Barth on Calling

"...our calling to be Christians, as plainly shown in the New Testament in the figure of Peter, must take place again and again. No man who is called does not also have to see and understand himself as one who has still to be called and therefore as one who stands alongside and in solidarity with the uncalled. ...For all the seriousness with which we must distinguish between Christians and non-Christians, we can never think in terms of a rigid separation. All that is possible is a genuinely unlimited openness of the called in relation to the uncalled, an unlimited readiness to see in the aliens of to-day the brothers of to-morrow, and to love them as such and not simply as men, neither the Old Testament nor the New knowing anything of a general love for humanity."

- Karl Barth

(Church Dogmatics. Translated by Rev. G. W. Bromiley. Edited by Rev. Prof. G. W. Bromiley and Rev. Prof. T. F. Torrance. Vol. IV, pt. 3. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1962, p. 494. Apologies for the non-inclusive language.)