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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.

Karl Barth

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Karl Barth
Age: 82 †
Born: 1886
Born: May 10
Died: 1968
Died: December 10
Pastor
Theologian
University Teacher
Basle
Faces
Speaking
Without
Boring
Way
Field
Labor
Sulky
Fields
Morose
Thoughts
Labors
Joy
Intolerable
Ways
Theologian

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Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation.
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We act unbelievingly and disobediently when, for whatever motive, we distort, falsify, or suppress the facts about our life in nature and history.
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No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.
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Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so?
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The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time.
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Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.
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There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology.
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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.
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As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give glory to God
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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.
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Radically and basically, all sin is simply ingratitude.
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A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.
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Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
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Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure.
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When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers.
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In Jesus, God wills to be true God not only in the height but also in the depth - in the depth of human creatureliness, sinfulness and mortality.
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Mozart's music is free of all exaggeration, of all sharp breaks and contradictions. The sun shines but does not blind, does not burn or consume. Heaven arches over the earth, but it does not weigh it down, it does not crush or devour it.
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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.
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A free theologian works in communication with other theologians...He waits for them and asks them to wait for him. Our sadly lacking yet indispensable theological co-operation depends directly or indirectly on whether or not we are wiling to wait for one another, perhaps lamenting, yet smiling with tears in our eyes.
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Mozart's music is an invitation to the listener to venture just a little out of the sense of his own subjectivity.
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