“Calvin is a cataract, a primeval forest, a demonic power, something directly down from Himalaya, absolutely Chinese, strange, mythological; I lack completely the means, the suction cups, even to assimilate this phenomenon, not to speak of presenting it adequately. What I receive is only a thin little stream and what I can then give out again is only a yet thinner extract of this little stream. I could gladly and profitably set myself down and spend all the rest of my life just with Calvin.”

–Karl Barth, Revolutionary Theology in the Making, trans. James D. Smart (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1964), 101. As quoted by Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1988), 163.