Karl Barth Quotes

Swiss Protestant theologian (1886-1968)

Karl Barth (/bɑrt/; 10 May 1886 – 10 December 1968) was a Swiss Reformed pastor, and one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the 20th century, a leader of what became known as the neo-orthodox movement. He was largely responsible for the Barmen Declaration, which was one of the founding documents of the Confessing Church opposed to Nazi policies.

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Alternative Names: Barth, Karl, 1886-1968

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

The center is not something which is under our control, but something that controls us.

Everyone who must contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously; and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices for the devil to have lost his game.

the older and younger Blumhardt and their friends. There would have been something significant to learn — as later developments prove — from the books of Friedrich Zündel, for example.

the irreconcilable antitheses of death and life, the world and the kingdom of heaven, and then again to see them both as one, before he can evaluate the concealed power of this unique spirit. For ‘this was a man and to be a man means to be a fighter’.

UNSETTLED QUESTIONS FOR THEOLOGY TODAY (1920)

The Resurrection is the revelation: the disclosing of Jesus as the Christ, the appearing of God, and the apprehending of God in Jesus. 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. In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it. And, precisely because it does not touch it, it touches it as its frontier — as the new world.

In the Credo the Church bows before that God Whom we did not seek and find — Who rather has sought and found us.

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

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

Jesus Christ, as He is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.

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.

the Church should be the place where a word reverberates right into the world.

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.

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.