The Bible Salvages Broken People, Not the Other Way Around

I am reading Carl F. H. Henry’s autobiography, written in 1986.  So far it is a great read.  It is filled with humorous stories that had me laughing out loud, and even more stories that show his heart for evangelism, God, and the truth of Scripture.  At one point he is reflecting on the years he spent attending Wheaton College in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  In the following passage Henry explains a bit of what Evangelical higher education should be about: 

What I do maintain is that all Christian learning must be for the sake of worship and service of God in the world, and that we are deceived if we think that our own schematic skills or speculative theories or politico-economic proposals make the Bible meaningful and credible to the contemporary world.  The case for Christianity does not rest upon our ingenuity; it rests upon the incarnate and risen Lord.  The Bible is meaningful and credible as it stands; it is we, not the Scriptures, that need to be salvaged.  Unless evangelical education understands Christianity’s salvific witness in terms of the whole self–intellect, volition, emotion, conscience, imagination–and of hte world in its total need–justice, peace, stewardship and much else–it cannot adequately confront a planet that has sagged out of moral and spiriutal orbit. 
–Carl F. H. Henry, Confessions of a Theologian: An Autobiography (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1986), 76. 

His first exhortation is something we need to hear and believe.  The Bible is powerful and meaningful and credible as it is.  God doesn’t need us to make it relevant, or to salvage it for our postmodern world.  It is not up to our cleverness or ingenuity to advance the truth.  We must simply and faithfully learn and apply God’s word to every area of life.  When we do so, we will come to learn how God, through His word will salvage so many broken areas of our life and world. 

Henry’s second exhortation is less clear to me.  There are a lot of different ways his last sentence could be interpreted.  One of my goals for the summer is to get a better grasp of what Henry and other 20th century Neo-Evangelicals were advocating regarding Christianity’s engagement with culture and how Christianity’s “salvific witness” should be applied to the whole self and the total need of the world.  Maybe I’ll share some of my gleanings here.  Let me know if you have any thoughts.