Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

CHAPTER 4
The Flight from Dogma
With the Enlightenment (c. 1650-1780), the tensions between faith and history
became more polarised. It is from this period that most would date the beginning
of the 'quest of the historical Jesus'. The quest itself has been punctuated
by episodes and periods when the tensions between faith and history became
unbearable and erupted into open conflict. Our overview will focus first on
those phases when scholars of the quest attempted (in one degree or other) to
distance themselves from the traditional claims of faith (this chapter), and then
on those matching phases when scholars in reaction to the quest attempted to
distance themselves from the newer claims of history (chapter 5). Here again I
should stress that I am not attempting anything like a complete analysis of the
much-analysed quest, but simply highlighting waymarks of particular significance
and of continuing relevance for those still interested in pursuing such a
quest.
a. Scientific Criticism
4.1. The Enlightenment and Modernity
The Enlightenment is the name usually given to that period in the West when
scholars began to 'liberate' themselves from what was perceived as their enslavement
and the enslavement of knowledge to established authority and tradition.
The case of Galileo came to be archetypal: the fact that, despite his Catholic piety,
he had been put on trial for heresy in Rome, found guilty of teaching Copernican
'doctrine' (sic) and compelled to recant (1633), epitomised the hegemony
which theology was attempting to maintain over the new science and which be-
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