Haeberle Barth Quotes

We don't know what drives and sustains us, only that we are most miserably driven and, imperfectly, sustained. ~ John Barth

God has not the slightest need for our proofs. ~ Karl Barth

What a sentence, everything was wrong from the outset. ~ John Barth

Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation, ~ Karl Barth

Exactly halfway between exegesis and practical theology stands dogmatics, ~ Karl Barth

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. ~ John Barth

Not every boy thrown to the wolves becomes a hero. ~ John Barth

I have read many books, but the Bible reads me. ~ Karl Barth

Theology must have the character of a living procession. ~ Karl Barth

A man's most useful friend and fearsome foe is the poet. ~ John Barth

True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God. ~ Karl Barth

In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians. ~ Karl Barth

What is it with men," I said. "Always wanting to put things in my ass." They ~ Greg Barth

Peace on earth (Luke 2:14) is salvation for, not from, the world. ~ Markus Barth

A quite specific astonishment stands at the beginning of every theological perception, inquiry, and thought. ~ Karl Barth

I try things and fail at them all the time. It's called living with no regrets. ~ Christi Barth

I haven't even read everything I wrote. ~ Karl Barth

All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate. ~ John Barth

Those rituals of getting ready to write produce a kind of trance state. ~ John Barth

The enemy you flee is not exterior to yourself ~ John Barth

Political correctness jeopardizes more than it should the human capacity to speak the truth, ~ Karl Barth

The Christian Church does not exist in Heaven, but on earth and in time. ~ Karl Barth

I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally. ~ Karl Barth

God listens to Bach while the angels listen to Mozart. ~ Karl Barth

If you would learn a thing, straightway declare yourself a professor of it! ~ John Barth

Agape is related to Eros, as Mozart to Beethoven. How could they possibly be confused? ~ Karl Barth

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. ~ Karl Barth

You take ordinary things and turn them rainbow bright. It's what makes you so special. ~ Christi Barth

The Word ought to be exposed in the words ~ Karl Barth

When theology recognizes one thing properly, it mis-recognizes something else all the more thoroughly. ~ Karl Barth

A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity. ~ Karl Barth

That clever folk care less for what ye think than why ye think it. ~ John Barth

Loyalty in a free society depends upon the toleration of disloyalty. ~ Alan Barth

It is often pleasant to stone a martyr, no matter how much we may admire him. ~ John Barth

Man can certainly keep on lying (and does so), but he cannot make truth falsehood. ~ Karl Barth

Sin scorches us most after it comes under the scrutinizing light of God's forgiveness and not before ~ Karl Barth

Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn. ~ John Barth

Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. ~ Karl Barth

Intellectual discussion, after all, is the real joy of the winter of life, when other pleasures have flown, as it were. ~ John Barth

Mozart's music always sounds unburdened, effortless, and light. This is why it unburdens, releases, and liberates us. ~ Karl Barth

Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is Himself the way ~ Karl Barth

Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene. ~ John Barth

For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers. For Ambrose it is a place of fear and confusion. ~ John Barth

Others live for the lie of love; Echo lives for her lovely lies, loves for their livening. ~ John Barth

Radically and basically, all sin is simply ingratitude. ~ Karl Barth

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. ~ Karl Barth

On observing 1963 America for the first time, the author says that organization and standardization to a certain degree compete with divine providence. ~ Karl Barth

Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way? ~ John Barth

No one can become and remain a theologian unless he is compelled again and again to be astonished at himself. ~ Karl Barth

There was some simple, radical difference about him. He hoped it was genius, feared it was madness, devoted himself to amiability and inconspicuousness. ~ John Barth

Like an ox-cart driver in monsoon season or the skipper of a grounded ship, one must sometimes go forward by going back. ~ John Barth

For the millions that suffer unjustly, the Confessing Church does not yet have a heart. ~ Karl Barth

I have remarked elsewhere that I regard the Almighty as not a bad novelist, except that He is a realist. ~ John Barth

We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard. ~ Karl Barth

Abortion is 'the great modern sin. ~ Karl Barth

[Plot is] the gradual perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a new and complexified equilibrium. ~ John Barth

[T]he world is richer in associations than meanings . . . and it is the part of wisdom to distinguish between the two. ~ John Barth

Innocence is like youth,' he declared sadly, 'which is given to us only to expend and takes its very meaning from its loss. ~ John Barth

There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology. ~ Karl Barth

This is an exciting time. A new chapter in our history. ~ John Barth

Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it. ~ Karl Barth

There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis, because it guarantees a complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost canonical status in Protestant theology. But now we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical. ~ Karl Barth

Only in living by the effect of Christ's sacrifice and after its pattern can the saints find out and attempt to do 'what pleases the Lord ~ Markus Barth

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant ~ John Barth

Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes. ~ John Barth

Specificity of time and place drop away and one starts to think about the picture, as much as what it is of. ~ Uta Barth

Religion may be a private affair, but the woik and word of God are the reconciliation of the world with God, as it was performed in Jesus Christ. ~ Karl Barth

Humanity in its basic form is co-humanity. ~ Karl Barth

When you look at this mirror I hope you'll remember that there's always another way of seeing things: that's the beginning of wisdom. ~ John Barth

... beg Love's pardon for your want of faith. Helen chose you without reason because she loves you without cause; embrace her without question and watch your weather change. ~ John Barth

Tis e'er the lot of the innocent in the world, to fly to the wolf for succor from the lion. ~ John Barth

The Devil may also make use of morality. ~ Karl Barth

Choosing is existence. To the extent that you don't choose, you don't exist, ~ John Barth

More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations. ~ John Barth

Thou shalt make no image, no abstraction, including none of THE American, THE Swiss, THE German. ~ Karl Barth

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so? ~ Karl Barth

News is only the first rough draft of history. ~ Alan Barth

Let your repentance salt my shoe leather," I said presently, "and then, as I lately sheathed my blade of anger, so sheath you my blade of love. ~ John Barth

The author says that theologian operates with windows open to the interest of the world, but also with a skylight that allows full awareness of prayer. ~ Karl Barth

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life. ~ Karl Barth

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

The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself. ~ Karl Barth

Evangelical theology is modest theology, because it is determined to be so by its object, that is, by him who is its subject. ~ Karl Barth

Finally you begin to make your mistakes on the highest level-let's say the upper slopes of slippery Parnassus-and it's at that point you need coaching. ~ John Barth

Heaven is the creation inconceivable to man; earth is the creation conceivable to him. ~ Karl Barth

Drolls & dreamers that we are, we fancy that we can undo what we fancy we have done. ~ John Barth

Humor is the opposite of all self-admiration and self-praise. ~ Karl Barth

... you don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings ... serendipitously.
The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor ~ John Barth

I was a huge fan of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. ~ Jessica Barth

In sum I'm not what either parent or I had in mind. One hoped I'd be astonishing, forceful, triumphant - heroical in other words. One dead. I myself conventional. I turn out I. ~ John Barth

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art. ~ John Barth

Faith is never identical with piety. ~ Karl Barth

Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse? ~ John Barth

Scientific dogmatics must devote itself to the criticism and correction of Church proclamation and not just to a repetitive exposition of it. ~ Karl Barth

There's a great difficulty in making
choices if you have any imagination at all. Faced with such a multitude of desireable choices, no one choice
seems satisfactory for very long by comparison with the aggregate desirability of all the rest, though compared to any *one* of the others it would not be found inferior. All equally attractive but none finally inviting. ~ John Barth

If I have a system it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called 'the infinite qualitative distinction' between time and eternity ~ Karl Barth

Mozart creates music from a mysterious center, and so knows the limits to the right and the left, above and below. He maintains moderation. ~ Karl Barth

I don't see how anybody starts a novel without knowing how it's going to end. I usually make detailed outlines: how many chapters it will be and so forth. ~ John Barth

When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers. ~ Karl Barth

Where dogmatics exists at all, it exists only with the will to be a Church dogmatics, a dogmatics of the ecumenical Church. ~ Karl Barth