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 “cli...”

“heaven and earth, nature and man, comedy and tragedy, … the Virgin Mary and the demons...Mozart simply contains and includes all this within his music in perfect harmony. This harmony is not a matt...”

“The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall b...”

“For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not yet have a heart.”

“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 qual...”

“Faith is never identical with piety even if it were the purest and finest.”

“Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.”

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

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

“Jesus Christus und die soziale Bewegung, lecture delivered at Safenwil December 17, 1911, as translated in Karl Barth and Radical Politics (Westminster Press: 1976)”

“Jesus is the movement for social justice, and the movement for social justice is Jesus in the present.”

“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 th...”

“Even a child can see that an industrial enterprise would have neither net profits nor profits in general without the participation of the worker. Why does he receive only a wage from the entreprene...”

“In conclusion, a word about your tired expression that there is a difference between theory and praxis. ... Thereby you want to say that praxis should be as unencumbered as possible by theory. Comi...”

“The Gospel is not a religious message to inform mankind of their divinity or to tell them how they may become divine. The Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men.”

“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 pl...”

“The name Jesus defines an historical occurence and marks the point where the unknown world cuts the known world . . . as Christ Jesus is the plane which lies beyond our comprehension. The plane whi...”

“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 g...”

“The power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men. It must not be confounded with any high, exalted, force, known or knowable.”

“We know that God is He whom we do not know, and that our ignorance is precisely the problem and the source of our knowledge. The Epistle to the Romans is a revelation of the unknown God; God choose...”