Karl Barth
Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.Collection: God
Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.Collection: Thankful
Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.Collection: Religion
It is always the case that when the Christian looks back, he is looking at the forgiveness of sins.Collection: Forgiveness
Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.
Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.
It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.
Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.
Faith is never identical with piety.
Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo.
Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.
In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.
What God chooses for us children of men is always the best.
No one can be saved - in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved - in virtue of what God can do.
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.
Jews have God's promise and if we Christians have it, too, then it is only as those chosen with them, as guests in their house, that we are new wood grafted onto their tree.
The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.
Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.
To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.Collection: Prayer
I have read many books, but the Bible reads me.Collection: Book
When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers.Collection: Brother
Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Gratitude evokes grace like the voice and echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.Collection: Faith
Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.Collection: Newspapers
What happened on that day (of Easter) became, was and remained the centre around which everything else moves. For everything lasts its time, but the love of God - which was at work and was expressed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead - lasts forever. Because this event took place, there is no reason to despair, and even when we read the newspaper with all its confusing and frightening news, there is every reason to hope.Collection: Jesus
We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard.Collection: Eye
Prayer without study would be empty. Study without prayer would be blind.Collection: Prayer
Faith is not an art. Faith is not an achievement. Faith is not a good work of which some may boast while others can excuse themselves with a shrug of the shoulders for not being capable of it. It is a decisive insight of faith itself that all of us are incapable of faith in ourselves, whether we think of its preparation, beginning, continuation, or completion.Collection: Art
When we are at our wits' end for an answer, then the Holy Spirit can give us an answer. But how can He give us an answer when we are still well supplied with all sorts of answers of our own?Collection: Giving
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so?Collection: Jesus
Radically and basically, all sin is simply ingratitude.Collection: Sin
Grace creates liberated laughter. The grace of God...is beautiful, and it radiates joy and awakens humor.Collection: Beautiful
The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.Collection: Littles
On the basis of the eternal will of God we have to think of EVERY HUMAN BEING, even the oddest, most villainous or miserable, as one to whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God is Father; and we have to deal with him on this assumption. If the other person knows that already, then we have to strengthen him in the knowledge. If he does no know it yet or no longer knows it, our business is to transmit this knowledge to him.Collection: Brother
Theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have repeatedly been congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the Church.Collection: Church
Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life.Collection: Christian
All sin has its being and origin in the fact that man wants to be his own judge. And in wanting to be that, and thinking and acting accordingly, he and his whole world is in conflict with God. It is an unreconciled world, and therefore a suffering world, a world given up to destruction.Collection: Men
One drop of eternity is of greater weight than a vast ocean of finite things.Collection: Powerful
The theologian who labours without joy is not a theologian at all.Collection: Joy
Our position is such that we can be rescued from eternal death and translated into life only by total and unceasing substitution, the substitution which God Himself undertakes on our behalf.Collection: Behalf
There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis , because it guarantees complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost a canonical status in Protestant theology. But now, we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Happiness
For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not yet have a heart.Collection: Heart
With an ear open to your musical dialectic, one can be young and become old, can work and rest, be content and sad: in short, one can live.Collection: Musical
The statement that 'God is dead' comes from Nietzsche and has recently been trumpeted abroad by some German and American theologians. But the good Lord has not died of this; He who dwells in the heaven laughs at them.Collection: Atheist
Humor is the opposite of all self-admiration and self-praise.Collection: Self
A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.Collection: Limits
'joy' in Phillippians is a defiant 'Nevertheless!' that Paul sets like a full stop against the Philippians' anxiety.Collection: Joy
No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.Collection: Men
I haven't even read everything I wrote.Collection: Havens
What is offered to man's apprehension in any specific revelation of Christ is the living God himself.Collection: Christian