Barth Quotes 1
Only when grace is recognized to be incomprehensible is it grace.
The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather it sets a question-mark against all truths.
God is the unknown God, and, precisely because He is unknown, He bestows life and breath and all things. Therefore the power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men. It must not be confounded with any high, exalted force, known or knowable.
The activity of the community is related to the Gospel only in so far as it is no more than a crater formed by the explosion of a shell and seeks to be no more than a void in which the Gospel reveals itself.
If men must have their religious needs satisfied, if they must surround themselves with comfortable illusions about their knowledge of God and particularly about their union with Him, -well, the world penetrates far deeper into such matters than does a Christianity which misunderstands itself, and of such a 'gospel' we have good cause to be ashamed.
The Gospel of salvation can only be believed in; it is a matter for faith only. It demands choice. This is its seriousness. To him that is not sufficiently mature to accept a contradiction and to rest in it, it becomes a scandal-to him that is unable to escape the necessity of contradiction, it becomes a matter for faith.
Faith is awe in the precense of the divine incognito.
There is no man who ought not to believe or who cannot believe. Neither the Jew nor the Greek is disenfranchised from the Gospel. By setting a question-mark against the whole course of this world and its inevitability, the Gospel directly concerns every man.
Life moves on its course in its vast uncertainty and we move with it, even though we do not see the great question-mark that is set against us.
It is, in fact, always God against whom we are thrust. Even the unbeliever encounters God, but he does not penetrate through to the truth of God that is hidden from him, and so he is broken to pieces on God, as Pharaoh was.
Our well-regulated, pleasureable life longs for some hours of devotion, some prolongation into infinity. And so, when we set God upon the throne of the world, we mean by God ourselves.
When we rebel, we are in rebellion not against what is foreign to us but against that which is most intimately ours, not against what is removed from us but against that which lies at our hearts.
The insecurity of our whole existence, the vanity and utter questionableness of all that is and of what we are lie as in a text-book open before us.
Fugitive is the soul in this world and soulless is the world, when men do not find themselves within the sphere of the knowledge of the unknown God.
That God is not known as God is due, not merely to some error of thought or to some gap in experience, but to a fundamentally wrong attitude to life.
The enterprise of setting up the 'No-God' is avenged by its success.
When God has been deprived of His glory, men are also deprived of theirs.
Faith is the ineffable reality of God ... clarity of sight is no system, no discovery of research, but the eternal ground of perception.
God alone is the merchant who can pay in the currency of eternity. He alone can make a valuation which is eternally valid.
Disturbance of soul, restless murmuring, cavil, and protest: such may be sign-posts to the peace of God which passeth all understanding.
What is pleasing to God comes into being when all human righteousness is gone, irretrievably gone, when men are uncertain and lost, when they have abandoned all ethical and religious illusions, and when they have renounced every hope in this world and in this heaven.
God knows what we do not know. Hence emerges the incomprehensible possibility that lawless men are brought to judgment, and yet pass through it into freedom.
He sets all men of all ranks always under one threat and under one promise.
In His utter strangeness God wills to make Himself known and can make Himself known.
Apart from this, thy labour is but THY labour: thy righteousness is robbery, for who does not steal? thy purity is adultery, for who is rid of sexuality? thy piety is arrogance, for where is the piety which does not approach God too nearly? Is there any advantage in distinguishing before the judgement seat of God a higher and a lower form of worldliness?
If God be not for thee, all is against thee.
For when God does not find the worth which He values and for which He renders, mere human advantages have no particular significance.
The heroes of God without God may be compared to a traveller who remains standing under the sign-post, instead of moving in the direction to which it directs him. The sign-post has become meaningless; and their faith and prayers and Biblical outlook are meaningless also.
God passes by all that is concrete, visible, and outward, for He judges in secret according to His justice.
Barth, Karl. The Epistle to the Romans.
Taken from chapters 1 and 2.
The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather it sets a question-mark against all truths.
God is the unknown God, and, precisely because He is unknown, He bestows life and breath and all things. Therefore the power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men. It must not be confounded with any high, exalted force, known or knowable.
The activity of the community is related to the Gospel only in so far as it is no more than a crater formed by the explosion of a shell and seeks to be no more than a void in which the Gospel reveals itself.
If men must have their religious needs satisfied, if they must surround themselves with comfortable illusions about their knowledge of God and particularly about their union with Him, -well, the world penetrates far deeper into such matters than does a Christianity which misunderstands itself, and of such a 'gospel' we have good cause to be ashamed.
The Gospel of salvation can only be believed in; it is a matter for faith only. It demands choice. This is its seriousness. To him that is not sufficiently mature to accept a contradiction and to rest in it, it becomes a scandal-to him that is unable to escape the necessity of contradiction, it becomes a matter for faith.
Faith is awe in the precense of the divine incognito.
There is no man who ought not to believe or who cannot believe. Neither the Jew nor the Greek is disenfranchised from the Gospel. By setting a question-mark against the whole course of this world and its inevitability, the Gospel directly concerns every man.
Life moves on its course in its vast uncertainty and we move with it, even though we do not see the great question-mark that is set against us.
It is, in fact, always God against whom we are thrust. Even the unbeliever encounters God, but he does not penetrate through to the truth of God that is hidden from him, and so he is broken to pieces on God, as Pharaoh was.
Our well-regulated, pleasureable life longs for some hours of devotion, some prolongation into infinity. And so, when we set God upon the throne of the world, we mean by God ourselves.
When we rebel, we are in rebellion not against what is foreign to us but against that which is most intimately ours, not against what is removed from us but against that which lies at our hearts.
The insecurity of our whole existence, the vanity and utter questionableness of all that is and of what we are lie as in a text-book open before us.
Fugitive is the soul in this world and soulless is the world, when men do not find themselves within the sphere of the knowledge of the unknown God.
That God is not known as God is due, not merely to some error of thought or to some gap in experience, but to a fundamentally wrong attitude to life.
The enterprise of setting up the 'No-God' is avenged by its success.
When God has been deprived of His glory, men are also deprived of theirs.
Faith is the ineffable reality of God ... clarity of sight is no system, no discovery of research, but the eternal ground of perception.
God alone is the merchant who can pay in the currency of eternity. He alone can make a valuation which is eternally valid.
Disturbance of soul, restless murmuring, cavil, and protest: such may be sign-posts to the peace of God which passeth all understanding.
What is pleasing to God comes into being when all human righteousness is gone, irretrievably gone, when men are uncertain and lost, when they have abandoned all ethical and religious illusions, and when they have renounced every hope in this world and in this heaven.
God knows what we do not know. Hence emerges the incomprehensible possibility that lawless men are brought to judgment, and yet pass through it into freedom.
He sets all men of all ranks always under one threat and under one promise.
In His utter strangeness God wills to make Himself known and can make Himself known.
Apart from this, thy labour is but THY labour: thy righteousness is robbery, for who does not steal? thy purity is adultery, for who is rid of sexuality? thy piety is arrogance, for where is the piety which does not approach God too nearly? Is there any advantage in distinguishing before the judgement seat of God a higher and a lower form of worldliness?
If God be not for thee, all is against thee.
For when God does not find the worth which He values and for which He renders, mere human advantages have no particular significance.
The heroes of God without God may be compared to a traveller who remains standing under the sign-post, instead of moving in the direction to which it directs him. The sign-post has become meaningless; and their faith and prayers and Biblical outlook are meaningless also.
God passes by all that is concrete, visible, and outward, for He judges in secret according to His justice.
Barth, Karl. The Epistle to the Romans.
Taken from chapters 1 and 2.
4 Comments:
We all work so hard to formulate our theology and sadly, after we have done so, most of us quit walking by faith and instead by sight, by the things we have convinced ourselves that we know. This post reminds me that I know very little but that I am known by God through Jesus and held safely in the hand of God by a force that I can't even comprehend.
Pam
thanks!
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