As a committed Catholic and longtime historian: it sounds like Hamman is evaluating pre-Protestant Christianity and finding that it’s...extremely Catholic. There are no themes or depictions here that are scandalous or even unfamiliar to me. This “version” of Jesus never went away! You just won’t find him talked about this way in low-church Protestantism. And it’s telling that--as far as I can tell---the things in these spiritualities that give the author pause are precisely those same Calvinist and Protestant reactions to that earlier “version” of Jesus.
thank you for this excellent review!
As a committed Catholic and longtime historian: it sounds like Hamman is evaluating pre-Protestant Christianity and finding that it’s...extremely Catholic. There are no themes or depictions here that are scandalous or even unfamiliar to me. This “version” of Jesus never went away! You just won’t find him talked about this way in low-church Protestantism. And it’s telling that--as far as I can tell---the things in these spiritualities that give the author pause are precisely those same Calvinist and Protestant reactions to that earlier “version” of Jesus.