Karl Barth quotes - page 3

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:

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

Karl Barth

We must be clear that whatever we say of God in such human concepts can never be more than an indication of Him; no such concept can really conceive the nature of God. God is inconceivable.

Karl Barth

God in the highest, in the sense of the Christian Confession, means He who from on high has condescended to us, has come to us, has become ours.

Karl Barth

The Resurrection is the emergence of the necessity of giving glory to God: the reckoning with what is unknown and unobservable in Jesus, the recognition of Him as Paradox, Victor and Primal History.

Karl Barth

The name Jesus defines an historical occurence and marks the point where the unknown world cuts the known world . . . as Christ Jesus is the plane which lies beyond our comprehension.

Karl Barth

The Epistle to the Romans is a revelation of the unknown God; God chooses to come to man, not man to God. Even after the revelation man cannot know God, for he is ever the unknown God.

Karl Barth

The saving of anyone is something which is not in the power of man, but only of God. 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

We are now assuming that we have here the centre and goal of all God's works, and therefore the hidden beginning of them all.

Karl Barth

In Jesus, God really becomes a mystery, makes himself known as the unknown, speaks as the eternally Silent One.

Karl Barth

The relation between us and God, between this world and His world presses for recognition, but the line of intersection is not self-evident.

Karl Barth

To look to Him is to see Him at the very centre, to see Him and the history which, accomplished in Him, heals everything and all things, as the mystery, reality, origin and goal of the whole world, all men, all life.

Karl Barth

He is the One who stands above us and also above our highest and deepest feelings, strivings, intuitions, above the products, even the most sublime, of the human spirit.

Karl Barth

The reason sees the small and the larger but not the large. It sees the preliminary, but not the final, the derived but not the original, the complex but not the simple. It sees what is human but not what is divine.

Karl Barth

This is the voice of our conscience, telling us of the righteousness of God. And since conscience is the perfect interpreter of life, what it tells us is no question, no riddle, no problem, but a fact - the deepest, innermost, surest fact of life: God is righteous.

Karl Barth

He may let go of God, but God does not let go of him.

Karl Barth

There is no way from us to God - not even via negativa not even a via dialectica nor paradoxa.

Karl Barth

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed!

Karl Barth

Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God, but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.

Karl Barth

Jews have God's promise and if we Christians have it, too, then it is only as those chosen with them, as guests in their house, that we are new wood grafted onto their tree.

Karl Barth

What God chooses for us children of men is always the best.

Karl Barth

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.

Karl Barth

Even a child can see that an industrial enterprise would have neither net profits nor profits in general without the participation of the worker. Why does he receive only a wage from the entrepreneur instead of a share in the profits? There is no other reason other than the fact that the means of production are the private property of the entrepreneur. ... This inequality and dependence is precisely the injustice that we don't want.

Karl Barth