The Intersection of Providence and Nothingness: Neighbors, Nations, and Nationalism

What is God’s providential relationship to the nations and nationalism? This paper seeks to constructively connect how Barth’s theology reckoned with nationalism and nations with his doctrine of divine providence and das Nichtige. This paper contends that Barth’s positive and negative distinctions between nationhood and nationalism parallel the distinctions he makes between providence and Nothingness. This paper briefly describes Barth’s positive account of nations as part of God’s providential overruling of the world-occurrence and related to God’s right-hand and positive willing. Further, this paper argues that when nations fail to remain open and peaceable toward their neighbors—by seeking to become a totality—nationhood has morphed to nationalism. Barth’s vehement opposition to nationalism, its destruction, and “national gods” means nationalism can be best understood as a virulent manifestation of Nothingness that exists only under left-hand of God’s rejecting will as that which is overcome in Christ’s death and resurrection.