Freedom for Fellowship

Here are a couple zingers from Karl Barth that I had to pull from my thesis in an effort to stop repeating myself so much. Today I find them not only relevant but compelling.

‘The old desire for a purely private existence, and therefore for reserve and resistance to both God and neighbour, may and will continually arise again in the Christian…. For all the relapses into his old, private being, [however], it is once and for all established that that cavern is behind him and the open country of fellowship before him.’

Church Dogmatics IV/3.2, 664. 

With the observation that ‘we find it strangely hard to live in real unity of spirit with our fellow Christians,’ Barth probes to the heart of our predilection for false peace by asking, ‘are we not strangely tempted to accept as our real brothers and sisters only a few open and congenial people or a little circle of such?’

The Christian Life, 151-153.