We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the world war, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.
As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give glory to God
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the duality of our obligation to speak about God and our inherent limitations in fully understanding or articulating divine concepts.
Karl Barth's quote reflects on the tension between the responsibility of ministers to communicate the divine message and the inherent limitations of human language and understanding. He acknowledges that while there is an obligation to speak about God, we must recognize our inability to fully comprehend or express the divine nature. This recognition itself becomes a form of honoring God, as it leads to humility and reverence in the face of the divine mystery.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
A minister might use this quote during a sermon to illustrate the limits of human understanding of the divine.
More from Karl Barth
All quotes →When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers.
Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.
That the zeal for God's honor is also a dangerous passion, that the Christian must bring with him the courage to swim against the tide instead of with it... accept a good deal of loneliness, will perhaps be nowhere so clear and palpable as in the church, where he would so much like things to be different. Yet he cannot and he will not refuse to take this risk and pay this price... he belongs where the reformation of the church is underway or will again be underway.
In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.
Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life.
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With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor
It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible. Instead of rejoicing in this glorious "impossible" which gives meaning and dignity to our lives, we try to domesticate God, to make his might actions comprehensible to our finite minds.
Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what tomorrow has in store?
If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving. And, after all, one can give freedom only by setting someone free.
The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.