Essay Ontological Anthropocentrism

failure and hardship? Where is the love in unleashing the evil and temptation which were introduced in the creation stories of Genesis, which would entrap and impair the Israelites during the cycle of apostasy and continue to challenge modern day humanity? The nature of the God in the garden who not only created the trees, stated the conditions, and actively pointed out or brought attention to the trees as if to taunt or dare Adam and Eve. Furthermore, a God that would be manipulative and conniving in creating or allowing a supernatural creation (the serpent) to have the access and authority to deceive Adam and Eve. Humans were created and placed in a higher order in the hierarchy and ironically in one of the creation stories, man was created last, but then exalted to be first and to have dominion over all of creation. “Ontological anthropocentrism views the human as a species that stands apart from or even against nature. That Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 associate the human with the image of God indicates that human beings are like God, from which we might infer that the human is unlike animal life and distinguished from the natural world. As God is understood as transcending the material order, so too the human is essentially related to the transcendent realm or being of God rather than the realm of the animal and material.” …show more content…
Pechansky challenges the reader to consider that although God is powerful, that YHWH’s power is limited and therefore posing an insecurity to which YHWH is validated by tempting, testing and proving man in order to validate His supreme authority. I propose that from this perspective God also emerges as a pseudo-bully, a childlike figure who is much bigger than the other children on the playground, who stands center field and dares all other to touch or take the ball away from