Ok – I have been reading this commentary and am only on page 53 but have a few quotes I wanted to post. It has been hard to resist highlighting the entire book. Anyhow – here are some quotes I have highlighted to date:
"When God has been deprived of His glory, men are also deprived of theirs."
"No one can, of course, bring out the meaning of a text (auslegen) without at the same time adding something to it (einlegen)."
"All human achievements are no more than PROLEGOMENA; and this is especially the case in the field of theology."
(Commenting on Paul’s intro to Romans) "Here is no genious rejoicing in his own creative ability. The man who is now speaking is an emissary, bound to perform his duty; the minister of his King; a servant not a master."
"The resurrection is the revelation: the disclosing of Jesus as the Christ, the appearing of God and the apprehending of God in Jesus."
"Jesus is declared to be the Son of God wherever he reveals Himself and is recognized as the Messiah, before the first Easter day and most assuredly after it. The declaration of the Son of man to be the Son of God is the significance of Jesus, and, apart from this Jesus has no more significance or insignificance than any man, or thing, or period of history in itself."
"God does not need us. Indeed, if He were not God, He would be ashamed of us. We, at any rate, cannot be ashamed of Him."
"Bound to the world as it is, we cannot here and now apprehend. We can only receive the Gospel."
"Precisely because the "No" of God is all embracing, it is also His "Yes".
"If Christ be very God, he must be unknown, very to be known directly is the characteristic mark of an idol." (this is actually Barth quoting Soren Kierkegaard in his footnotes).
"Where the faithfulness of God encounters the fidelity of man, there is manifested His righteousness. There shall the righteous man live."
"The judgement under which we stand is a fact, quite apart from our attitude to it. Indeed, it is the fact most characteristic of our life."
"The irony of intelligence – we know that God is He whom we do not know, and that our ignorance is precisely the problem and the source of our knowledge."
"Disloyalty to Him (God) is disloyalty to ourselves."
"But on whatever level it occurs, if the experience of religion is more than a void, or claims to contain, or to possess or to enjoy God, it is a shameless and abortive anticipation of that which can proceed from the unknown God alone."
"They became unable to reckon with anything except feelings and experiences and events. They think merely in terms of more or less spiritual sophistry without light from above or from behind."
Harnessing Chaos 