Jesus, Prophet of Islam - The Islamic Bulletin

258 Jesus, Prophet of Islam

Between the two poles of complete acceptance and complete rejec­
tion of the established Church's reliability as the guardians of the
message of Jesus, there lies every shade of opinions as to what it is
to be a believing Christian. Wilfred Cantwell Smith writes:

There is so much diversity and clash, so much chaos, in

the Christian Church today that the old ideal of a uni­

fied or systematic Christian truth has gone. For this, the

ecumenical movement is too late. What has happened

is that the Christian world has moved into that situa­

tion of open variety, of optional alternatives. Il would

seem no longer possible for anyone to be told or even to

imagine that he can be told, what it means or should

mean, formally and generically, to be a Christian. He

must decide for himself -and only for himself. 8

This conclusion implies that there are as many versions of Christi­
anity today as there are Christians, and that the role of the Church,
as an institution which is the guardian of Jesus's message, has
largely ceased to exist:Agraduatestudentat U.c.L.A. asked: 'What
is the point of a Church if it's always up to my own conscience?' 9
However, the Church remains an integral part of Western culture
today, and the relationship between the two is an interesting one.

o o o o o

Vast amounts of literature have been written in the West during
the last few centuries, in the attempt to understand the nature of
existence. They provide a catalogue of all the possible avenues of
thought a person's mind will pursue when he or she does not have
the certainty of revealed knowledge to live and understand his or
her life by.Sornewriterssuchas Pascalhaverealisedthatthe mind
is a limited tool, and that the heart is the centre of their being, and
the container of real knowledge:

The heart has its reasons which are unknown to reason

... It is the heart which is aware of God and not reason.

This is what faith is: God perceived intuitively by the

heart, not by reason. 10

In the attempt to gain access to the heart many have rejected Chris­
tianity and experimented with other means:

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