Dogmatics in Outline Quotes

“The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary”, means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus , his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline: Essential Christian Theology from the Twentieth Century's Greatest Theologian

“Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“God has not the slightest need for our proofs.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“the Church should be the place where a word reverberates right into the world.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“political correctness jeopardizes more than it should the human capacity to speak the truth,”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“Christendom and the theological world were always ill-advised in thinking it their duty for some reason or other, either of enthusiasm or of theological conception, to pitch their tents in opposition to reason.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“Exactly halfway between exegesis and practical theology stands dogmatics,”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“No act of man can claim to be more than an attempt, not even science.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“Everyone who must contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously; and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices for the devil to have lost his game.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“The greatest hindrance to faith is again and again just the pride and anxiety of our human hearts.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“Faith is rather a freedom, a permission. It is permitted to be so—that the believer in God’s Word may hold on to this Word in everything, in spite of all that contradicts it.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“We ourselves shall never be true to ourselves. Our human path is, as such, a path from one disloyalty to another; and it is the same with the ways of the gods of this world. They do not keep what they promise. So with them there is never any real peace and clarity. In God alone is there faithfulness, and faith is the trust that we may hold to Him, to His promise and to His guidance. To hold to God is to rely on the fact that God is there for me, and to live in this certainty. This is the promise God gives us: I am there for you.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“I believe” means “I trust”. No more must I dream of trusting in myself, I no longer need to justify myself, to excuse myself, to attempt to save and preserve myself. This most profound effort of man to trust to himself, to see himself as in the right, has become pointless. I believe—not in myself—I believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. So also trust in any sort of authorities, who might offer themselves to me as trustworthy, as an anchor which I ought to hold on to, has become frail and superfluous.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“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.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“Heaven is the creation inconceivable to man; earth is the creation conceivable to him.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“Creation is grace: a statement at which we should like best to pause in reverence, fear and gratitude. God does not grudge the existence of the reality distinct from Himself; He does not grudge it its own reality, nature and freedom.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“I repeat that dogmatics is not a thing which has fallen from Heaven to earth. And if someone were to say that it would be wonderful if there were such an absolute dogmatics fallen from Heaven, the only possible answer would be: ‘Yes, if we were angels.’ But since by God’s will we are not, it will be good for us to have just a human and earthly dogmatics. The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time. And although it is a gift of God, He has set it right amid earthly and human circumstances, and to that fact corresponds absolutely everything that happens in the Church. The Christian Church lives on earth and it lives in history, with the lofty good entrusted to it by God. In the possession and administration of this lofty good it passes on its way through history, in strength and in weakness, in faithfulness and in unfaithfulness, in obedience and in disobedience, in understanding and in misunderstanding of what is said to it.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“The area of the Church stands in the world, as outwardly the Church stands in the village or in a city, beside the school, the cinema and the railway station. The Church’s language cannot aim at being an end in itself. It must be made clear that the Church exists for the sake of the world, that the light is shining in the darkness.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation,”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“In dogmatics our question is: What are we to think and say?”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline