William Lane Craig’s Departure from Concordism destroys the Kalam Cosmological Argument

In his controversial and dense work, In Quest of the Historical Adam, Dr. William Lane Craig attempts a precarious balancing act.

For decades, Craig was the champion of "Kalam," a cosmological argument that uses the beginning of the universe to prove a Transcendent Cause. Yet, in this book, he pivots toward a hermeneutic that many of his long-time followers find jarring. By classifying the opening chapters of Genesis as mytho-history, Craig moves decisively away from concordism, the attempt to harmonize the biblical narrative with scientific data, and in doing so, creates a profound tension with his previous philosophical legacy.

The Rejection of Concordism

Concordism is the belief that the Bible and modern science, when properly understood, will provide a unified account of physical reality. A concordist looks at the "days" of Genesis and tries to find their equivalent in geological epochs or Big Bang cosmology.

Craig, however, argues that concordism is a failed enterprise. He asserts that the author of Genesis was not trying to provide a "scientific" account of the world's origin. Instead, Craig relegates Genesis 1–11 to the genre of mytho-history. This term implies that while the stories are grounded in a historical core (the "history" part), they are "clothed" in the language of myth containing "fantastical" elements that were never intended to be taken literally.

For Craig, trying to find the Big Bang in Genesis 1:1 or the details of biology in the creation of Adam is a "category error." He believes the text is intentionally figurative. By doing this, he essentially "protects" the Bible from scientific falsification, but he does so by stripping the text of its physical, propositional claims about how the world came to be.

Genesis 1:1 and the "Fantastical" of Mytho-History

When Craig applies the "mytho-history" label to Genesis 1:1, he isn't calling it a lie, but he is categorizing it alongside other Ancient Near Eastern creation myths. He argues that the narrative of God speaking the world into existence in six literal days is a literary device.

To the traditionalist, this feels like a retreat into "mythology." If the description of the Spirit hovering over the waters or the specific sequence of light and firmament are merely mythic tropes, the historical "hook" becomes incredibly thin. Craig acknowledges that these chapters contain "fantastical elements" such as a talking serpent, magical trees, and extreme human lifespans which he uses as evidence that the genre is not "straight history." By relegating these to the realm of myth, he avoids the need to explain them scientifically, but he also severs the link between the biblical word and the material world.

The Kalam Argument: A House Divided?

The most stinging critique of Craig’s new direction is how it interacts with his life’s work: the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The Kalam argument is built on two simple premises:

• Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

• The universe began to exist.

• Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Craig has spent forty years using modern astrophysics, the expansion of the universe and the Second Law of Thermodynamics to prove the second premise. He argued brilliantly that science confirms the biblical claim that the universe had a beginning (t=0).

However, by moving toward mytho-history, critics argue that Craig is relegating his own "history of the Kalam" to the trash bin. If Genesis 1:1 is mytho-history and not a literal, historical report of the beginning of the space-time manifold, then the biblical foundation for the Kalam argument becomes symbolic rather than factual.

The irony is palpable: Craig uses science to prove the universe began (supporting the logic of Kalam), but then tells us the biblical account of that beginning is a mythical narrative that shouldn't be read for scientific accuracy. If the "Beginning" in Genesis is a mythic trope, why did Craig spend decades trying to prove it was a scientific fact?

The Cost of the Quest

By abandoning concordism, Craig risks a form of intellectual dualism. In his philosophical work, he demands rigorous, literal evidence for a beginning; in his biblical work, he allows the account of that beginning to drift into the "fantastical."

While Craig believes he is saving the "Historical Adam" by placing him 750,000 years in the past as a Homo heidelbergensis, he may be losing the very bridge he built between faith and reason. If the foundations of Genesis are mytho-history, the "brilliant history" of the Kalam argument which sought to show that the Bible was right about the beginning of the world suddenly lacks a scriptural anchor that is as "real" as the science used to defend it.