Karl Barth Quotes

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

I have read many books, but the Bible reads me.

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

There will be no song on our lips if there be no anguish in our hearts.

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

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

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

The Spirit bears witness. Ecstasy and enlightenment, inspiration and intuition are not necessary. Happy is the man who is worthy of these; but woe unto us if we wait for such experiences; woe unto us if we do not perceive that these things are of secondary importance.

If I have a system it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called 'the infinite qualitative distinction' between time and eternity

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

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

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

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

I haven't even read everything I wrote.

Thus in this oneness Jesus Christ is the Mediator, the Reconciler, between God and man. Thus He comes forward to MAN on behalf of GOD calling for and awakening faith, love and hope, and to GOD on behalf of MAN, representing man, making satisfaction and interceding. Thus He attests and guarantees to God's free GRACE and at the same time attests and guarantees to God man's free GRATITUDE.

A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.

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.

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

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

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

The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary”, means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus , his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.

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

We must hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

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

To be a Christian and to pray are one and the same thing; it is a matter that cannot be left to our caprice. It is a need, a kind of breathing necessary to life.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

To say revelation is to say, 'the Word became flesh...'

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

The Devil may also make use of morality.

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

When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers.

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.

True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God.

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

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

What happened on that day (of Easter) became, was and remained the centre around which everything else moves. For everything lasts its time, but the love of God - which was at work and was expressed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead - lasts forever. Because this event took place, there is no reason to despair, and even when we read the newspaper with all its confusing and frightening news, there is every reason to hope.

I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.

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

Man can certainly keep on lying (and does so), but he cannot make truth falsehood.

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.

God listens to Bach while the angels listen to Mozart.