Imago Dei and the Meaning of Life (I)

This is a guest post by Peter Lupu. Lightly edited by BV with his comments in blue.

In a post titled Imago Dei, (December 4, 2009), Bill clarifies the meaning of this important theistic concept. However, in his typical way, he does much more. He offers us guidelines to see and appreciate the broader implication of a proper understanding of imago Dei. In the present post I shall confine myself to the task of fleshing out these implications, as I understand them. In subsequent posts, and with the gracious cooperation of Bill, I will try to wrestle with these implications to the best of my abilities. I should make clear at the outset that I agree with Bill’s exposition of the meaning and significance of imago Dei within a theistic conception. If there is anything with which I disagree, or have some reservations, is the principal conclusion Bill draws from the concept of imago Dei regarding the meaning of life.

Peter and I thus agree that, within a theistic framework, imago Dei must be interpreted to mean that the image and likeness is spiritual, not material.  Man was not created in God's material image, since he has none; he was created in God's spiritual image.  But this implies that what is essential to man is not his animal body which presumably can be accounted for in the naturalistic terms of evolutionary biology, but his spirit or consciousness.  The question of the meaning of human life has an irreducibly subjective tenor: it is about the meaning, if any, of the consciousness that we experience ourselves as possessing.

Here is the basic thesis that will be the focus of my musings:

The paradox is that when atheistic man tries to stand on his own two feet, declaring himself independent of God, at that moment he is next to nothing, a transient flash in the cosmic pan. But when man accepts his creaturely status as imago Dei, thereby accepting his radical dependence, at that moment he becomes more than a speck of cosmic dust slated for destruction. Thus Jean-Paul Sartre had it precisely backwards in thinking that if God exists then man is nothing; it is rather that man is something only if God exists. For if man exists in a godless universe he is but a cosmic fluke and all the existentialist posturing in the world won't change the fact. (Bill V, Imago Dei, December 4, 2009)

Bill’s thesis is the following:

(T). The existence of persons has an objective meaning only if God exists and God graced them with such meaning.

Why? Well, the intuition that supports (T) is this: “…if man exists in a godless universe he is but a cosmic fluke and all the existentialist posturing in the world won't change the fact.” (ibid) Not only is man’s origin in a godless universe a “cosmic fluke,” but the significance of his individual existence, the existence of his whole species, and the existence of life itself has no meaning, purpose, or value in a godless, material, and indifferent universe in which these lofty concepts have but a subjective and temporary significance. Once the brief spark of light emitted by our existence is extinguished forever, it is gone for good and not a single hint, echo, or trace shall remain. Imagine a parallel universe exactly identical to our own except that life and human existence never evolved. Except for a cosmic moment, our own universe is no different qualitatively than the parallel one.  And that cosmic moment ripe and pungent, bursting with meaning, will be all gone without a trace as if it was never there, just like in that parallel universe I invited you to imagine in which it was never there.

Bill recognizes only two objective positions about the meaning of life that make sense: the divine position and the absurd position. The divine position maintains that objective meaning can flow only from the spring of a divine being provided such a being intends to share this objective meaning with his creations. Imago Dei is the sign that encapsulates within itself the evidence that God intended to share and that we are blessed with the means to find that out. Acknowledging in our imago Dei God’s intent to share and recognizing within its contours the presence of the means to discover this objective meaning is unveiling the secret to the meaning of our life. We either see it or we don’t.   

The absurd position (the “paradox” as Bill calls this) is that meaning flows from our own subjective existence and we make of it what we choose. However, this flood of subjective meaning together with our efforts to make of it what we will is itself an insignificant occurrence within the vast span of meaningless and indifferent universe. For if we are nothing but a momentary and passing coincidence conceived by an indifferent universe, then ultimately so must be our very being, all its fruits, and the actions stemming from it. A momentary and passing coincidence cannot bring into existence anything that transcends its nature. Therefore, it can only invent (Wiggins!), or better yet, manufacture for itself a subjective or perhaps an inter-subjective sense of its own transcendent meaning. This is the grand production of a myth that ultimately and tragically is tantamount to nothing but the desperate cry of a creature attempting to wrestle the impossible; a cry which echoes throughout a deaf universe and is, therefore, occasionally noticed, and can be so noticed, only by the very same insignificant creature (The Myth of Sisyphus minus the gods).

As I see it, the subjectivist view of existential meaning is deeply incoherent. To be blunt, anyone who answers the meaning question by saying ‘The meaning of one’s life is the meaning one gives it’ simply has not understood the question. The question arises concretely when one begins to doubt the value of the dominant projects and purposes one has been pursuing. A novelist, a stockbroker, a philosopher, a professional chess player, even if successful, can come to doubt the point of being a novelist, a stockbroker, a philosopher, a professional chess player. ‘Have I wasted my life helping the rich get richer?’ ‘Have I dribbled my life away among bloodless abstractions in an illusory quest for an unattainable knowledge?’ ‘Am I squandering my life’s energies on a mere game?’ These are possible questions. Even if one has been entirely successful in achieving one’s life-goals, these questions can and do arise. They are not questions about success or failure within a life-plan but questions about the success or failure of a life-plan as a whole. Anyone who sincerely asks himself whether he is wasting or has wasted his life presupposes by his very posing of the question that there are objective factors that bear on the question of the meaning of life. To raise the question is to presuppose that existential meaning cannot be identified with agent-conferred meaning. One who wonders whether he is wasting his life perhaps does not thereby presuppose that there is exactly one recipe for a meaningful life applicable to all, but he does presuppose that there are one or more objectively meaningful uses of a human life. He presupposes that one can throw away one’s life, waste one’s time, fail to live a meaningful life. But if the meaning of one’s life is the meaning one gives it, then one cannot fail to live a meaningful life since any meaning is as good as any other. To tell such a person that it suffices for his life to have meaning that he invest it with meaning shows a failure to understand the question. The person can respond with an analog of G. E. Moore’s Open Question Argument: "You tell me that the meaning of my life is identical to the style of life I choose as meaningful. But is this style of life truly meaningful?" The fact that the question remains open even after the subjectivist answer has been proffered shows that the subjectivist answer is no answer at all.

Within the divine position, imago Dei embodies God’s willingness to share meaning. Imago Dei is the spring of God’s gift of meaning, imprinted upon our being, which in turn bestows meaning upon everything else we are, can be, think, or do. Imago Dei  is the sole evidence we can ever muster that the subjective sense of our meaning is not the invention of a myth, a myth that will face an insignificant end just as surely as we will without it. And this is so because in the end, imago Dei is our sole link to the only possible source and guarantor of objective meaning, God himself.  

Within the absurd position, by contrast, there is nothing to bestow meaning upon us from the outside. And the subjective meaning we ourselves manufacture and reify into the myth of objective meaning lacks any objective standing within the ultimate reality of an indifferent universe. In the absence of an ultimate guarantor, imago Dei  is itself a myth, a myth manufactured by us in order to cope with the absurdity and ultimate meaninglessness of life.  

It would be better to say that in the absence of an ultimate guarantor there is no imago Dei: there cannot be an image of God without God.  It is worth noting that the genitive construction 'image of God' is a subjective, not an objective, genitive.

Bill’s conclusion: “when atheistic man tries to stand on his own two feet, declaring himself independent of God, at that moment he is next to nothing, a transient flash in the cosmic pan.”  The absurd position, thus, cannot be escaped by atheist man. His liberation from God earned him the price of the absurdity of his own existence. Bill without so much as asking invites you nonetheless to ponder this question. Which one is preferable: the absurdity of life as an inevitable consequence of the atheist godless universe or the Imago Dei that encapsulates the guarantee for a rich, lasting, and meaningful life that can be granted only by a God? Faced only with these two options, I know which one I would prefer, ceteris paribus.

Does Bill have an argument that compels us to accept that we face these and only these two options? He does not state such an argument in this post (for the post is not about this question), but he has one. It is this: something cannot spring out of nothing (or the Principle of Sufficient Reason). The something here, i.e., meaning,  is different in principle from hunks of indifferent matter and their properties. Therefore, if a hunk of matter has meaning, it is because something external to it and very unlike it bestowed meaning upon it. But a bestower of meaning can bestow meaning only if it already possesses such meaning and it has the power to confer it upon something else. We appear to possess meaning and, thus, have the power to bestow it upon something else. But, now you have to ask: how did we acquire meaning? In a godless universe we are nothing but a hunk of matter (albeit a very complicated one). Thus, whatever it is that we produce on our own cannot be qualitatively (in principle) different than the goings on with all other matter around us. Therefore, the subjective meaning we produce has no objective significance as meaning:  i.e., it is no different in principle than that which other hunks of matter produce throughout the vast space of a godless universe. And just like anything else in such a universe, it will pass too without a trace leaving behind nothing but more hunks of matter. Subjective meaning, thus, is itself nothing but an aspect of matter within a godless universe. Therefore, since we cannot produce objective meaning ourselves, and since something such as objective meaning cannot spring out of anything that is unlike it, it follows that: either there is a God which is inherently endowed with objective meaning and can confer it on another, if it so wills (the divine position), or there is no such a God and, therefore, there is only subjective meaning which has no objective standing, since it is no different in principle than that which is already present in one form or another by hunks of matter (the absurd position).  

In the preceding paragraph, Peter misrepresents my position somewhat.  Just as there cannot be value without one or more valuers, there cannot be meaning without meaners, original Sinn-ers, if you will.  The meaning of a map, for instance, is not possessed by the map intrinsically in virtue of its geometrical and physical properties, but derives from a being possessing original intentionality who bestows meaning upon the map and the symbols it contains. (Let it be stipulated that the closer the contour lines on the topographical map, the steeper the terrain depicted. Etc.)  But this can be the case even in a godless universe.  There can be original Sinn-ers without God, if you catch my drift.  I wouldn't say what Peter says interpreting me, namely, that "Subjective meaning, thus, is itself nothing but an aspect of matter within a godless universe."  No meaning is an aspect of matter or reducible to matter.  We are sources of meaning (original intentionality) and this fact shows that physicalism is false whether or not God exists.

The question is rather this:  given that we are original Sinn-ers, sources of meaning capable of bestowing meaning, what is the meaning (point, purpose) of our existence as  sources of meaning?  What is the meaning of consciousness, taking this term broadly to include all modalities of intentionality, all qualitative modalities, self-awareness, conscience, and what all else?  My point is that, even though we are sources of meaning for thisn distinct from us, we cannot be sources of meaning for our very existence as sources of meaning.  I am pretty sure Peter understands my thought here; it is merely his characterization of it that I think is inadequate.

Conclusion: Imago Dei, according to Bill, is the evidence imprinted by God upon our very being, evidence that is available to each of us and from which we can infer that there is an objective meaning to our existence and life. [Our life as conscious beings, not as animals in nature.] Of course, it is up to each and every one of us to recognize this message, reject the absurd position, and opt instead for the divine position. Alternatively, we are free not to recognize this evidence, in which case we discard the only possible link we can have to an objective meaning. However, such a course lands us in the absurd position toward the meaning of life, one which has ominous consequences. 

This concludes the present post. I hope Bill agrees with my clarification of his position about the relationship between imago Dei and the meaning of life. In the next post, sometime in the future, I shall continue this conversation and attempt to carve out a third position between the divine and the absurd positions.

Thank you, Peter, I look forward to your Middle Path.  I would only add that my view is that, if the question of the meaning of life has an answer, then it must have an answer along theistic lines.  But in that long paper of mine which you read I tentatively fowarded an aporetic conclusion to the effect that the question, though as meaningful as can be,  has no good answer.  The meaning of life cannot be subjective.  But it cannot be purely objective either: it must be subjectively appropriable, and not just by some of us . But then I gave reasons to doubt subjective appropriability by all.