Blessed Excess: Religion and the Hyperbolic Imagination

What if the deepest truths of religion are not found in moderation—but in excess?

In Blessed Excess, Stephen H. Webb offers a bold and original vision of religion as an intensification of ordinary experience, arguing that hyperbole—language that goes "too far"—is not merely decorative, but essential to theological thinking. Moving beyond traditional studies of metaphor and analogy, Webb reveals how exaggeration, overflow, and surplus shape the way we speak about God, love, sacrifice, and grace.Engaging a rich and diverse range of voices—from the First Epistle of John to Kierkegaard, from Georges Bataille to Flannery O’Connor and G. K. Chesterton—Webb demonstrates how hyperbolic imagination stretches the limits of reason, inviting readers into a more expansive understanding of faith.

With intellectual rigor and creative insight, Blessed Excess opens new pathways for exploring both Christian theology and comparative religion. It challenges readers to reconsider the boundaries between logic and paradox, devotion and excess, the finite and the infinite.

Provocative, illuminating, and deeply original, Blessed Excess is essential reading for anyone interested in theology, philosophy, and the power of language to transform belief.