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Creation, writes Barth, is grace. All created things are kept from a state of nothingness only by God. But the "whole realm we term evil—death, sin, the Devil and hell—is not God's creation, but rather what was excluded by God's creation, that to which God has said 'No.' And if there is a reality of evil, it can only be the reality of this excluded and repudiated thing, the reality behind God's back, which He passed over when He made the world and made it good." Thus, evil is nothingness; and the man who wants to sin—"that is, to 'sunder' himself from God and from himself"—is doomed by, his disobedience to fall into this uncreated nothing.
Fresh Spirit. The Church, says Barth, will die and petrify if it does not proclaim the Good News. Christians have been told to "Go out and preach the Gospel!" The injunction is not " 'Go and celebrate services!' 'Go and edify yourselves with the sermon!' 'Go and celebrate the Sacraments!' 'Go and present yourselves in a liturgy, which perhaps repeats the heavenly liturgy!' 'Go and devise a theology which may gloriously unfold like the Summa of St. Thomas!' Of course, there is nothing to forbid all this; there may exist very good cause to do it all; but nothing, nothing at all for its own sake. In it all, the one thing must prevail: 'Proclaim the Gospel to every creature!' . . .
"Where the Church is living, it must ask itself whether it is serving this commission or whether it is a purpose in itself? If the second is the case, then as a rule it begins to smack of the 'sacred,' to affect piety, to play the priest and to mumble. Anyone with a keen nose will smell it and find it dreadful! Christianity is not 'sacred'; rather, there breathes in it the fresh air of the Spirit. Otherwise it is not Christianity. For it is an out & out 'worldly' thing, open to all humanity: 'Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.' "
*Formulated in its original Greek version some time before the year 250.