Karl Barth
Karl Barth
Karl BarthMay 10, 1886 – December 10, 1968) was a Swiss Reformed theologian who is often regarded as the greatest Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. Pope Pius XII called him the most important Christian theologian since St. Thomas Aquinas. His influence expanded well beyond the academic realm to mainstream culture, leading him to be featured on the cover of Time on April 20, 1962...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionReligious Author
Date of Birth10 May 1886
CountrySwitzerland
No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.
What expressions we used - in part taken over and in part newly invented! above all, the famous 'wholly other' breaking in upon us 'perpendicularly from above,' the not less famous 'infinite qualitative distinction' between God and man, the vacuum, the mathematical point, and the tangent in which alone they must meet.
Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.
The Spirit bears witness. Ecstasy and enlightenment, inspiration and intuition are not necessary. Happy is the man who is worthy of these; but woe unto us if we wait for such experiences; woe unto us if we do not perceive that these things are of secondary importance.
When the frontier between God and man, the last inexorable barrier and obstacle, is not closed, the barrier between what is normal and what is perverse is opened.
What God chooses for us children of men is always the best.
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.
What is offered to man's apprehension in any specific revelation of Christ is the living God himself.
The relation of this God with this man; the relation of this man with this God--this is the only theme of the Bible and of philosophy.
True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God.
I had to show that the Bible dealt with an encounter between God and Man. I thought only of the apartness of God. What I had to learn after that was the togetherness of Man and God a union of two totally different kinds of beings.
Man can certainly keep on lying (and does so), but he cannot make truth falsehood.
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.
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.