Karl Barth quotes

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. (Karl Barth)
The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself. View quote
Karl Barth
Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace. View quote
Karl Barth
In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians. View quote
Karl Barth
Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life. View quote
Karl Barth
Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. View quote
Karl Barth
Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is Himself the way. View quote
Karl Barth
The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise. View quote
Karl Barth
Where dogmatics exists at all, it exists only with the will to be a Church dogmatics, a dogmatics of the ecumenical Church. View quote
Karl Barth
Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it. View quote
Karl Barth
For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not yet have a heart. (Karl Barth)
When I come before these men I do not have to explain that we are all sinners. They have committed every sin there is. All I have to tell them is that I, too, am a sinner. View quote
Karl Barth
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. View quote
Karl Barth
Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo. View quote
Karl Barth
To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world. View quote
Karl Barth
Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible. View quote
Karl Barth
Prayer without study would be empty. Study without prayer would be blind. View quote
Karl Barth
No one can be saved - in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved - in virtue of what God can do. View quote
Karl Barth
The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that. View quote
Karl Barth
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. View quote
Karl Barth
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 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. View quote
Karl Barth
While it is beyond our comprehension that eternity should meet us in time, yet it is true because in Jesus Christ eternity has become time. View quote
Karl Barth
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. View quote
Karl Barth
I do not preach universal salvation, what I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all men at the Judgment. View quote
Karl Barth