Karl Barth

Here are the thoughts of yet another significant theologian -- Swiss born Karl Barth. Many consider Barth to be the most inlfuential theologian since Thomas Aquinas. Here's a sampling of his thoughts:

[God] is not deaf, he listens; more than that, he acts. He does not act in the same way whether we pray or not. Prayer exerts an influence upon God's action, even upon his existence. That is what the word 'answer' means. ... The fact that God yields to man's petitions, changing his intentions in response to man's prayer, is not a sign of weakness. He himself, in the glory of his majesty and power, has so willed it.

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.

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.


Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God


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.

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

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.

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.