William Lane Craig

Life

Craig was born in 1949 in Peoria, Illinois, and grew up in Keokuk, Iowa. In high school he competed in debate and won the state oratory championship. In September 1965, as a sixteen-year-old high school student, he heard the gospel for the first time and became a Christian.

He studied at Wheaton College (B.A., 1971) and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A.). He then researched the cosmological argument under John Hick at the University of Birmingham in England, earning a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1977. At the University of Munich in Germany, under Wolfhart Pannenberg, he studied the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus that emerged during the deist controversy (deism being the view that God created the world but does not intervene in it), earning a doctorate in theology in 1984. He married Jan in 1972.

His positions have included the following:

• Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (1980–1986)
• Professor, Westmont College (1986–1987)
• Researcher, University of Louvain, Belgium (1987–1994)
• Research Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University (1996–2020)
• Professor of Philosophy, Houston Christian University (2014–2024)

He is currently Emeritus Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology.

Ministry and Contributions

Craig's best-known contribution is his development and defense of the kalam cosmological argument. The term kalam refers to a tradition of medieval Islamic theology. The argument proceeds in three steps:

• Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
• The universe began to exist.
• Therefore, the universe has a cause.

With the publication of The Kalām Cosmological Argument in 1979, Craig brought this argument back into contemporary philosophical discussion. He has also devoted considerable effort to arguing for the resurrection of Jesus on historical grounds. He is further known as a proponent of Molinism, which seeks to reconcile divine foreknowledge with human freedom.

Craig has held public debates with atheists such as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, and A. C. Grayling, and he founded the web-based apologetics ministry Reasonable Faith (ReasonableFaith.org). He has written or edited more than forty books, of which Reasonable Faith (1994) and On Guard are regarded as his major works. In 2016 the educational website The Best Schools named him one of the fifty most influential living philosophers.

Influence on the Korean Church

Craig has been introduced to Korea chiefly through translations of his books and recordings of his debates. Korean translations include the following:

• Bogeumjuui byeonjeunghak (Evangelical Apologetics), a translation of On Guard (Christian Literature Crusade, 2019)
• Yesu buhwal nonjaeng (The Debate over the Resurrection of Jesus) and Sinjeongnon nonjaeng (The Debate over Theodicy), coauthored with N. T. Wright and others (Saemulgyeol Plus)
• Yeoksajeok adameul chujeokhada, a translation of In Quest of the Historical Adam (Saemulgyeol Plus, 2023)

Through these books he has become known among seminary students and church members interested in arguments for the existence of God and the apologetic defense of the resurrection.

Assessment

Within evangelicalism, Craig is regarded as a leading apologist who has defended the Christian faith using the rigorous methods of analytic philosophy. At the same time, his arguments have met with objections:

• His atheist debate opponents have challenged the premises of the kalam argument, particularly the premise that the universe had a beginning and the inference that its cause is a personal God.
• The Molinism he endorses diverges from the Calvinist tradition, which emphasizes God's sovereign predestination.
• His recent work on the historicity of Adam has become a subject of discussion even within evangelicalism in connection with the question of creation and evolution.