Karl Barth Quotes & Sayings

I had to show that the Bible dealt with an encounter between God and Man. I thought only of the apartness of God. What I had to learn after that was the togetherness of Man and God a union of two totally different kinds of beings. — Karl Barth

A quite specific astonishment stands at the beginning of every theological perception, inquiry, and thought. — Karl Barth

Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation, — Karl Barth

What is offered to man's apprehension in any specific revelation of Christ is the living God himself. — Karl Barth

In dogmatics our question is: What are we to think and say? — Karl Barth

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

Let us hear what the Bible says and what we as Christians are called to hear together: By grace you have been saved. — Karl Barth

Radically and basically, all sin is simply ingratitude. — Karl Barth

The term 'laity' is one of the worst in the vocabulary of religion and ought to be banished from the Christian conversation. — Karl Barth

The righteousness of God in His election means, then, that as a righteous Judge God perceives and estimates as such the lost cause of the creature, and that in spite of its opposition He gives sentence in its favour, fashioning for it His own righteousness. — Karl Barth

Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. — Karl Barth

The mature and well-balanced man, standing firmly with both feet on the earth, who has never been lamed and broken an half-blinded by the scandal of life, is as such the existentially godless man. — Karl Barth

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. — Karl Barth

The statement that 'God is dead' comes from Nietzsche and has recently been trumpeted abroad by some German and American theologians. But the good Lord has not died of this; He who dwells in the heaven laughs at them. — Karl Barth

It is always the case that when the Christian looks back, he is looking at the forgiveness of sins. — Karl Barth

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

Our position is such that we can be rescued from eternal death and translated into life only by total and unceasing substitution, the substitution which God Himself undertakes on our behalf. — Karl Barth

Grace creates liberated laughter. The grace of God ... is beautiful, and it radiates joy and awakens humor. — Karl Barth

God transcends even the undertakings of evangelical theologians. — 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

Grace and gratitude go together like heaven and earth. — 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

I repeat that dogmatics is not a thing which has fallen from Heaven to earth. And if someone were to say that it would be wonderful if there were such an absolute dogmatics fallen from Heaven, the only possible answer would be: 'Yes, if we were angels.' But since by God's will we are not, it will be good for us to have just a human and earthly dogmatics. The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time. And although it is a gift of God, He has set it right amid earthly and human circumstances, and to that fact corresponds absolutely everything that happens in the Church. The Christian Church lives on earth and it lives in history, with the lofty good entrusted to it by God. In the possession and administration of this lofty good it passes on its way through history, in strength and in weakness, in faithfulness and in unfaithfulness, in obedience and in disobedience, in understanding and in misunderstanding of what is said to it. — Karl Barth

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

No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science. — Karl Barth

In Jesus Christ there is no isolation of man from God or of God from man. Rather, in Him we encounter the history, the dialogue, in which God and man meet together and are together, the reality of the covenant MUTUALLY contracted, preserved, and fulfilled by them. Jesus Christ is in His one Person, as true GOD, MAN'S loyal partner, and as true MAN, GOD'S. He is the Lord humbled for communion with man and likewise the Servant exalted to communion with God. — Karl Barth

What expressions we used - in part taken over and in part newly invented! above all, the famous 'wholly other' breaking in upon us 'perpendicularly from above,' the not less famous 'infinite qualitative distinction' between God and man, the vacuum, the mathematical point, and the tangent in which alone they must meet. — Karl Barth

He wants in His freedom actually not to be without man but WITH him and in the same freedom not against him but FOR him, and that apart from or even counter to what man deserves. He wants in fact to be man's partner, his almighty and compassionate Saviour. He chooses to give man the benefit of His power, which encompasses not only the high and the distant but also the deep and the near, in order to maintain communion with him in the realm guaranteed by His deity. He determines to love him, to be his God, his Lord, his compassionate Preserver and Saviour to eternal life, and to desire his praise and service. — Karl Barth

Mozart creates music from a mysterious center, and so knows the limits to the right and the left, above and below. He maintains moderation. — 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

He has heard, and causes those with ears to hear, even today, what we shall not see until the end of time - the whole context of Providence. As though in the light of this end, he heard the harmony of creation to which the shadow belongs but in which the shadow is not darkness, deficiency is not defeat, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy and infinite melancholy is ultimately forced to claim undisputed sway ... Mozart causes us to hear that even on the latter side, and therefore in its totality creation praises its master and is therefore perfect. — Karl Barth

Society is now really ruled by its own logos; say rather by a whole pantheon of its own hypostases and powers ... we are beginning to suspect that the idols are vain, but their demonic influence upon our lives is not thereby allayed. For it is one thing to entertain critical doubts regarding the god of this world, and another thing to perceive the dunamis, the meaning and might of the living God who is building a new world. — Karl Barth

Man can certainly keep on lying ... but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel ... but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God. — Karl Barth

Theology must have the character of a living procession. — Karl Barth

On the basis of the eternal will of God we have to think of EVERY HUMAN BEING, even the oddest, most villainous or miserable, as one to whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God is Father; and we have to deal with him on this assumption. If the other person knows that already, then we have to strengthen him in the knowledge. If he does no know it yet or no longer knows it, our business is to transmit this knowledge to him. — 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. We are also assuming that the prominent place occupied by this divine work has something corresponding to it in the essence of God, that the Son forms the centre of the Trinity, and that the essence of the divine being has, so to speak, its locus ... in His work, in the name and person of Jesus Christ. — Karl Barth

The gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question mark against all truths. — Karl Barth

But, even in this concrete relationship to the Son of God become man, this is really something new only in so far as it expresses the revelation of what began to be true with the Incarnation and has never since ceased to be true. — Karl Barth

Sin scorches us most after it comes under the scrutinizing light of God's forgiveness and not before — Karl Barth

For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not yet have a heart. — Karl Barth

Faith is not an art. Faith is not an achievement. Faith is not a good work of which some may boast while others can excuse themselves with a shrug of the shoulders for not being capable of it. It is a decisive insight of faith itself that all of us are incapable of faith in ourselves, whether we think of its preparation, beginning, continuation, or completion. In this respect believers understand unbelievers, skeptics, and atheists better than they understand themselves. Unlike unbelievers, they regard the impossibility of faith as necessary, not accidental ... — Karl Barth

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

With an ear open to your musical dialectic, one can be young and become old, can work and rest, be content and sad: in short, one can live. — Karl Barth

What is there within the Bible?"
"It is a dangerous question. We might do better not to come too near this burning bush. For we are sure to betray what is - behind us! The Bible gives to every man and every era such answers to your questions as they deserve. We shall always find in it as much as we seek and no more: high and divine content if it is high and divine content that we seek; transitory and "historical" content, if transitory and "historical" content that we seek. Nothing whatever, if it is nothing whatever that we seek. The hungry are satisfied by it, and to the satisfied it is surfeiting before they have opened it. The question, "What is in the Bible?" has a mortifying way of converting itself into the opposing question, "Well, what are you looking for, and who are you, pray, who make bold to look? — Karl Barth

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. — Karl Barth

Abortion is 'the great modern sin. — Karl Barth

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. — 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

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

This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before. — Karl Barth

The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time. — Karl Barth

He [Jesus Christ] is the Master of all as the Servant of all. — Karl Barth

All sin has its being and origin in the fact that man wants to be his own judge. And in wanting to be that, and thinking and acting accordingly, he and his whole world is in conflict with God. It is an unreconciled world, and therefore a suffering world, a world given up to destruction. — Karl Barth

Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good. — Karl Barth

The Devil may also make use of morality. — Karl Barth

God has not the slightest need for our proofs. — Karl Barth

I haven't even read everything I wrote. — Karl Barth

The Word ought to be exposed in the words — Karl Barth

Thou shalt make no image, no abstraction, including none of THE American, THE Swiss, THE German. — Karl Barth

Theology can be useful only when it does not retreat from the divine judgment that accompanies the work of all men, but, instead unreservedly exposes and submits itself to this judgment. Only by not rejecting or resisting the threat that encounters it, but, instead, acknowledging it propriety, reconciling itself to it, and enduring and bearing it, can theology become useful. — Karl Barth

Holy Communion is offered to all, as surely as the living Jesus Christ is for all, as surely as all of us are not divided in him, but belong together as brothers and sisters, all of us poor sinners, all of us rich through his mercy. Amen. — 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

There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology. — Karl Barth

The theologian who labours without joy is not a theologian at all. — Karl Barth

Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life. — Karl Barth

When the frontier between God and man, the last inexorable barrier and obstacle, is not closed, the barrier between what is normal and what is perverse is opened. — Karl Barth

Agape is related to Eros, as Mozart to Beethoven. How could they possibly be confused? — Karl Barth

Mozart's music is an invitation to the listener to venture just a little out of the sense of his own subjectivity. — Karl Barth

The relation of this God with this man; the relation of this man with this God
this is the only theme of the Bible and of philosophy. — Karl Barth

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. — Karl Barth

I don't believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ, the reconciler of all — Karl Barth

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

Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Gratitude evokes grace like the voice and echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning. — Karl Barth

Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it. — Karl Barth

Faith is never identical with piety. — Karl Barth

Sin is not confined to the evil things we do. It is the evil within us, the evil which we are. — Karl Barth

As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give glory to God — Karl Barth

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. — Karl Barth

In Jesus, God wills to be true God not only in the height but also in the depth - in the depth of human creatureliness, sinfulness and mortality. — Karl Barth

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so? — Karl Barth

Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us. — Karl Barth

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life. — Karl Barth

Impossibility is more possible than everything which we hold to be possible. — Karl Barth

Exegesis, exegesis, and yet more exegesis! — Karl Barth

Heaven is the creation inconceivable to man; earth is the creation conceivable to him. — 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

Humanity in its basic form is co-humanity. — Karl Barth

'joy' in Phillippians is a defiant 'Nevertheless!' that Paul sets like a full stop against the Philippians' anxiety ... — Karl Barth

Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart. — Karl Barth

Exactly halfway between exegesis and practical theology stands dogmatics, — Karl Barth

Evangelical theology is modest theology, because it is determined to be so by its object, that is, by him who is its subject. — Karl Barth

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. — Karl Barth

Creation is grace: a statement at which we should like best to pause in reverence, fear and gratitude. God does not grudge the existence of the reality distinct from Himself; He does not grudge it its own reality, nature and freedom. — Karl Barth

The area of the Church stands in the world, as outwardly the Church stands in the village or in a city, beside the school, the cinema and the railway station. The Church's language cannot aim at being an end in itself. It must be made clear that the Church exists for the sake of the world, that the light is shining in the darkness. — 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

When we are at our wits' end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own? — Karl Barth

No one can become and remain a theologian unless he is compelled again and again to be astonished at himself. — Karl Barth

When theology recognizes one thing properly, it mis-recognizes something else all the more thoroughly. — Karl Barth

Prayer without study would be empty. Study without prayer would be blind. — Karl Barth