Quote by Karl Barth
“[I]t is necessary to man to have a definite conception of God, … since he is man he can no more form other than a human conception of him. … [T]hese predicates are certainly without any objective validity; but … if he is to exist for me, he cannot appear otherwise than as he does appear to me, namely as a being with attributes analogous to human. … I cannot know whether God is something else in himself or for himself than he is for me; what he is to me is all that he is. For me, there lies in these predicates under which he exists for me, what he is in himself; his very nature; he is for me what he alone can ever be for me. The religious man finds perfect satisfaction in that which God is in relation to himself; of any other relation he knows nothing; for God is to him what he can alone be to man.”
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Karl Barth was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom critics hold to be among the most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century.
Beginning with his experience as a pastor, he rejected his training in the predominant liberal theology typical of 19th-century Protestantism. Instead he embarked on a new theological path initially called dialectical theology, due to its stress on the paradoxical nature of divine truth (e.g., God's relationship to humanity embodies both grace and judgment). Other critics have referred to Barth as the father of neo-orthodoxy -- a term emphatically rejected by Barth himself. The most accurate description of his work might be "a theology of the Word." Barth's theological thought emphasized the sovereignty of God, particularly through his innovative doctrine of election.
Barth tries to recover the Doctrine of the Trinity in theology from its putative loss in liberalism. His argument follows from the idea that God is the object of God's own self-knowledge, and revelation in the Bible means the self-unveiling to humanity of the God who cannot be discovered by humanity simply through its own efforts.