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>>Naland: And my contention in the article is that this is the most critiČcal, the most
important claimed event in world history. You know. Forget World War I, World War II...
>>Ankerberg: Yes.
>>Montgomery: Right on! Right on!
>>Naland: ...and if this is the event, the pivotal event of world history, why can we
not pick up and see that on a certain day, at a certain place, that Jesus appeared to
certain people? Now, we have a whole mishmash of...
>>Montgomery: Listen, there is no correlaČtion between the importance of an event and the
amount of historical description of the event. That is to say, the event that you referred
to earlier -- Constantine's success in turning the Roman Empire into an officially Christian
situation...
>>Montgomery: The amount of historical data we have concerning the events of the Milvian
Bridge and so forth are relatively slight. Likewise, in the case of Charlemagne's activity.
You can't judge, first of all, the importance of the event, and then say "I'm not going
to believe the event unless I have a kind of transcript of every single aspect of the
event presented uniformly by all the people who had contact with it."
>>Naland: But you believe...
>>Montgomery: All you need is probability. All you need is good, reasonable historical
probability. And that's determined by the way in which you establish any other events.
>>Naland: If I'm not incorrect, you believe that God does intervene in history...
>>Montgomery: Right on!
>>Naland: ...and that in this case He intervened in history...
>>Montgomery: Yes.
>>Naland: ...and that He chose witnesses?
>>Montgomery: Right.
>>Naland: Okay. Well, why couldn't the witnesses that He chose give us witness that made sense?
That was not contradictoČry...
>>Montgomery: They aren't contradictory, but you asked, "Why didn't God choose witnesses
that would give us stuff that `makes sense'?"
>>Naland: Right.
>>Montgomery: Now, this is really imporČtant...
>>Naland: Right.
>>Montgomery: ...and you'll pardon me if I'm awfully direct with you. What you have done
is to establish a criterion, a personČal criteriČon, as to what God Almighty should
have done in order to bring you to believe in these events. And because God Almighty
doesn't do what you expect Him to do, therefore, you say, "I don't have to take these events
seriously." What you ought to be doing is this. You ought to be asking yourself, "What
kind of historical evidence do I require when I handle the general events of human history?
How much data, and what kind of data do I need to determine that Lincoln was shot in
Ford's Theater and didn't slip on a banana peel in Peoria?" And when you analyze those
data, you do not find that all the witnesses give everything. You'll find one witness giving
one thing, one giving another, but the confluence of data point and lead you to a certain conclusion.
It isn't one hundred percent certain; it's a probability concluČsion, but it's on that
kind of reasoning that you base all of your ordinary activi-ties of life.