Kenneth Oakes > Quotes

“He acknowledges Himself to be our God by creating and maintaining the distance by which we are separated from Him; he displays His mercy by inaugurating His krisis and bringing us under judgement. He guarantees our salvation by willing to be God and known as God—in Christ; He justifies us by justifying Himself” (41).”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“In this time, however, the prisoner can become the watchman. The resurrection “seals us in,” seals us into our humanity, our suffering, and our condition as creatures and as creatures of God. Yet the resurrection also provides an “exit,” not from being creatures, but a hope of release from our present suffering in a world of sin and death. It is an exit, but it an exit that we must wait for; it is a matter of hope.”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“The gospel requires faith. The resurrection, the power of God unto salvation, is so new and unexpected that it can only appear to us as a contradiction”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“Only what Abraham does not do, namely faith, is of any significance. A different way of seeing human value (one seen in both Genesis and Dostoevsky!) is presented to us. The Book of Life is concerned with precisely that: life! It is not concerned with debts owed but with the grace that might be given.”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“The law makes known the complete separation of God and humanity, which then allows us to see the positive relation between God and humanity. The law allows God to be known as God, as the unknown God who justifies the ungodly, as the God who quickens the dead and calls into being the things that are not, as the God from whom springs hope against hope.”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“Paul is a witness and so he points away from himself. All witnesses point away from themselves, their virtues, communities, ideas, and point towards God; “the activity of the community is related to the Gospel only in so far as it is no more than a crater formed by the explosion of a shell and seeks to be no more than a void in which the Gospel reveals itself” (36). There is an irreducible difference between God and the world, and part of the gospel is hearing and accepting this difference.”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“The truth of the resurrection, that humanity is limited, put into crisis, and established by God, is a known truth. The triviality of human existence, its questionable character, points beyond itself to a righteous God who pronounces a “No” over humanity (“you are not God”).”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“Jesus would not be the Christ if in the end figures like Abraham, Jeremiah, Socrates, Grünewald, Luther, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky remained at some historical distance from him or contrasted with him, and were not understood in their essential unity, simultaneity, and togetherness in him.”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“When we think of God apart from the resurrection we are actually thinking of the “No-God,” the Nicht-Gott. This No-God does not resurrect, does not redeem creation, does not claim to be God among the gods, and does not judge the unrighteousness and evil of humanity. The world’s protest against the No-God is entirely justified.”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans

“There is the impulse and the habit of assigning God a place, even the highest place, within our world. There is thinking that God might need something we can provide and that we and God are in a relationship that we can control. Equally, we think we can communicate directly, by sight, and we think we can draw God unto ourselves. We can even storm the supra-sensible, transcendent realm and place God as some highest thing or value. Such is our righteousness. This logic of inversion is clearest in the statement that “this secret identification of ourselves with God carries with it our isolation from him” (45).”
― Kenneth Oakes, Reading Karl Barth: A Companion to Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans