Quotes from Karl Barth

God's love toward us commends itself in this, that Christ died for us while we were still weak, still sinners, still godless, still enemies. It has therefore not waited for us, but has come to meet us and gone before us.

In virtue of the name of Pontius Pilate being connected with Him, the life and passion of Jesus Christ is an event in the same world history in which our life also takes place.

He reconciles them with God through His death. That means that in His own death He makes their peace with God--before they themselves have decided for this peace and quite apart from that decision. In believing, they are only conforming to the decision about them that has already been made in Him.

Durch das Leid hindurch, nicht am Leid vorbei, geht der Weg zur Freude.

I regard anticommunism as a matter of principle an evil even greater than communism itself.

No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.

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.

Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.

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.

God listens to Bach while the angels listen to Mozart.

Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo.

When the frontier between God and man, the last inexorable barrier and obstacle, is not closed, the barrier between what is normal and what is perverse is opened.