Inspirational Quotes by Karl Barth
“[T]here is no distinction between the predicates of the divine and human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between the divine and human subject … [T]he predicates are not accidents, but express the essence of the subject … [T]he essence of religion … conceives and affirms a profoundly human relation as divine relations[.]”
“Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings, - a dialogue of man with himself, with his heart. … [I]n prayer, man speaks undisguisedly of what weighs upon him, which affects him closely; he makes his heart objective; … Concentration … is the condition of prayer; … prayer is itself concentration, - the dismissal of all distracting ideas, of all disturbing influences from without, … in order to have relation only with one's own being. Only a trusting, open, hearty, fervent prayer is said to help; but this help lies in the prayer itself.”
topics: a-prayer-to
“The clearest, most irrefragable proof that man in religion contemplates himself as the object of the Divine Being … is … love … , the … central point of religion. God, for the sake of man, empties himself of his Godhead, lays aside his Godhead. … How can the worth of man be more strongly expressed than when God, for man's sake, becomes a man, when man is the end, the object of the divine love? The love of God to man is an essential condition of the Divine Being … . Here lies the ultimate emphasis, the fundamental feeling of religion. The love of God makes me loving; … But when I love and worship the love with which God loves man, do I not love man … ? [I]f God loves man, man is the heart of God … [I]s not the content of the divine nature, the human nature? … [T]he love of God … - the … central point of religion – [is] the love of man to himself.”
topics: love
“Belief in Providence is belief in a power to which all things stand at command to be used according to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power of reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature; … it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into existence out of nothing. … [T]he only proof of Providence is miracle. … [M]iracle … implies … that the miracle worker is the same as he who brought forth all things by his mere will – God the Creator.”
topics: providence
“[A] merely personal God is an abstract God; but so he ought to be – that is involved in the idea of him; for he is nothing else than the personal nature of man positing himself out of all connection with the world, making itself free from all dependence on nature.”
topics: ourselves-abstracted
“The religious man renounces the joys of this world, but only that he may win in return the joys of heaven; … and the joys of heaven are the same as those of earth, only that they are freed from the limits and contrarieties of this life. Religion thus arrives, though by a circuit, at the very goal, the goal of joy, towards which the natural man hastens in a direct line. To live in images or symbols is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices the thing itself to the image.”
“[E]very understanding which I posit as different from my own, is only a position of my own understanding, i.e. an idea of my own, a conception which falls within my power of thought, and thus expressed my understanding. … What I think of as united, I unite; what I think of as distinct, I distinguish; … [M]y understanding or my imagination is itself the power of uniting … ; understanding is only the understanding which exists in man[.]”
topics: our-creations
“[Faith] makes salvation dependent on itself, not on the fulfilment of common human duties. … [I]nwardly morality is subordinate to faith, so it must also be outwardly, practically … sacrificed to faith. … [A]ctions which are morally bad, but which according to faith are laudable, because they have in view the advantage of faith. … Hence faith absolves … everything; … the highest commandment therefore is: Believe!”
“That he is, he has to thank Nature; that he is man, he has to thank man; spiritually as well as physically he can achieve nothing without his fellow-man. Four hands can do more than two, but also four eyes can see more than two. … In isolation human power is limited, in combination it is infinite. The knowledge of a single man is limited, but reason, science, is unlimited, for it is a common act of mankind; … the scientific genius of a particular age comprehends in itself the thinking powers of the preceding age[.]”
topics: one-each-others-shoulders
“We consume the air and we are consumed by it; we enjoy and are enjoyed.”
topics: all-a-part
“[T]he understanding or the reason is the necessary being. … [I]f there were no reason, no consciousness, all would be nothing; existence would be equivalent to non-existence. Consciousness first founds the distinction between existence and non-existence. In consciousness is first revealed the value of existence, the value of nature.”
topics: consciousness
“Anyone who does not want communism-and none of us do-should take socialism seriously.”
“The demand that the Bible should be read and understood and expounded historically is, therefore, obviously justified and can never be taken too seriously. The Bible itself posits this demand: even where it appeals expressly to divine commissionings and promptings, in its actual composition it is everywhere a human word, and this human word is obviously intended to be taken seriously and read and understood and expounded as such. To do anything else would be to miss the reality of the Bible and therefore the Bible itself as the witness of revelation. The demand for a "historical" understanding of the Bible necessarily means, in content, that we have to take it for what it undoubtedly is and is meant to be: the human speech uttered by specific men at specific times in a specific situation, in a specific language and with a specific intention. It means that the understanding of it has honestly and unreservedly been one which is guided by all these consideration. If the word "historical" is a modern word, the thing itself was not really invented in modern times. And if the more exact definition of what is "historical" in this sense is liable to change and has actually changed at times, it is still quite clear that when and wherever the Bible has been really read and expounded, in this sense it has been read "historically" and not unhistorically, i.e., its concrete humanity has not been ignored. To the extent that it has been ignored, it has not been read at all. We have, therefore, not only no cause to retract from this demand, but every cause to accept it strictly on theological grounds. (§19.1, p. 464)”
“Theology must have the character of a living procession.”
“It is undoubtedly the case (and considerations advanced in the first sub-section have prepared us for this conclusion) that the election does in some sense denote the basis of all the relationships between God and man, between God in His very earliest movement towards man and man in his very earliest determination by this divine movement. it is in the decision in favour of this movement, in God’s self-determination and the resultant determination of man, in the basic relationship which is enclosed and fulfilled within Himself, that God is who He is.”
“Durch das Leid hindurch, nicht am Leid vorbei, geht der Weg zur Freude.”
“I regard anticommunism as a matter of principle an evil even greater than communism itself.”
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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.