God’s Goodness, Divine Purpose, and the Meaning of Life

Abstract

The divine purpose theory (DPT)—according to which that human life is meaningful to the extent that it fulfills some purpose or plan to which God has directed us—encounters well-known Euthyphro problems.  Some theists attempt to avoid these problems by appealing to God’s essential goodness, à la the modified divine command theory (DCT) of Adams and Alston.  However, recent criticisms of the modified DCT show its conception of God’s goodness to be incoherent; and these criticisms can be shown to present an analogous set of problems for the DPT.  Further, the argument can be extended to any account of meaningfulness according to which the value of what humans do can only be conferred by God.  Thus, it would seem that there is no tenable version of the view that meaningfulness is conferred on human life by some act or attitude of God’s.