Meaning Without Mandate — 48

Some Christian apologetics claims that human life is objectively meaningful only if its purpose is divinely assigned. This paper rejects that exclusivity inference. It compares a source-only mandate account with a value-and-participation account, on which a purpose contributes meaning when it concerns a worthwhile good, fittingly engages reflective agency, and is met with responsible participation. The comparison exposes a missing bridge: assignment identifies a source but does not by itself establish those meaning-making conditions. A modal countercase supplies the second result: a coherent possible non-theistic world can contain objective goods, finite agents, and lives of love, inquiry, craft, or repair that satisfy the conditions without divine assignment. Conceptual analysis, ordinary exemplars, and naturalist, hybrid, and theistic scholarship support that possibility. Divine assignment therefore does not explain meaning by source alone and is not necessary for meaning. The argument does not disprove theism, deny that a religious vocation could deepen meaning, or settle whether reality has an ultimate purpose.