Swiss Reformed theologian (1886-1968)
When the angels praise God in Heaven I am sure they play Bach.
KARL BARTH
"Witness to an Ancient Truth", TIME Magazine, April 20, 1962
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
Church Dogmatics
Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it.
KARL BARTH
Church Dogmatics
And now to my socialist friends who are here present: I have said that Jesus wanted what you want, that he wanted to help those who are least, that he wanted to establish the kingdom of God upon this earth, that he wanted to abolish self-seeking property, that he wanted to make persons into comrades. Your concerns are in line with the concerns of Jesus. Real socialism is real Christianity in our time.
KARL BARTH
lecture delivered at Safenwil, "Jesus Christus und die soziale Bewegung", December 17, 1911
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 Humanity of God
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
The Epistle to the Romans
We begin by stating that religion is unbelief. It is a concern, indeed, we must say that it is the one great concern, of godless man.
KARL BARTH
Church Dogmatics
The known plane is God's creation, fallen out of its union with Him, and therefore the world of the flesh needing redemption, the world of men, and of time, and of things -- our world. This known plane is intersected by another plane that is unknown -- the world of the Father, of the Primal Creation, and of the final Redemption. 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
The Epistle to the Romans
Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone. Piety is the possibility of the removal of the last traces of a firm foundation upon which we can erect a system of thought.
KARL BARTH
The Epistle to the Romans
In Jesus, God really becomes a mystery, makes himself known as the unknown, speaks as the eternally Silent One.
KARL BARTH
The Epistle to the Romans
God is personal, but personal in an incomprehensible way, in so far as the conception of his personality surpasses all our views of personality.
KARL BARTH
The Knowledge of God and the Service of God
No one can become and remain a theologian unless he is compelled again and again to be astonished at himself.
KARL BARTH
Evangelical Theology: An Introduction
Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
KARL BARTH
attributed, The Harper Book of Quotations
Whatever we may think of its character as reality or illusion, this sphere arises and exists in the fact that man depends on himself over against God. But this means that in actual fact God becomes unknowable to him and he makes himself equal to God. For the man who refuses his grace God becomes the substance of the highest that he himself can see, choose, create and be. It is of this that he gives an account in natural theology He must do it, because this is the self-exposition and self-justification of the being of man in this sphere.
KARL BARTH
Church Dogmatics
He unveils Himself as the One He is by veiling Himself in a form which He Himself is not. He uses this form distinct from Himself, He uses its work and sign, in order to be objective in, with and under this form, and therefore to give Himself to us to be known. Revelation means the giving of signs. We can say quite simply that revelation means sacrament, i.e., the self-witness of God, the representation of His truth, and therefore of the truth in which He knows Himself, in the form of creaturely objectivity and therefore in a form which is adapted to our creaturely knowledge.
KARL BARTH
Church Dogmatics
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
The Humanity of God