Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Karl Barth

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

Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God, but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.

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

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

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

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

Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.

Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.

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.

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

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.

In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.

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

No one can be saved - in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved - in virtue of what God can do.

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

Faith is never identical with piety.

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.

Sin is not confined to the evil things we do. It is the evil within us, the evil which we are.

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

Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it.

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

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

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.

Radically and basically, all sin is simply ingratitude.

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

When we are at our wits' end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?

Grace and gratitude go together like heaven and earth.

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.

The angels laugh at old Karl. They laugh at him because he tries to grasp the truth about God in a book of Dogmatics. They laugh at the fact that volume follows volume, and each is thicker than the previous ones. As they laugh, they say to one another, ‘Look! Here he comes now with his little pushcart full of volumes of the Dogmatics!’—and they laugh about the persons who write so much about Karl Barth instead of writing about the things he is trying to write about. Truly, the angels laugh.

The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.

The Devil may also make use of morality.

We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard.

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

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

Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Gratitude evokes grace like the voice and echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.

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

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

All sin has its being and origin in the fact that man wants to be his own judge. And in wanting to be that, and thinking and acting accordingly, he and his whole world is in conflict with God. It is an unreconciled world, and therefore a suffering world, a world given up to destruction.

Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.

Let us hear what the Bible says and what we as Christians are called to hear together: By grace you have been saved.

We act unbelievingly and disobediently when, for whatever motive, we distort, falsify, or suppress the facts about our life in nature and history.

I don’t believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ, the reconciler of all

The resurrection of Jesus was like a boulder crashing into the pool of history.

The enterprise of Adolf Hitler, with all its clatter and fireworks, and all its cunning and dynamic energy, is the enterprise of an evil spirit, which is apparently allowed its freedom for a time in order to test our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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.

The term 'laity' is one of the worst in the vocabulary of religion and ought to be banished from the Christian conversation.

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

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.

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.

Man can certainly keep on lying... but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel... but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God.

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

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

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

The theologian who labors without joy is not a theologian at all. Sulky faces, morose thoughts and boring ways of speaking are intolerable in this field.

One drop of eternity is of greater weight than a vast ocean of finite things.

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so?

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