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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
Free
Limit
Determine
Limits
Activity

More quotes by Karl Barth

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Abortion is 'the great modern sin.
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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In dogmatics our question is: What are we to think and say?
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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Where dogmatics exists at all, it exists only with the will to be a Church dogmatics, a dogmatics of the ecumenical Church.
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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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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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
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I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.
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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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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When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers.
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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We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard.
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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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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What God chooses for us children of men is always the best.
Karl Barth
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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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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 Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time.
Karl Barth