Quote by Karl Barth
“The general premiss of … belief is: man of himself can know nothing of God; all his knowledge is merely vain, earthly, human. … God is known only by himself. Thus we know nothing of God; for revelation is the word of God … [I]n revelation man … places revelation in opposition to human knowledge … ; here reason must hold its peace. But nevertheless the divine revelation is determined by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels, but to men; hence he uses human speech and human conceptions. … God is … free in will; … but he is not free as to the understanding; he cannot reveal to man whatever he will, but only what is adapted to man, … [W]hat God thinks in relation to man is determined by the idea of man – it has arisen out of reflection on human nature. [H]e thinks of himself, not with his own thinking power, but with man's. … That which comes from God to man, comes to man only from man in God, … only from the ideal nature of man to the phenomenal man, from the species to the individual. Thus, between the divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature, there is no other than an illusory distinction; … so in revelation man goes out of himself, in order, by a circuitous path, to return to himself!”
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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.