William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig (b. 1949) is an American analytic philosopher of religion and evangelical Christian apologist. He earned a PhD in philosophy under John Hick at the University of Birmingham (1977) and a doctorate in theology under Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich (1984). He has held research positions at Talbot School of Theology and Houston Christian University. Craig is best known for reviving and defending the Kalam cosmological argument, drawing on medieval Islamic kalam (especially al-Ghazali) and contemporary big bang cosmology to argue that the universe has a transcendent personal cause. His broader program defends classical theism through a cumulative case including the fine-tuning argument, a moral argument, the ontological argument, and a historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus. In philosophical theology he has developed an A-theory of time, a Molinist account of divine middle knowledge reconciling foreknowledge with libertarian freedom, and, more controversially, a neo-Apollinarian Christology. Craig is also widely known for his formal public debates with Antony Flew, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, and others. His positions have drawn substantive critique: Wes Morriston, Graham Oppy, Adolf Grünbaum, and Quentin Smith have contested the Kalam argument's premises and its theological inferences, while his views on divine command ethics and Old Testament violence have prompted ongoing debate among theists and secular philosophers alike.