Barth distinguishes between religion and faith. Religion is man's search for God and it always results in man finding a god that he wants to find.
Because God is the living God, Barth warns against identifying the Word of God with any human form or institution. Not even the Bible can be identified as the Word of God. The error of fundamentalism, as he sees it, is that it takes the Bible as a "self-sufficient Paper-Pope." To Barth the words of the Bible and of the human Jesus are "tokens." One may read the Bible without hearing the Word of God. But the Word does come to us through these tokens. Some day, as we read a passage of Scripture, it may suddenly come alive and speak to us in the situation in which we find ourselves. The writers of Scripture wrote to tell of the revelation they received from God and, as we read, the same God who spoke to them may speak to us. Thus, says Barth, the Bible is a record of a past revelation and a promise of future revelation.
God reveals not information but himself.