Nothingness, not nothing

In exploring the privation view of evil, Barth says this: “If God’s reality and revelation are known in His presence and action in Jesus Christ, he is also known as the God who is confronted by nothingness, for whom it constitutes a problem, who takes it seriously, who does not deal with it incidentally but in the fullness of the glory of His deity, who is not engaged indirectly or mediately but which His whole being, involving Himself to the utmost. If we accept this, we cannot argue that because it (evil) has nothing in common with God and His creature nothingness is nothing, i.e., it does not exist. That which confronts God in this way, and is seriously treated by Him, is surely not nothing or non-existent. In the light of God’s relationship to it we must accept the fact that in a third way of its own nothingness ‘is.’ All conceptions or doctrine which would deny or minimize this ‘is’ are untenable from the Christian standpoint. Nothingness is not nothing.”