The fundamental error of modern times lies in the fact that the yawning abyss of quality in the difference between God and man has been removed.
The distinction emphasizes the very different attributes of finite and temporal men and the infinite and eternal qualities of a supreme being.
The paradoxical nature of the Incarnation, that God is embodied in a man, is offensive to reason, and can only be comprehended indirectly, through faith.
In the preface to the Second Edition of his commentary, Barth writes, "if I have a system, it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the 'infinite qualitative distinction' between time and eternity, and to my regarding this as possessing negative as well as positive significance: 'God is in heaven, and thou art on earth'.
He put it this way in 1846: The subjective thinker is a dialectician dealing with the existential, and he has the passion of thought requisite for holding fast to the qualitative disjunction.