The Biblical Expositor

Volume 1: Genesis–Esther

The Living Theme of the Great Book

Consulting Editor

Carl F. H. Henry

© 1960 by A. J. Holman Company. Database © 2016 WORD search.

Preface

An astonishing change has come over the literary world in recent generations. We stand at last in the midst of widespread and willful revolt against Christian ideals. Not since the very outset of the Christian era have the words of men and the Word of God moved at such awesome distance from each other. Ours is an age which exposes Christian faith and fervor to the continual onslaughts of the printed page. The literature of our time constantly disturbs man’s faith and challenges his idealism; much of our modern reading, in fact, weakens the moral sense, depresses the religious life, and even corrupts the conscience. Even where it does not contribute to avowed unbelief or to halting skepticism, it parades profane characters in bold irreverence and in revolt against those lofty standards that once distinguished the Western world from its pagan setting. The fact that many gifted writers today devote their artistic brilliance and power to the commercial exploitation of moral compromise gives bad books a fascination that dulls their repellency even to sensitive natures. So the literary pollution of the age loses repugnance, lowers men’s abhorrence to conscious evil, and does unsuspected positive harm.

These characteristics of our era reap the harvest of indifference to the noblest literature of the past: the sacred books of the Bible, and a great tradition of literature shaped by its view of God and His relations to mankind. A century that neglected the Scriptures, that dismissed as prudish whatever mirrored Biblical standards of life and conduct, and that even disparaged these sacred precepts as too rigid for modern men, should not be surprised that bestiality and barbarity should once again come to characterize the Western man. When discerning scholars peered into the deep ravine into which our ideals had sagged, was it at all strange that they should discover an intrinsic connection between the moral anarchy of our times and this revolt against the Christian heritage? And is it any more surprising that many interpreters of the modern scene acknowledge that a return to the Biblical revelation of men and things alone remains as a hopeful alternative to moral decay and despair?

In 1957, in the offices of Christianity Today in Washington, D.C., the writer was conversing with Commander Scott G. Lamb of the A. J. Holman Company both about the exciting rediscovery of interest in Biblical studies and the importance of encouraging the widest possible interest in the message of the Bible to our times. The Holman Company is about to mark, in 1961, its 160th anniversary as a major Bible publishing house. What project might the firm sponsor, Commander Lamb inquired, that would be of service to the present generation? After reflection, the writer proposed the present project—an ...