Barth: Miscellaneous

"The Church is not 'of the opinion', it does not have 'views', convictions, enthusiasms. It believes and confesses, that is it speaks and acts on the basis of the message based on God Himself in Christ."

"God thinks it not robbery to be divine, that is, He does not hold on to the booty like a robber, but God parts with Himself. Such is the glory of His Godhead, that He can be 'selfless', that He can actually forgive Himself something... It is is the depth of the Godhead, the greatness of His glory which is revealed in the very fact that it can also completely hide itself in its sheer opposite, in the profoundest rejection and the greatest misery of the creature... Reconciliation means God taking man's place."

"What then is the meaning of man's life? It means hurrying to the grave. Man is hurrying to meet his past. This past, in which there is no more furture, will be the final thing..."

"The atheist is not aware of what Godlessness is. Godlessness is existence in hell... God's judgment is righteeous--that is, it gives man what he wanted."

"Where men may receive and possess the Holy Spirit, it is of course a human experience and a human act. It is also a matter of the understanding and of the will and, I might indeed say, of the imagination. This too belongs to being a Christian. The whole man, right into the inmost regions of the so-called 'unconscious', is taken in claim. God's relation to man includes the whole of him."

"It [the Church] cannot be formed by men's hands; that is why the zealous, swift founding of Churches, such as took place in America and also sometimes in Holland, is doubtful business. Calvin liked to apply to the Church a military conception, that of la compagnie des fideles. A company usually comes together on the basis of a command and not on that of a free agreement."