William Lane Craig


William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author, and theologian. He is a visiting professor of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology of Biola University. Until 2024, he was also a professor of philosophy at Houston Christian University.
Craig has updated and defended the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. He has also published work where he argues in favor of the historical plausibility of the resurrection of Jesus. His study of divine aseity and Platonism culminated with his book God Over All.

Early life and education

Craig was born August 23, 1949, in Peoria, Illinois, to Mallory and Doris Craig. He attended East Peoria Community High School from 1963 to 1967, where he competed in debate and won the state championship in oratory. In September 1965, his junior year, he became a Christian.
After graduating from high school, Craig attended Wheaton College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in communications. He graduated in 1971 and married his wife, Jan, whom he met on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ, the next year. They have two grown children and reside in suburban Atlanta, Georgia.
In 1973, Craig entered the program in philosophy of religion at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School north of Chicago, where he studied under Norman Geisler. He received two master's degrees, one in philosophy of religion, and the other in church history and the history of Christian thought. In 1975, Craig began doctoral studies in philosophy at the University of Birmingham in England, writing on the cosmological argument under the direction of John Hick. He was awarded a doctorate in 1977. Out of this study came his first book, The Kalām Cosmological Argument, a defense of the argument he first encountered in theologian Stuart Hackett's work on the same topic.
Craig was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in 1978 from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to pursue research on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus under the direction of Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich in Germany. His studies in Munich under Pannenberg's supervision led to a second doctorate, this one in theology, awarded in 1984 with the publication of his doctoral thesis, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus During the Deist Controversy.

Career

Craig joined the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois in 1980, where he taught philosophy of religion until 1986.
After a one-year stint at Westmont College on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, Craig moved in 1987 with his wife and two young children back to Europe, where he was a visiting scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium until 1994. At that time, Craig joined the Department of Philosophy and Ethics at Talbot School of Theology in suburban Los Angeles as a research professor of philosophy, a position he currently holds, and he went on to become a professor of philosophy at Houston Christian University in 2014. In 2017, Biola University created a permanent faculty position and endowed chair, the William Lane Craig Endowed Chair in Philosophy, in honor of Craig's academic contributions.
Craig served as president of the Philosophy of Time Society from 1999 to 2006. He helped revitalize the Evangelical Philosophical Society and served as its president from 1996 to 2005. In the mid-2000s, Craig established the online Christian apologetics ministry ReasonableFaith.org.
Craig has authored or edited over forty books and over two hundred articles published in professional philosophy and theology journals, including: The Journal of Philosophy, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,'' Philosophical Studies, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Faith and Philosophy, Erkenntnis, and American Philosophical Quarterly.''

Philosophical and theological views

Kalam cosmological argument

Craig has written and spoken in defense of a version of the cosmological argument called the Kalam cosmological argument. While the Kalam originated in medieval Islamic philosophy, Craig added appeals to scientific and philosophical ideas in the argument's defense. Craig's work has resulted in contemporary interest in the argument, and in cosmological arguments in general.
Craig formulates his version of the argument as follows:
  1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
  2. The universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
Craig's defense of the argument mainly focuses on the second premise, which he offers several arguments for. For example, Craig appeals to Hilbert's example of an infinite hotel to argue that actually infinite collections are impossible, and thus the past is finite and has a beginning. In another argument, Craig says that the series of events in time is formed by a process in which each moment is added to history in succession. According to Craig, this process can never produce an actually infinite collection of events, but at best a potentially infinite one. On this basis, he argues that the past is finite and has a beginning.
Craig also appeals to various physical theories to support the argument's second premise, such as the standard Big Bang model of cosmic origins and certain implications of the second law of thermodynamics.
The Kalam argument concludes that the universe had a cause, but Craig further argues that the cause must be a person. First, Craig argues that the best way to explain the origin of a temporal effect with a beginning from an eternally existing cause is if that cause is a personal agent endowed with free will. Second, the only candidates for a timeless, spaceless, immaterial being are abstract objects like numbers or unembodied minds; but abstract objects are causally effete. Third, Craig uses Richard Swinburne's separation of causal explanation; causal explanation can be given in terms either of initial conditions and laws of nature or of a personal agent and its volitions; but a first physical state of the universe cannot be explained in terms of initial conditions and natural laws.
Craig's arguments to support the Kalam argument have been discussed and debated by a variety of commentators, including Adolf Grünbaum, Quentin Smith, Wes Morriston, Graham Oppy, Andrew Loke, Robert C. Koons, and Alexander Pruss. Many of these papers are contained in the two-volume anthology The Kalām Cosmological Argument, volume 1 covering philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past and volume 2 the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe.

Divine omniscience

Craig is a proponent of Molinism, an idea first formulated by the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina according to which God possesses foreknowledge of which free actions each person would perform under every possible circumstance, a kind of knowledge that is sometimes termed "middle knowledge". Protestant-Molinism, such as Craig's, first entered Protestant theology through two anti-Calvinist thinkers: Jacobus Arminius and Conrad Vorstius. Molinists such as Craig appeal to this idea to reconcile the perceived conflict between God's providence and foreknowledge with human free will. The idea is that, by relying on middle knowledge, God does not interfere with anyone's free will, instead choosing which circumstances to actualize given a complete understanding of how people would freely choose to act in response. Craig also appeals to Molinism in his discussions of the inspiration of scripture, Christian exclusivism, the perseverance of the Saints, and missionary evangelism.

Resurrection of Jesus

Craig has written two volumes arguing for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus and Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus. In the former volume, Craig describes the history of the discussion, including David Hume's arguments against the identification of miracles. The latter volume is an exegetical study of the New Testament material pertinent to the resurrection.
Craig structures his arguments for the historicity of the resurrection under 3 headings:
  1. The tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his female followers on the Sunday after his crucifixion.
  2. Various individuals and groups experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death.
  3. The earliest disciples came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead despite strong predispositions to the contrary.
Craig argues that the best explanation of these three events is a literal resurrection. He applies an evaluative framework developed by philosopher of history C. Behan McCullagh to examine various theoretical explanations proposed for these events. From that framework, he rejects alternative theories such as Gerd Lüdemann's hallucination hypothesis, the conspiracy hypothesis, and Heinrich Paulus or Friedrich Schleiermacher's apparent death hypothesis as lacking explanatory scope, explanatory power, and sufficient historical plausibility. In 1996 Craig participated in the Resurrection Summit, a meeting held at St. Joseph's Seminary, New York, in order to discuss the resurrection of Jesus. Papers from the summit were later compiled and published in the book The Resurrection. An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus, edited by S.T Davis, D. Kendall and G. O'Collins.

Philosophy of time

Craig defends a presentist version of the A-theory of time. According to this theory, the present exists, but the past and future do not. Additionally, he holds that there are tensed facts, such as it is now lunchtime, which cannot be reduced to or identified with tenseless facts of the form it is lunchtime at noon on February 10, 2020. According to this theory, presentness is a real aspect of time, and not merely a projection of our thought and talk about time. He raises several defenses of this theory, two of which are especially notable. First, he criticizes J. M. E. McTaggart's argument that the A-theory is incoherent, suggesting that McTaggart's argument begs the question by covertly presupposing the B-theory. Second, he defends the A-theory from empirical challenges arising from the standard interpretation of Einstein's special theory of relativity. He responds to this challenge by advocating a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of SR which is empirically equivalent to the standard interpretation, and which is consistent with the A-theory and with absolute simultaneity. Craig criticizes the standard interpretation of SR on the grounds that it is based on a discredited positivist epistemology. Moreover, he claims that the assumption of positivism invalidates the appeal to SR made by opponents of the A-theory.