Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics is the greatest theological achievement of the modern era, and yet Barth often remarked in humility that God laughs at his Dogmatics. My friend Dr. Marty Folsom reminded me of the following famous and frequently quoted example of Barth's humble view of his marvelous achievement: 

"The angels laugh at old Karl. They laugh at him because he tries to grasp the truth about God in a book of Dogmatics. They laugh at the fact that volume follows volume and each is thicker than the previous one. As they laugh, they say to one another, 'Look! Here he comes now with his little pushcart full of volumes of the Dogmatics!'

And they laugh about the men who write so much about Karl Barth instead of writing about the things he is trying to write about. Truly, the Angels laugh."

The quotation is from an article by Johannes A. Lombard in Antwort, Evangelischer Verlag AG, Zollikon-Zurich, 1956, p. 895, and originally translated by Robert McAfee Brown and quoted in myriad books including How I Changed My Mind [1] and too many others to list.

My friend Richard Keith (and mastermind behind Karl Barth for Dummies) has converted this quote into this hilarious meme: 

Sources:

1. Karl Barth, How I Changed My Mind, (John Knox Press, 1966), p. 14