MADE MAN
By Craig Hamilton
Matthias Media. 261 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 925 424 447
The intention of this book is to create a text which blends biblical and historical instruction with the practical implications of the incarnation which the author himself ‘could actually survive reading.’
To accomplish this, he begins with what reads like a blasphemous quotation from a Will Ferrell film. However well-intentioned, this sets the tone for the worst excesses of the book.
Much to appreciate
Substantially, there is much to appreciate about the volume. Despite his desperate lightness of tone, there are sections of careful historical and theological thought. In particular, the way the author works through the early centuries of church history, seeking to summarise some of the thinking of the church councils, is genuinely creditable. He relies heavily on the work of Fred Sanders at key moments. There are a couple of points at which – trying to keep things simple – he is in danger of creating his own formulations or not explaining or nuancing some of the emphases of certain church fathers. He needs to take more care to make his classifications and distinctions accurate and plain, so that it is clear what he is saying about such weighty concepts as impassability and the hypostatic union (especially given some of the debates on these topics in recent years). I am still not quite sure what he believes on impassability, as he seems to rock back and forth between a couple of possibilities. That is not a good thing, given how much attention has recently been paid to it; he needs to make plain where he stands, and that should be within his grasp.
Furthermore, he keeps clumsily insisting on the fact that the incarnation is itself redemptive. While he takes pains to communicate that he is not seeking to detract from the centrality of the cross, I thought he could have been crisper and punchier about the connection between the person and the work of the Saviour, as well as having a clearer emphasis on His resurrected humanity as our hope. However, he is careful to try to explain the classical terms in ways that, at points, are genuinely helpful, especially for the novice.
Hard work
However, stylistically, the book is hard work. It veers between the obvious and the thoughtful, the sober and the crass, the reverent and the irreverent. After that initial ‘Jesus of Ricky Bobby’ jolt, the same tone crops up repeatedly. It is as if the author has been told that he needs to keep things light, so he repeatedly interrupts his most careful and weighty sections with odd asides. It is probably meant to lighten the load; all it does is break the flow and disrupt the focus. Thus, at some points, the style undoes the substance. For example, some of the historical pen-pictures are facile, over-simplistic, even childish. This is becoming an ugly feature of a lot of current writing on church history: accessibility and vividness are confused with jocularity and crassness. In aiming at simplicity, we are left with silliness. These jarring shifts of tone make it hard to take the serious parts seriously: one cannot shake off the superficiality of so many of the references and asides.
The result is a book that left me disappointed, in part because it could have offered so much more. I have no objection to humanity and humour in their proper place and proportion, but they are clumsily handled here, the effect being to trivialise rather than illuminate. These efforts do not so much bring the Christ of the Bible near, as drag him down.
If the intention is to bring one into a state of awed wonder and humble adoration, the book undoes itself, undermining its weightiest contributions with its flimsy flippancy. Occasionally instructive but otherwise unremarkable, the author may have succeeded in writing a book that he could actually survive reading, but not in writing one that is likely to last the course. That’s a shame because - stripped of the relentless inanity - there is much here that could have been helpful. Perhaps there is another book that already does, more carefully and reverently, what this one set out to do. If not, I would suggest that the market is still open for a simple, clear, warm, humbling, instructive introduction to this most sweet and profound of truths.
