William Lane Craig (/kreɪɡ/;[2] born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author, and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism.

[15][16] He attended East Peoria Community High School from 1963 to 1967,[17] where he competed in debate and won the state championship in oratory.

[23] In 1973, Craig entered the program in philosophy of religion at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School north of Chicago, where he studied under Norman Geisler.

[24][25][7] In 1975, Craig began doctoral studies in philosophy at the University of Birmingham in England,[26] writing on the cosmological argument under the direction of John Hick.

[7] Craig was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in 1978 from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation[29] to pursue research on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus under the direction of Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich in Germany.

[30][31] Craig joined the faculty of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois in 1980, where he taught philosophy of religion until 1986.

[32] 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,[33] where he was a visiting scholar at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Louvain) in Belgium until 1994.

[a][57][58] While the Kalam originated in medieval Islamic philosophy, Craig added appeals to scientific and philosophical ideas in the argument's defense.

[59][67][68] 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.

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.

[82] Protestant-Molinism, such as Craig's, first entered Protestant theology through two anti-Calvinist thinkers: Jacobus Arminius and Conrad Vorstius.

[83] Molinists such as Craig appeal to this idea to reconcile the perceived conflict between God's providence and foreknowledge with human free will.

[84] Craig also appeals to Molinism in his discussions of the inspiration of scripture, Christian exclusivism, the perseverance of the Saints, and missionary evangelism.

[91] He applies an evaluative framework developed by philosopher of history C. Behan McCullagh[92] to examine various theoretical explanations proposed for these events.

Second, he defends the A-theory from empirical challenges arising from the standard interpretation of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (SR).

[99] 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.

[112] Craig has additionally argued that even if one were to grant that these references were being used as in a word-world relation, that fictionalism is a viable explanation of their use; in particular pretense theory, according to which statements about abstract objects are expressions of make-believe, imagined to be true, even if literally false.

[114] Also as a preliminary study for his systematic philosophical theology Craig explored the biblical commitment to and scientific credibility of an original human pair who were the universal progenitors of mankind.

[115] Following the Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen, Craig argues on the basis of various family resemblances that Genesis 1-11 plausibly belongs to the genre of mytho-history, which aims to recount historical persons and events in the figurative and often fantastic language of myth.

[116] Craig is a critic of metaphysical naturalism,[117] New Atheism,[118] and prosperity theology,[119][non-primary source needed] as well as a defender of Reformed epistemology.

[132] According to Nathan Schneider, "[many] professional philosophers know about him only vaguely, but in the field of philosophy of religion, [Craig's] books and articles are among the most cited".