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A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.

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
Activity
Free
Limit
Determine
Limits

More quotes by Karl Barth

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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
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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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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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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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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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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.
Karl Barth
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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.
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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There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology.
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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Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation.
Karl Barth
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The Devil may also make use of morality.
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
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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
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No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.
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 go together like heaven and earth.
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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Where dogmatics exists at all, it exists only with the will to be a Church dogmatics, a dogmatics of the ecumenical Church.
Karl Barth