works in the phenomenal/physical world.
Even so, the text somewhat equivocates, for, running in tandem with the idea of human dominion is the unresolved issue of why God should be "mindful" of humanity enough to continually engage with it. Yet that is definitely the sense of Psalm 8:4. It is as if the mere fact of dominion over the physical universe does not entirely dispose of what the idea of dominion fully means. If that were the case, then God would not need to be mindful of humanity or become engaged in the details of human experience. On the other hand, God's continual engagement suggests that dominion is not the same as an articulation of perfection, and the evidence of real-world human experience is that it is far from perfected. Real-world human experience is suffused with contingency and uncertainty, not least because human beings do not have a singular sense of God's intervention in earthly experience. Indeed, the evidence of nature over which mankind supposedly has dominion is that human beings have a problematic relationship with it. They can exploit nature's abundance, but they are also vulnerable to its behavior: The earth swallows human beings up or drowns them or otherwise injures them, and God's creatures can be deadly to them.
Psalm 8:4-6 is not the only point in the bible that raises the convergence of humanity, the natural world, and God. At other points in the bible (for example as cross-referenced in the King James Version), the text articulates the multiple problems and possible interpretations that arise when the convergence of humanity, cosmos, and the divine occurs.
At Job 7:17, Job is in the depths of despair because of everything he has endured. "What is man," Job asks the Lord, "that thou shouldest magnify him?" In other words, is it not a great cosmic/divine joke for God to give man dominion over the earth and then send plague upon plague to make the dominator miserable?
An entirely different t...