William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author, and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism.

He is a professor of philosophy at Houston Christian University and at the Talbot School of Theology of Biola 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.

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, majoring 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.

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.

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.

Out of this study came his first book, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979), a defense of the argument he first encountered in Hackett's work.

Craig joined the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1980, where he taught philosophy of religion until 1986.

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 (1985).

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 (Louvain) in Belgium until 1994.

He helped revitalize the Evangelical Philosophical Society and served as its president from 1996 to 2005.

Craig served as president of the Philosophy of Time Society from 1999 to 2006.

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.

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:

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 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.

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.