“The fact that God is revealed to us is then grace. Grace is the majesty, the freedom, the undeservedness, the unexpectedness, the newness, the arbitrariness, in which the relationship to God and therefore the possibility of knowing Him is opened up to man by God Himself. Grace is really the orientation in which God sets up an order which did not previously exist, to the power and benefit of which man has no claim, which he has no power to set up, which he has no competence even subsequently to justify, which in its singularity–which corresponds exactly to the singularity of the nature and being of God–he can only recognise and acknowledge as it is actually set up, as it is powerful and effective as a benefit that comes to him. Grace is God’s good-pleasure. And it is precisly in God’s good-pleasure that the reality of our being with God and of His being with us consists.”
–Karl Barth Church Dogmatics II.1 (London:T+T Clark, 1957), E.T. p. 74 (Hat tip: Matthew Lee Anderson)
Anything ending with “ism” has little or nothing to do with God. – Karl Barth pic.twitter.com/iIcEp7wLEI
— Taylor Mertins (@taylormertins) February 1, 2021