Like Catching Water in a Net

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.

"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

Vorwort
Val Webb attempts to set out intuitions or intimations of the Divine nature and attributes from the stories and poems of the world's religions.

Autorentext
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

Klappentext

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.

Zusammenfassung

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.

Inhalt
Preface 1. Is Something Out There? 2. Metaphorically Speaking...3.The GOD Who Is Not...4. To Be...or Not to Be? 5. What's in a Name? 6. Feathers on the Breath of GOD 7. Where Can I Go from Your Spirit? 8. Nature Speaks 9. Divine Attributes: God Is Like... 10. The Power of the One 11. Imago Dei 12. In the Family Way 13. The Bible Tells Me So... 14. Who Do You Say I Am? 15.What Is Truth?