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

In Like Catching Water in a Net, Val Webb is not out to prove the existence of a God, but to set out intuitions or intimations of the Divine nature and attributes from the 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 writings of Sufi, Buddhist, and Hindu mystics, the nature religions of ancient Mesopotamians, their kin the Israelites, and the Aboriginal people of her beloved Australia, as well as Christian traditions. Why have so many societies throughout history suspected there is Something Bigger than themselves? What is the difference between knowing Something exists and knowing what that Something might be (or not be)? And what about arguments against the existence of God at all? Webb poses a critical challenge to the way traditional Christianity has straitjacketed Western notions of God and traces the lines of intersection and divergence of various religions in order to offer fresh ways to consider Something More in today's multifaith world.

Val Webb is a university lecturer in religion who divides her time between the U.S. and Austrailia. She teacher every year at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Whitley College in Melbourne.