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Godhead and the Nothing
Eminent theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer breaks new ground by exploring the ultimate transfiguration of the Godhead as a question of the Nihil or nothingness and God. The Nihil is essential to the full actualization of the Godhead in that it fully occurs in both a primordial and an apocalyptic sacrifice of the Godhead. Virtually unexplored by philosophical and theological thinking, the Nihil is luminously enacted in the deepest expressions of the imagination, and most clearly and decisively so in the Christian epic tradition. Altizer looks at the works of philosophers and theologians such as Spinoza, Barth, Hegel, Nietzsche, and epic writers such as Dante, Milton, and Blake to ultimately posit a God that is necessarily a dichotomous God.
179 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2003
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About the author
Thomas J.J. Altizer
36 books21 followersThomas Jonathan Jackson Altizer was a radical theologian who is known for incorporating Friedrich Nietzsche's conception of the "death of God" and G. W. F. Hegel's dialectical philosophy into his systematic theology.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 20, 2026
A rare DNF. I get the gist of the authors argument regarding the paradox of God and evils nothingness but the overly academic language and nuance in the writing made it near impossible to read and enjoy.
July 4, 2025
Altizer’s “Godhead and the Nothing” (2003) advances a radical theological argument that merges Hegelian dialectics with Christian apocalyptic thought. His central thesis posits that God’s death represents not merely a cultural shift but a concrete theological event marked by God’s complete and irreversible self-emptying (kenosis).
Altizer conceptualizes the Nothing (das Nichts) not as mere nonexistence but as a generative void emerging from God’s self-negation—a paradoxical state that simultaneously represents the Godhead’s absence and transformation. Drawing from Hegel’s dialectical framework, he argues that this divine self-emptying enables authentic freedom and fulfills divine presence in the world. This process culminates in what he terms “total presence,” where the traditional boundaries between sacred and profane dissolve, and divinity becomes fully immanent in the world. For Altizer, this transformation completes the Christian apocalyptic vision through the transcendent God’s full conversion into immanent presence.
However, Altizer’s argument rests on the problematic premise that nothingness constitutes ‘something’ standing in dialectical opposition to Being. This notion violates the fundamental definition of nothingness itself. As Parmenides correctly established, nothing can only be nothing—it cannot possess positive attributes or stand in opposition to anything.
Altizer’s reading of Augustine fundamentally misrepresents the Church Father’s positions regarding the nature of evil and sin. He attributes to Augustine “the deep paradox of an evil that is a sheer or pure nothingness and nevertheless a full actuality in sin, or an evil that is ultimately real even while being absolutely unreal, or an evil that is a pure illusion and yet overwhelmingly real in and as that very illusion” (p. X). This interpretation distorts Augustine’s actual teaching. Augustine characterizes evil’s metaphysical status as privation, meaning it exists not as an independent substance but as an absence of good. Like a pothole in a road, which exists and poses danger yet represents a privation of asphalt, evil manifests as a real deficiency or lack within Being rather than as a paradoxical entity that both is and is not.
Altizer erroneously asserts that the Neoplatonists and Scholastics could only conceive of evil as pure nothingness or a privation of Being, and thus failed to grasp either evil’s actuality or absolute nothingness itself (p. 13). This misrepresents their position. The Scholastics fully acknowledged evil’s reality, following the Neoplatonist Proclus’s principle that evil exists parasitically by drawing its existence from the good. This parasitic relationship perfectly mirrors the nature of a pothole, which exists as a real defect by compromising the road’s integrity.
The concept of God becoming fully immanent in the world inevitably leads to a complete secularization of Christian religion—an aspiration Altizer shares with numerous modern theologians, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Eberhard Jüngel, David Tracy, N.T. Wright, John Hick, and Ronald Gregor Smith. In “Creation and Reality” (1999), Michael Welker observes that this worldly theology has contributed to the collapse of classical theism currently unfolding in the major European churches and, to some extent, in North American churches as well.
Altizer’s vision of divine immanence, shared by many contemporary theologians, appears to accelerate rather than resolve the crisis of Western Christianity. Despite its innovative approach, “Godhead and the Nothing” ultimately demonstrates the philosophical pitfalls of attempting to resolve theological paradoxes through Hegelian dialectics.
Altizer conceptualizes the Nothing (das Nichts) not as mere nonexistence but as a generative void emerging from God’s self-negation—a paradoxical state that simultaneously represents the Godhead’s absence and transformation. Drawing from Hegel’s dialectical framework, he argues that this divine self-emptying enables authentic freedom and fulfills divine presence in the world. This process culminates in what he terms “total presence,” where the traditional boundaries between sacred and profane dissolve, and divinity becomes fully immanent in the world. For Altizer, this transformation completes the Christian apocalyptic vision through the transcendent God’s full conversion into immanent presence.
However, Altizer’s argument rests on the problematic premise that nothingness constitutes ‘something’ standing in dialectical opposition to Being. This notion violates the fundamental definition of nothingness itself. As Parmenides correctly established, nothing can only be nothing—it cannot possess positive attributes or stand in opposition to anything.
Altizer’s reading of Augustine fundamentally misrepresents the Church Father’s positions regarding the nature of evil and sin. He attributes to Augustine “the deep paradox of an evil that is a sheer or pure nothingness and nevertheless a full actuality in sin, or an evil that is ultimately real even while being absolutely unreal, or an evil that is a pure illusion and yet overwhelmingly real in and as that very illusion” (p. X). This interpretation distorts Augustine’s actual teaching. Augustine characterizes evil’s metaphysical status as privation, meaning it exists not as an independent substance but as an absence of good. Like a pothole in a road, which exists and poses danger yet represents a privation of asphalt, evil manifests as a real deficiency or lack within Being rather than as a paradoxical entity that both is and is not.
Altizer erroneously asserts that the Neoplatonists and Scholastics could only conceive of evil as pure nothingness or a privation of Being, and thus failed to grasp either evil’s actuality or absolute nothingness itself (p. 13). This misrepresents their position. The Scholastics fully acknowledged evil’s reality, following the Neoplatonist Proclus’s principle that evil exists parasitically by drawing its existence from the good. This parasitic relationship perfectly mirrors the nature of a pothole, which exists as a real defect by compromising the road’s integrity.
The concept of God becoming fully immanent in the world inevitably leads to a complete secularization of Christian religion—an aspiration Altizer shares with numerous modern theologians, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Eberhard Jüngel, David Tracy, N.T. Wright, John Hick, and Ronald Gregor Smith. In “Creation and Reality” (1999), Michael Welker observes that this worldly theology has contributed to the collapse of classical theism currently unfolding in the major European churches and, to some extent, in North American churches as well.
Altizer’s vision of divine immanence, shared by many contemporary theologians, appears to accelerate rather than resolve the crisis of Western Christianity. Despite its innovative approach, “Godhead and the Nothing” ultimately demonstrates the philosophical pitfalls of attempting to resolve theological paradoxes through Hegelian dialectics.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews