ecclesiastical earnestness

Barth, CD I/2, p. 808:

...there exists in the Church, before heresy arises... the possibility that a false moralistic earnestness will dominate proclamation, as though it is man's affair whether it is victorious or defeated, as though man has to make the Word of God powerful by the weight of his own will, as though it lies in man's hands to compel decisions about it. When this is the case, the Church strengthens itself to serve the Word of God, as though it is a matter of the organization and running of a business, or the instituting and carrying through of a great law-suit, or the deployment and operations of an army... it is impossible to handle the truth this way.  As a rule, this kind of ecclesiastical earnestness involves a trimmed and therefore a truncated version of the truth. It may not be guilty of actual heresy, but it presupposes a deviation which sooner or later will lead to heresy.