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I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.

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
Take
Literally
Seriously
Bible

More quotes by 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 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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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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He [Jesus Christ] is the Master of all as the Servant of all.
Karl Barth
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Abortion is 'the great modern sin.
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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We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the world war, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.
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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Sin is not confined to the evil things we do. It is the evil within us, the evil which we are.
Karl Barth
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Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so?
Karl Barth
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Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it.
Karl Barth
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God listens to Bach while the angels listen to Mozart.
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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The theologian who labours without joy is not a theologian at all.
Karl Barth
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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.
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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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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There will be no song on our lips if there be no anguish in our hearts.
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 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