“The power of God can be detected neither in the world of nature nor in the souls of men. It must not be confounded with any high, exalted, force, known or knowable.”
The Epistle to the Romans (1918; 1921)
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Karl Barth 73
Swiss Protestant theologian 1886–1968Related quotes

“The reason fat men are good natured is they can neither fight nor run.”

Summarizing the Law of Conservation of Force, in "On the Conservation of Force" (1862), p. 280
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1881)

II. That God is unchanging, unbegotten, eternal, incorporeal, and not in space.
Variant translation:
The essences of the gods are neither generated; for eternal natures are without generation; and those beings are eternal who possess a first power, and are naturally void of passivity. Nor are their essences composed from bodies; for even the powers of bodies are incorporeal: nor are they comprehended in place; for this is the property of bodies: nor are they separated from the first cause, or from each other; in the same manner as intellections are not separated from intellect, nor sciences from the soul.
II. That a God is immutable, without Generation, eternal, incorporeal, and has no Subsistence in Place, as translated by Thomas Taylor
On the Gods and the Cosmos

“The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.”
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus (1897)
Context: Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah,, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

1870s, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)