Quotes from Karl Barth

The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.

Faith is never identical with "piety" even if it were the purest and finest.

We must be clear that whatever we say of God in such human concepts can never be more than an indication of Him; no such concept can really conceive the nature of God. God is inconceivable.

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.

The Resurrection is the emergence of the necessity of giving glory to God: the reckoning with what is unknown and unobservable in Jesus, the recognition of Him as Paradox, Victor and Primal History.

At bottom, knowledge of God in faith is always this indirect knowledge of God, knowledge of God in His works, and in these particular works in the determining and using of certain creaturely realities to bear witness to the divine objectivity. What distinguishes faith from unbelief, erroneous faith and superstition is that it is content with this indirect knowledge of God.

There is no way from us to God -- not even via negativa not even a via dialectica nor paradoxa. The god who stood at the end of some human way -- even of this way -- would not be God.

Jesus is the movement for social justice, and the movement for social justice is Jesus in the present.

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

It is always the case that when the Christian looks back, he is looking at the forgiveness of sins.

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.

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.