Quotes by Karl Barth

“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 climbi...”

“I haven't even read everything I wrote.”

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

“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.”

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

“The church speaks finally in that it prays for the world.”

“There does not exist any more a holy mountain or a holy city or holy land which can be marked on a map. The reason is not that Gods holiness in space has suddenly become unworthy of Him or has chan...”

“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 b...”

“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 t...”

“God wants man to be His creature. Furthermore, He wants him to be His PARTNER. There is a causa Dei in the world. God wants light, not darkness. He wants cosmos, not chaos. He wants peace, not diso...”

“God's high freedom in Jesus Christ is His freedom for LOVE. The divine capacity which operates and exhibits itself in that superiority and subordination is manifestly also God's capacity to bend do...”

“In His free grace, God is for man in every respect; He surrounds man from all sides. He is man's Lord who is before him, above him, after him, and thence also with him in history, the locus of man'...”

“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 ...”

“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 t...”

“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.”

“The demand that the Bible should be read and understood and expounded historically is, therefore, obviously justified and can never be taken too seriously. The Bible itself posits this demand: even...”

“There is no such thing as a special biblical hermeneutics. But we have to learn that hermeneutics which is alone and generally valid by means of the Bible as the witness of revelation. We therefore...”

“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...”

“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...”

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