Worldviews provide the glasses or lens through which we interpret facts. Certain facts fit better with certain worldviews, or don't fit with them at all.
A couple of examples:
1-Parapsychological phenomena and "consciousness" fit well with personalistic (spiritualistic) wordviews, for example with theism. But they don't fit well or easily with impersonalistic, mechanistic, materialistic worldviews (e.g. scientific naturalism).
2-Moral values and free will (essential to moral responsability), being essentially connected to free and rational persons, fit well in personalistic (spiritual) worldviews, but don't fit well with mechanistic, impersonalistic, radically deterministic and materialistic worldviews (e.g. scientific naturalism).
The above considerations are pretty obvious for most objective people and don't require any special defense (in any case, in this blog I've provided a lot of arguments for them).
The important thing here is that, once you have chosen a particular worldview (and everybody have one), your worldview will exert strong pressure on you in order to be sympathetic to the facts which fit well with it, and unsympathetic (and even openly hostile) to the facts which are at variance with them. This pressure works well regardless of whether you're aware of them or not.
As example, scientific naturalists (self-proclaimed "skeptics") are unsympathetic (and even hostile) to paranormal phenomena, the afterlife, the existence and causal efficacy of consciousness, free will or the objectivity of moral values. On the contrary, theists, in general, openly admit all of these facts because they fit well, easily, in the theistic-personalistic worldview (in fact, in theism, God is a personal, spiritual, conscious, free, rational, moral, causally efficient being who has created us spiritually at his image... so naturally, these personalistic properties and facts are fully expected to exist if theism is true)
This general consideration applies with great force in the case of Jesus' scholarship. Since Jesus' life, teachings and deeds are connected to "spiritual" matters (God, exorcisms which imply the existence of souls, resurrection, etc.), the worldview of each Jesus scholar will be reflected in his assesment of the evidence for the historical Jesus (specially, in the fact that each scholar will consider as antecedently probable and hence likely to be historical any claim about Jesus which fits the scholar's own worldview; and the facts which don't fit the scholar's worldview will be considered antecedently unlikely or even impossible, regardless of the evidence).
The above is valid for all scholars and non-scholars alike (including us). So, the question is not if our worldview influences our assesment of the evidence, but rather if our worldview is justified or not.
A couple of examples:
1-Parapsychological phenomena and "consciousness" fit well with personalistic (spiritualistic) wordviews, for example with theism. But they don't fit well or easily with impersonalistic, mechanistic, materialistic worldviews (e.g. scientific naturalism).
2-Moral values and free will (essential to moral responsability), being essentially connected to free and rational persons, fit well in personalistic (spiritual) worldviews, but don't fit well with mechanistic, impersonalistic, radically deterministic and materialistic worldviews (e.g. scientific naturalism).
The above considerations are pretty obvious for most objective people and don't require any special defense (in any case, in this blog I've provided a lot of arguments for them).
The important thing here is that, once you have chosen a particular worldview (and everybody have one), your worldview will exert strong pressure on you in order to be sympathetic to the facts which fit well with it, and unsympathetic (and even openly hostile) to the facts which are at variance with them. This pressure works well regardless of whether you're aware of them or not.
As example, scientific naturalists (self-proclaimed "skeptics") are unsympathetic (and even hostile) to paranormal phenomena, the afterlife, the existence and causal efficacy of consciousness, free will or the objectivity of moral values. On the contrary, theists, in general, openly admit all of these facts because they fit well, easily, in the theistic-personalistic worldview (in fact, in theism, God is a personal, spiritual, conscious, free, rational, moral, causally efficient being who has created us spiritually at his image... so naturally, these personalistic properties and facts are fully expected to exist if theism is true)
This general consideration applies with great force in the case of Jesus' scholarship. Since Jesus' life, teachings and deeds are connected to "spiritual" matters (God, exorcisms which imply the existence of souls, resurrection, etc.), the worldview of each Jesus scholar will be reflected in his assesment of the evidence for the historical Jesus (specially, in the fact that each scholar will consider as antecedently probable and hence likely to be historical any claim about Jesus which fits the scholar's own worldview; and the facts which don't fit the scholar's worldview will be considered antecedently unlikely or even impossible, regardless of the evidence).
The above is valid for all scholars and non-scholars alike (including us). So, the question is not if our worldview influences our assesment of the evidence, but rather if our worldview is justified or not.
Examplesof worldviews' influences in Jesus scholarship:
According to New Testament scholar Dale Allison, our worldview influences both the specific topic of the resurrection as the more general topic of Jesus' life and teachings (because, after all, if the ressurrection happened, it happened in the same person who uttered such sayings and teachings, so there is a continuum in the life of Jesus which cannot be separated). Allison comments: "If judgment about the resurrection cannot be isolated from one's worldviews, it equally cannot be isolated from one's estimation of the pre-Easter Jesus" (Resurrrecting Jesus, p. 350)
Almost everybody understand this and this is also why atheistic scholars don't accept Jesus' resurrection (because the widely-recognized and agreed connection of such event with God's causation). You won't see atheist scholars accepting the resurrection, but explaining them in terms of extraterrestial intervention, a cosmic accident, parapsychology (which knows of not independent evidence for paranormal resurrections in the sense that it applies to Jesus) or any other contrieved explanation.
They know that accepting the resurrection as a fact will make the inference to God as the most likely explanation too easy, and this is incompatible with the atheist scholar's own worldview. Moreover, this is a too Christian-favourable conclusion, which they cannot accept.
Let's see two examples:
Almost everybody understand this and this is also why atheistic scholars don't accept Jesus' resurrection (because the widely-recognized and agreed connection of such event with God's causation). You won't see atheist scholars accepting the resurrection, but explaining them in terms of extraterrestial intervention, a cosmic accident, parapsychology (which knows of not independent evidence for paranormal resurrections in the sense that it applies to Jesus) or any other contrieved explanation.
They know that accepting the resurrection as a fact will make the inference to God as the most likely explanation too easy, and this is incompatible with the atheist scholar's own worldview. Moreover, this is a too Christian-favourable conclusion, which they cannot accept.
Let's see two examples:
1)The Jesus Seminar: The scholars belonging to this group are the most egregious example of scholarphip based on atheistic, secularistic, strongly anti-Christian worldview.
The book "The Five Gospel" by the Jesus Seminar is telling, because it presents clearly the working assumptions of these scholars. In the preface, you can read:
the Christ of creed and dogma . . . can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo’s telescope. The old deities and demons were swept from the skies by that remarkable glass. Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo have dismantled the mythological abodes of the gods and Satan, and bequeathed us secular heavens (preface, p. ix-x, xiii. Emphasis in blue added).
The atheistic content of that paragraph is explicit: in advance it is assumed that modern science has refuted the belief in God (and therefore, by implication, of a Jesus who could be divine). Note that this assumptions IMPLIES (prior to the examination of the evidence) a Jesus that cannot be the Son of God or be resurrected by God.
Note carefully that the assumption is not a conclusion of Jesus scholarship, but an assumption based on physical sciences (which are interpreted in naturalistic, atheistic terms).
As fully expected, they read the historical evidence about Jesus with such "secularistic glasses". And the consequence is that the Jesus which is portrayed by the Jesus Seminar is a non-eschatological Jesus, a non-divine Jesus, a non-supernaturaslistic Jesus, a non-resurrected Jesus... that is, a Jesus fully compatible with the "secular heavens" which the Seminar supports. This is what I meant when I say that the Jesus portrayed by these people is a Jesus palatable to a secular age and anti-Christian readers (because it is exactly what the latter want to hear, specially by scholars who pretent to speak in the name of "modern scholarphip"). Nonsense and charlatanism!.
Obviously, such assumption is massively question-begging: Precisely, what we want to know on the basis of the evidence is if the traditional Christian portrait of Jesus is true or false. You cannot settle these questions on the grounds of ideological assumptions about the atheistic implications of Galileo's discoveries. It's just bad scholarship which reveals an ideological agenda.
The Jesus Seminar is the CSICOP-equivalent of Jesus scholarship.
Many people sympathetic to the paranormal, but (for whatever reasons) unsympathetic to Christianity will agree with the Seminar's rejection of the "Christ of creed and dogma" (because the paranormalist in question shares the same anti-Christian assumption). But such paranormalist will reject the Seminar's rejection of the paranormal (because this rejection doesn't fit with the paranormalist's personal beliefs). This is what I meant by the pernicious influence of our worldview in our assesment of the evidence.
All the people who I have known who supports the Jesus Seminar are people with strong anti-Christian beliefs. I know of no exceptions to this rule. Perhaps for theological reasons, they don't want a Jesus like the one portraited in traditional Christianity. They don't want a Jesus who was resurrected by God, or a Jesus who is the only son of God and they fight hard to avoid these conclusions or the evidence in favor of it.
2)John Dominic Crossan: Crossan is a member of the Jesus Seminar who has his own idiosyncratic beliefs about Jesus. Philosophically, he's an ATHEIST (as I've proved in other posts).
Consistent with his atheism, Crossan cannot accept the resurrection because correctly he perceives the plausible theistic origin of such event. Since there is not God, there is no one who can raised anybody from the death. He says "I do not think that anyone, anywhere, at any time brings dead people back to life" (Jesus: A revolutionary biography, p. 35)
Obviously, Crossan's opinion is true only if God doesn't exist. But if God exists, how the hell can you say in advance that bringing dead people back to life cannot occur? How do you know that? If God exists, then presumibly He has the power to do that, and it is an open historical question whether he did it or not (e.g. in the case of Jesus).
Crossan's atheism is of a naturalistic, materialistic kind. Se says: "I myself... do not believe that there are personal, supernatural spirts" (ibid. 85)
Note that Crossan's belief implies the NON-existence of God, because God is supposed to be a "personal, supernatural" spirit.
But let that pass. Crossan's naturalism prevents him to accept, for example, the evidence for the afterlife (e.g. NDEs), because for him, not such spirts exist at all.
Now, without reading any Crossan's works, ask yourself: What kind of Jesus is going to be portraited by an atheist scholar like Crossan? A resurrected Jesus? A Jesus as the Son of God? Obviously NOT!
As expected, for Crossan, Jesus had nothing to do with the supernaturalistic portrait of him in the Gospels. He was a mere peasant Jewish Cynic-like individual who never was resurrected in any literal sense and who was not the Son of God at all (after all if God doesn't exist, he cannot have sons, isn't it?)
I must confess my astonishing in discovering how the Jesus Seminar, and prominent members of it like Crossan and Marcus Borg, have been so influential among lay readers. Among professional scholars, they tend to be see with more skepticism (even by liberal scholars), and many of their main contributions have been (I think) rejected by most scholars in the last 15 years. (Even Borg's attenuated portrait of Jesus is not accepted by most scholars, as far I can see).
Since Christian scholars also have a worldview which influences the assesment of the evidence for the historical Jesus (e.g. exerts pressure on them in order to see Jesus as the Son of God), similar considerations apply to them.
The difference, in my opinion, is that scientific naturalism is false, and theism is likely to be true. And given the evidence for the resurrection, any purely naturalistic reconstruction of the historical Jesus is likely to be false too, because if Jesus was purely a natural man as the Seminar, Crossan and Borg pretend, the resurrection is extremely unlikely to happen. (Hence, the study of the resurrection of Jesus is crucial to discover who the real Jesus was).
But if theism is true and the evidence for the resurrection is good, then antecedently we have reason to think the view of Jesus as a special individual regarding God is likely to be true. Hence, the claims that Jesus was the Son of God are, antecedently, more likely to be historical given theism + the resurrection than in naturalism + Jesus= a mere teller of stories and teacher.
With such background (functioning as worldview), you can examine the evidence for Jesus' life with an open mind. Perhaps he was the son of God, perhaps not. Perhaps the resurrection happened, perhaps not. Perhaps he was God incarnate, perhaps not. Theism allows for all these options and hence supports open-mindness which see the historical Jesus as something which have to be settle by the historical evidence.
The Jesus Seminar's atheistic naturalism and secularism, on the contrary, reject some of these options in advance, so only the evidence which supports the Seminar's view will be accepted as the most plausible facts to the reconstruction of the historical Jesus.
Since Christian scholars also have a worldview which influences the assesment of the evidence for the historical Jesus (e.g. exerts pressure on them in order to see Jesus as the Son of God), similar considerations apply to them.
The difference, in my opinion, is that scientific naturalism is false, and theism is likely to be true. And given the evidence for the resurrection, any purely naturalistic reconstruction of the historical Jesus is likely to be false too, because if Jesus was purely a natural man as the Seminar, Crossan and Borg pretend, the resurrection is extremely unlikely to happen. (Hence, the study of the resurrection of Jesus is crucial to discover who the real Jesus was).
But if theism is true and the evidence for the resurrection is good, then antecedently we have reason to think the view of Jesus as a special individual regarding God is likely to be true. Hence, the claims that Jesus was the Son of God are, antecedently, more likely to be historical given theism + the resurrection than in naturalism + Jesus= a mere teller of stories and teacher.
With such background (functioning as worldview), you can examine the evidence for Jesus' life with an open mind. Perhaps he was the son of God, perhaps not. Perhaps the resurrection happened, perhaps not. Perhaps he was God incarnate, perhaps not. Theism allows for all these options and hence supports open-mindness which see the historical Jesus as something which have to be settle by the historical evidence.
The Jesus Seminar's atheistic naturalism and secularism, on the contrary, reject some of these options in advance, so only the evidence which supports the Seminar's view will be accepted as the most plausible facts to the reconstruction of the historical Jesus.
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