Barth Quotes

“Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her...and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.”
― John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse

“There are few poets today who can equal, in their esthetic exploitation of language, in their depth of commitment to their medium, in their range of conceptual understanding, in the purity of their closed forms, the work of Nabokov, Borges, Beckett, Barth, Broch, Gaddis, or Calvino, or any of half-a-dozen extraordinarily gifted South Americans.”
― William H. Gass, The World Within the Word

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

“Only unconditional grace can transform a hardened heart into a grateful heart. Only a free gift can demolish any notion of quid pro quo. Only an utterly merciful act of love can fashion a new creation capable of love. As theologian Karl Barth puts it, 'As the beloved of God, we have no alternative but to love him in return.”
― Mark Galli, Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit

“Karl Barth was the most significant theologian in the twentieth century, at least in western Christianity. His defence of the doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the incarnation of God’s eternal Son and his virginal conception in Mary’s womb, stunned the liberalism that had captured Protestantism in Europe. For this we can be thankful. But orthodox confession of foundational truths, if not allied to a whole hearted submission to the sufficiency and absolute authority of God’s inscripturated revelation, the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the only Saviour of sinners, the necessity of the new birth, and personal repentance and faith, is not biblical Christianity.

Hamilton, Ian. "False Friend?" review of Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals, by Mark Galli, Banner of Truth, 682: 29.”
― Ian Hamilton