Quote

True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God.

Karl Barth

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Karl Barth
Age: 82 †
Born: 1886
Born: May 10
Died: 1968
Died: December 10
Pastor
Theologian
University Teacher
Basle
Actual
Determination
Acting
True
Men
Claiming
Theology

More quotes by Karl Barth

Image
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
Image
The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time.
Karl Barth
Image
Mozart creates music from a mysterious center, and so knows the limits to the right and the left, above and below. He maintains moderation.
Karl Barth
Image
There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology.
Karl Barth
Image
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
Image
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.
Karl Barth
Image
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
Image
If I have a system it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called 'the infinite qualitative distinction' between time and eternity
Karl Barth
Image
Humanity in its basic form is co-humanity.
Karl Barth
Image
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
Image
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.
Karl Barth
Image
No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.
Karl Barth
Image
When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers.
Karl Barth
Image
Sin is not confined to the evil things we do. It is the evil within us, the evil which we are.
Karl Barth
Image
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
Image
The statement that 'God is dead' comes from Nietzsche and has recently been trumpeted abroad by some German and American theologians. But the good Lord has not died of this He who dwells in the heaven laughs at them.
Karl Barth
Image
I have read many books, but the Bible reads me.
Karl Barth
Image
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
Image
The enterprise of Adolf Hitler, with all its clatter and fireworks, and all its cunning and dynamic energy, is the enterprise of an evil spirit, which is apparently allowed its freedom for a time in order to test our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Karl Barth
Image
The Devil may also make use of morality.
Karl Barth