Jesus and the Ontology of Nothingness: Creation Through Emptiness

Introduction

The synoptic gospels describe Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness as a period of fasting: “And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered” (Luke 4:2, KJV).

Traditionally, this verse is interpreted as a story of spiritual discipline, where Jesus resists the devil’s temptations by relying on God’s word. Yet a deeper theological reading sees this moment not as mere abstinence but as a cosmic act. Jesus did not simply refuse food: He ate nothing because there was nothing. In this act, He infused “nothing” with life, inaugurating a new creation. In that state of emptiness, He gave “nothing” life, and in this act, everything came into being.

Jesus’ relationship to nothingness reveals His role not only as redeemer of history but as creator of existence itself. This essay will explore how the wilderness fasting can be understood as a creative encounter with nothingness, drawing from canonical scripture, Gnostic texts, and Christian theological tradition.

Humanity’s Destruction and the Cosmic Void

Scripture frequently portrays human sin as cosmic in scope. Paul states that creation was “made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Romans 8:20, KJV). The groaning of creation (Romans 8:22) reveals its wounded state.

Humanity did not merely harm creation; it destroyed “what is,” leaving behind only nothingness.

The Incarnation, therefore, is not God entering into a flourishing world but God stepping into a void. This aligns with apocalyptic imagery in Revelation, where “the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” (Revelation 21:1, KJV). Into such void, Christ enters: not to preserve the remnants of the old, but to inaugurate the possibility of the new.

“He Did Eat Nothing”: The Wilderness as Creation Event

Luke’s account that Jesus “did eat nothing” (Luke 4:2) is more than asceticism. Read ontologically, it reveals the condition of absence; there was nothing to consume. In this moment, Jesus embodies the primordial divine act: creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo).

Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as “without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” until God spoke light into being. Similarly, Jesus enters into the void of wilderness-nothingness and gives it vitality.

Patristic thought often dwells on this paradox. Augustine argued that God created the world not from pre-existing matter, but from nothing, declaring: “For what is anything unless You make it? Did it ever exist unless it existed because You are?” (Confessions XII.7). Jesus’ wilderness fast re-enacts this truth: He did not merely resist hunger, He demonstrated that even “nothing” can be filled with the fullness of God.

This act is not fasting-as-discipline but fasting-as-creation. By “eating nothing,” He did not simply endure emptiness; He gave “nothing” the capacity to become.

The Gnostic Witness: Feeding Nothing into Life

The Gospel of Thomas intensifies this vision. Jesus says: “If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the kingdom of God” (Thomas, Logion 27).

Here fasting is not simply bodily discipline but refusal to sustain the corrupted order. Another saying teaches: “Blessed is the lion which the man will eat so that the lion becomes human; and cursed is the man whom the lion will eat so that the lion still becomes human” (Thomas, Logion 7). These cryptic words suggest that what one consumes, one gives life to.

Placed alongside Luke, the meaning becomes profound: Jesus consumes nothing, and in consuming nothing, He gives it life. His wilderness act is thus the reverse of Adam’s: where Adam’s eating brought death, Christ’s not-eating brings life. Thus, the wilderness moment is not just symbolic preparation but the metaphysical axis on which new creation turns.

Jesus as the Future Breaking Into the Present

If Christ gave nothingness life (Jesus is the Christ), then He is not merely a figure of the past but the embodiment of the future.

Paul calls Him “the firstborn of every creature” and the one “by whom all things consist” (Colossians 1:15–17, KJV).

Jürgen Moltmann develops this perspective in Theology of Hope, where Christ is understood as the revelation of the future within history: “In the raising of Christ the eschatological future has already begun” (Moltmann, 1967, p. 211).

This interpretation aligns with this eschatological vision: Jesus’ wilderness fast is not only an event of deprivation but the first eruption of the future New Creation into the nothingness left by human destruction.

In this framework, Jesus’ presence in nothingness inaugurates the cosmos anew, not as restoration of what was, but as the future breaking open in the present. He is not only from the past but from the future, but his very being embodies what has not yet come into existence; therefore, the resurrection is the full disclosure of this truth: death and void are not the end, but the raw material of divine life.

Eckhart and the Ground of Nothingness

Meister Eckhart deepens this insight with his mystical language of “nothingness.” He argues that God dwells in the ground beyond all being, which for human perception appears as nothingness. “Therefore I ask God to rid me of God, for my essential being is above God insofar as we comprehend God as the principle of creatures” (Eckhart, Sermon 52).

For Eckhart, the soul meets God in the place where all being collapses into nothing.

Seen in this light, Jesus’ act of eating nothing is not mere physical fasting but revelation of the divine ground: He stands in the place of nothing and there calls forth everything.

Conclusion

The statement that “He did eat nothing” (Luke 4:2) is more than historical description; not merely descriptive of physical fasting; it is metaphysical revelation.

It is a theological key to understanding Christ (Jesus is the Christ) as the one who creates out of nothingness.

Humanity destroyed “what is,” but in eating nothing, Jesus infused emptiness with being. This act discloses Him not merely as savior of the past but as creator of the future, the one through whom “nothing” becomes “everything.” In Him, fasting is not refusal but creation, not emptiness but abundance, not the end but the beginning of all that is to come.

References

• Augustine. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford University Press, 1998.

• Meister Eckhart. The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense. Trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn. Paulist Press, 1981.

• Moltmann, J. (1967). Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology. Harper & Row.

• The Gospel of Thomas. In The Nag Hammadi Scriptures. Trans. Marvin Meyer. HarperOne, 2007.

• The Holy Bible: King James Version.

Closing Note: The Willingness to Be

If Jesus gave nothingness life, then the fullness of creation bears witness to His act.

The earth and all its creatures: the flowers that turn toward the sun, the trees that stretch their roots deep, the birds that sing, the animals that breathe; all display a simple and profound truth: a willingness to be, to live, to thrive.

In this willingness, creation itself testifies to the saving act of God, for all that lives has already been drawn into His life.

Yet humanity stands before a question that is as old as the gospel itself:

“Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:6, KJV).

Salvation is not merely imposed; it is embraced. To live, to thrive, to be; these require willingness. Jesus, who gave nothingness life, extends that same creative invitation to us:

Will you allow Him to make you whole? Will you choose to live? Will you join creation in its song?

The mystery of nothingness becoming everything culminates in this: that our response is not passive but willing. To be saved is to will; to lean into the life that Jesus has already breathed into emptiness.