"God Himself is the nearest to hand, as the absolutely simple must be, and at the same time the most distant, as the absolutely simple must also be. God Himself is the irresolvable and at the same time that which fills and embraces everything else. God Himself in His being for Himself is the one being which stands in need of nothing else and at the same time the one being by which every thing else came into being and exists. God Himself is the beginning in which everything begins, with which we must and can always begin with confidence and without need of excuse. And at the same time He is the end in which everything legitimately and necessarily ends, with which we must end with confidence and without need of excuse. God Himself is simple, so simple that in all His glory He can be near to the simplest perception and also laugh at the most profound or acute thinking so simple that He reduces everyone to silence, and then allows and requires everyone boldly to make Him the object of their thought and speech. He is so simple that to think and speak correctly of Him and to live correctly before Him does not in fact require any special human complexities or for that matter any special human simplicities, so that occasionally and according to our need He may permit and require both human complexity and human simplicity, and occasionally they may both be forbidden us..."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
ClergyChristian leadersAcademics from SwitzerlandChristian existentialistsTheologians from Switzerland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Barth
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"The name Jesus defines an historical occurence and marks the point where the unknown world cuts the known world . . .…"
"The Resurrection is the revelation: the disclosing of Jesus as the Christ, the appearing of God, and the apprehending…"
"The power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men. It must not be confounded wi…"
""The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highwa…"
"For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not yet have a heart."
"What expressions we used – in part taken over and in part newly invented! — above all, the famous 'wholly other' brea…"
"Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible."
"Faith is never identical with "piety" even if it were the purest and finest."
"Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace."
"Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo."