The Work
William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics was first published by Crossway Books in 1984 and has gone through three editions (1984, 1994, 2008), with the third edition being the most widely used. It is the standard textbook of evangelical philosophical apologetics, adopted in hundreds of seminary and university courses across the English-speaking world. The book synthesizes arguments from natural theology (the existence of God), natural theology (the existence of God, fine-tuning, moral values), and historical argumentation (the resurrection of Jesus) into a cumulative case for Christian theism that Craig has developed and defended in over 100 public debates with philosophers, scientists, and atheists.
The book's argument is organized around five major apologetic concerns: the relationship between reason and faith (engaging both evidentialist and Reformed epistemological models); the existence of God (the cosmological and teleological arguments); the problem of historical knowledge and miracles; the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus; and the exclusivity of Christianity in a pluralistic world. Craig's goal is to demonstrate that Christian belief is not merely compatible with intellectual rigor but that the available evidence - philosophical, cosmological, and historical - provides positive grounds for Christian theism.
Biblical Engagement
Genesis 1:1 ('In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth') provides the philosophical premise for Craig's most important original contribution to contemporary philosophy of religion: the revival and development of the Kalam cosmological argument. The argument runs: whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore the universe has a cause. Craig argues that this cause must be timeless, spaceless, immaterial, and enormously powerful - and that the most plausible description of such a cause is a personal Creator, consistent with the God of Genesis 1:1. The 'Kalam' in the argument's name refers to the medieval Islamic philosophical tradition (particularly Al-Ghazali) from which Craig revived it, but its biblical grounding is explicit: the argument vindicates the monotheistic creatio ex nihilo of Genesis 1 against both the infinite regress of an eternal universe and the impersonal necessity of naturalistic cosmology.
Psalm 19:1 ('The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork') is the biblical foundation for Craig's treatment of the fine-tuning of the universe as evidence for a designing intelligence. The anthropic fine-tuning of the physical constants of the universe - the precise values of the gravitational constant, the electromagnetic force, the cosmological constant, and dozens of other parameters - to values that permit the existence of carbon-based life is presented as evidence that the universe was designed with intelligent life in mind. Craig argues that the hypothesis of a personal Creator is the most plausible explanation for this remarkable coincidence.
1 Corinthians 15:3-8 ('For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures; And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve') provides the primary textual evidence for Craig's historical argument for the resurrection. Craig argues that 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 contains a pre-Pauline creed that can be dated to within two to five years of the crucifixion - making it the earliest account of the resurrection appearances and a document of extraordinary historical value. His four-fact historical case for the resurrection - the burial of Jesus in a known tomb; the discovery of the empty tomb by women disciples; the post-mortem appearances to individuals and groups; the origin of the disciples' belief in the resurrection - draws extensively on this passage and on the Gospel narratives.
Romans 2:14-15 ('For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts') is the biblical grounding for Craig's moral argument for God's existence. Craig argues that the existence of objective moral values - values that are binding on all human beings regardless of their cultural context - requires a transcendent moral lawgiver. The Pauline text supports the premise that moral knowledge is universal: even Gentiles who have not received the biblical revelation recognize the basic moral requirements that Paul identifies with 'the law written on the heart.'
Author and Context
William Lane Craig was born on August 23, 1949, in Peoria, Illinois. He was converted at the age of sixteen through the ministry of a high-school friend, and his intellectual formation was shaped by the apologetics tradition of C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. He studied at Wheaton College (B.A.), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A., M.Div.), the University of Birmingham (Ph.D. in philosophy of religion, under John Hick), and the University of Munich (D.Theol. in theology). He has held positions at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Talbot School of Theology, and is currently a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot.
Craig's academic specialty is the philosophy of time and the philosophy of space-time, but his public profile has been defined by his work in apologetics and his public debates. His 1988 debate with Antony Flew (who was then the leading philosophical defender of atheism in the English-speaking world) was widely regarded as a turning point in the apologetics landscape; subsequent debates with Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss, and Bart Ehrman have reached millions of viewers through recordings and online distribution.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument
Craig's most important original philosophical contribution is his revival and defense of the Kalam cosmological argument, first fully developed in The Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979) and summarized in Reasonable Faith. The argument's second premise - that the universe began to exist - is supported by both philosophical arguments against an actual infinite past and by scientific evidence from the Big Bang cosmology. Craig argues that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (2003) - which demonstrates that any universe that has been expanding on average throughout its history cannot be past-eternal - provides scientific confirmation of what the Kalam argument demonstrates philosophically: the universe had a beginning.
Critical Reception
Craig's work has received extensive critical engagement from both admirers and opponents. Among philosophers of religion, his arguments have been engaged seriously by Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, Graham Oppy, and J.L. Mackie. His defenders have praised the rigor of his argumentation, his mastery of the relevant scientific and philosophical literature, and his ability to present complex philosophical arguments to general audiences. His critics have argued that his arguments contain technical flaws (particularly in the Kalam argument's treatment of infinity and in his historical argument for the resurrection) and that his apologetic framework presupposes rather than establishes the Christian God.
Within evangelical scholarship, Craig has been criticized by Reformed epistemologists (following Alvin Plantinga) who argue that belief in God does not require evidential justification and by more conservative evangelicals who are uncomfortable with the degree to which his apologetics is shaped by secular philosophical standards.
Theological Significance
The book's significance lies in its demonstration that evangelical Christianity can engage the highest levels of contemporary academic philosophy without abandoning its confessional commitments. Craig's integration of Plantinga's Reformed epistemology with the evidentialist tradition of natural theology created a synthesis that has dominated evangelical philosophical apologetics for three decades.
Legacy
Craig's influence on evangelical intellectual culture has been transformative. By making sophisticated philosophical argument available to a general evangelical audience, he contributed to a significant upgrading of the intellectual culture of American evangelicalism in the 1990s and 2000s. His debates - many of which are available free online - have been viewed tens of millions of times and have shaped the apologetics training of an entire generation of evangelical students.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Genesis 1:1 (creation), Psalm 19:1-4 (creation declaring God's glory), Romans 1:19-20 (creation as evidence), Romans 2:12-16 (natural moral knowledge), 1 Corinthians 15:1-20 (the resurrection as gospel), and Acts 17:22-34 (Paul's apologetic at Athens - the model of engagement with secular philosophy).
Further Reading
- William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (2009) - the most comprehensive academic collection of natural theology arguments, to which Craig contributed two major essays. - Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (2000) - the Reformed epistemological alternative to Craig's evidentialist approach, with which Craig's work is in creative dialogue. - Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (1998) - a more popular presentation of the historical apologetics arguments that Craig develops at greater philosophical depth.