Like Catching Water in a Net: Human Attempts to Describe the Divine

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National Best Books 2007 Award-Winner in Religion "Insightful, imaginative, and provocative! Val Webb's new book has freed the Divine from the religious. A striking achievement."-John Shelby Spong, author of Jesus for the Non-Religious In Like Catching Water in a Net, Val Webb is not out to prove the existence of a God or the Divine, but to set out intuitions or intimations of the Divine nature and attributes from the stories and literature of the world's religions. Casting her net more widely than Karen Armstrong in The History of God or Jack Miles in God: A Biography, Webb delves deeply into the poetry and sayings of Sufi, Buddhist, and Hindu mystics, the nature religion of the ancient Mesopotamians, their kin the Israelites, and the Aboriginal people of her own beloved Australia.

Val Webb is a lecturer in religion, with a graduate degree in science and a Ph.D. in theology. She is the author of 10 books, including Florence Nightingale: The Making of a Radical Theologian and In Defence of Doubt: an invitation to adventure. Her book John's Message: Good News for the New Millennium was commissioned by the World Methodist Council. She now lives in Mudgee, Australia, and continues to write and lecture. www.valwebb.com.au

"Val Webb isn't out to prove the existence of a god, but to point out imitations of the Divine nature from the literature on the world's religions. Thus her survey includes range of world beliefs, from Buddhism and Hindu mystics to early Mesopotamians and the Aboriginals of Australia. The result is a critical challenge to the thinking processes of traditional Christianity and a challenge to readers to broaden their view of what constitutes spiritual thinking. Spirituality collections will find it invaluable." -James A. Cox, The Midwest Book Review, February 2008 -- James A. Cox "Val Webb is a writer, teacher, artist, theologian and scientist who weaves knowledge and experience together as she encourages the reader to open themselves to a myriad of metaphors, symbols and images that reveal the divine across cultures, relgions and centuries." - Journey "A lecturer in religion at universities in the US and Australia, Webb offers an absorbing book of metaphorical theology, one that follows the many and varied traces of the Divine in history. To this end, she explores the writings of Sufi, Buddhist, and Hindu mystics, the nature religions of the ancient Mesopotamians, the ethical monotheism of the ancient Israelites, the stress on the Creating Rainbow Spirit among the Aboriginal people, and theologies associated with traditional as well as progressive Christian traditions...Webb upholds process theism as the most fruitful, satisfying way to describe the Divine today. This astute book carries wide appeal." -Darren J.N. Middleton, Religious Studies Review, September 2008 "An absorbing book written with a lightness of touch, but grounded in deep knowledge and experience. As writer, teacher, artist, trained theologian and scientist, Val Webb draws on an amazing storehouse of ideas and explores in vivid, often unexpected ways the myriad of symbols and images that disclose the Divine in the contemporary world. Chosen from a host of multireligious sources, including the rich biblical heritage of Jews and Christians, but also science and nature, her work celebrates the ever elusive, mysterious Divine Presence, Power and Life in many original, refreshing ways, even as Communication itself. This is an intensely personal book packed with critical comment, insight and wisdom. Its searching questions and reflections can inspire a wide group of readers in their own attempts to decipher the wealth of symbols speaking to us about Divine Reality today."-Ursula King, Professor Emerita of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol -- Ursula King, Professor Emerita of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol "Insightful, imaginative, and provocative! Val Webb's new book has freed the Divine from the religious. A striking achievement."-John Shelby Spong, author of Jesus for the Non-Religious -- John Shelby Spong, author of Jesus for the Non-Religious Award-Winner in the Religion: General category of the National Best Books 2007 Awards. "Like Catching Water in a Net, the winner of the 2007 USA Best Books award for "Religion: general," carries forward the concerns animating those earlier books. There is ample recognition here of the necessary service doubt can render. Feminist insights are richly mined...But as the book's argument builds, one finds oneself hungering for the "Yes" in our undeniably human efforts to describe the divine. Webb is not going to settle for a wholly apophatic theology, reaching rather for a positive alternative to the problematic pieties she so emphatically critiques (66). She celebrates the fact that "a new Christianity is evolving, uncovering the human Jesus so long buried under centuries of dogma" (206). There seems to be, after all, a deep anthropological basis for this religious quest (211, 227)...She presses herself to go further, to identify "mega-characteristics" (111) in a reformed way. Thus she will speak of "the Divine, the world and ourselves as 'good' in aesthetic rather than moral terms" (115), calling upon Thomas Aquinas, Alfred North Whitehead, Dag Hammarskjold and the Turkish poet Fazil for explication. Or she will have us employ "the Image of GOD as Communication (NOT Communicator, because that returns to an 'idol' like us that we create)" (76). More materially, she will speak of "Love as a unifying, reconciling Force within this universe" (120)." - Paul R. Sponheim, Word & World 28/3, Summer 2008 -- Paul R. Sponheim * Word and World *