William Lane Craig

In 2021 Academic Influence website ranked Craig the nineteenth most influential philosopher in the world over the previous three decades (1990-2020) and the world's fourth most influential theologian over the same period.

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 (SR). 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.

In preparation for writing a systematic philosophical theology, Craig undertook a study of the doctrine of the atonement which resulted in two books 'The Atonement' (2019) and 'Atonement and the Death of Christ' (2020).

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 (2017), volume 1 covering philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past and volume 2 the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe.

In 2016, The Best Schools named William Lane Craig among the 50 most influential living philosophers.

In 2016, Craig was named Alumnus of the Year by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Craig argues that God existed in a timeless state causally prior to creation, but has existed in a temporal state beginning with creation, by virtue of his knowledge of tensed facts and his interactions with events. He gives two arguments in support of that view. First, he says that, given his tensed view of time, God cannot be timeless once he has created a temporal universe, since, after that point, he is related to time through his interactions and through causing events in time. Second, Craig says that as a feature of his omniscience, God must know the truth related to tensed facts about the world, such as whether the statement "Today is January 15th" is true or not or what is happening right now.

In 2014, he was named alumnus of the year by Wheaton.

In 2013, with respect and compliment to his debating skills, New Atheist Sam Harris once described Craig as "the one Christian Apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists".

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 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 frame work, 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.

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. 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 Baptist 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 has written two volumes arguing for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus (1985) and Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (3rd ed., 2002). 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 joined the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1980, where he taught philosophy of religion until 1986. In 1982 he received an invitation to debate with Kai Nielsen at the University of Calgary, Canada, on the question of God's existence. Encouraged by the reception, Craig has formally debated the existence of God (and related topics such as the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus) with many prominent figures, including: Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence M. Krauss, Lewis Wolpert, Antony Flew, Sean Carroll, Sir Roger Penrose, Peter Atkins, Bart Ehrman, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Paul Draper, Gerd Lüdemann, and A. C. Grayling. He also debated with Canadian Islamic scholar Shabir Ally.

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 commenced doctoral studies in philosophy at the University of Birmingham, 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 Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979), a defense of the argument he first encountered in Hackett's work. 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 Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München 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 (1985).

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 Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University and research professor of philosophy at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology. 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. While a student at East Peoria Community High School (1963–1967), Craig competed in debate and won the state championship in oratory. In September 1965, his junior year, he became a Christian, and after graduating from high school, attended Wheaton College, majoring in communications. Craig graduated in 1971 and the following year married his wife Jan, whom he met on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ. They have two grown children and reside in suburban Atlanta, Georgia.