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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

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
Speak
Ministers
Cannot
Recognition
Give
Obligation
Human
Recognize
Humans
However
Giving
Glory
Therefore
Ought
Inability

More quotes by Karl Barth

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The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise.
Karl Barth
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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.
Karl Barth
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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.
Karl Barth
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God listens to Bach while the angels listen to Mozart.
Karl Barth
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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.
Karl Barth
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To be a Christian and to pray are one and the same thing it is a matter that cannot be left to our caprice. It is a need, a kind of breathing necessary to life.
Karl Barth
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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.
Karl Barth
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There will be no song on our lips if there be no anguish in our hearts.
Karl Barth
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Grace creates liberated laughter. The grace of God...is beautiful, and it radiates joy and awakens humor.
Karl Barth
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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.
Karl Barth
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Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure.
Karl Barth
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We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard.
Karl Barth
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Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us.
Karl Barth
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The Devil may also make use of morality.
Karl Barth
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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.
Karl Barth
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What is offered to man's apprehension in any specific revelation of Christ is the living God himself.
Karl Barth
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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.
Karl Barth
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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.
Karl Barth
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Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Gratitude evokes grace like the voice and echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.
Karl Barth
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'joy' in Phillippians is a defiant 'Nevertheless!' that Paul sets like a full stop against the Philippians' anxiety.
Karl Barth