst others in the medium known to us, God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer... that is the living God.

Karl Barth

I do not preach universal salvation, what I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all men at the Judgment.

Karl Barth