Many things going on in that short little episode in the garden, eh? One thing to note is that the theft of knowledge and/or immortality from the gods is a common theme in mythology. Typically, man acquires the knowledge but misses out on immortality. (Obviously, this always must be the case in the stories.) Genesis, as usual, takes a common ANE theme and gives it a twist. I won’t pursue that any farther here, since it would require too much time and space.
While I am not against the idea of identifying the Tree of Life with the cross of Christ, or with the sacraments, these can easily fall victim to the type of allegorizing that characterized biblical interpretation in the Middle Ages. For instance, every time an OT passage mentioned “wood,” it was taken to be a symbol of the cross, and every time the word “water” appeared, it was taken as a symbol of baptism. This, obviously, can run into all sorts of problems. I’ve even heard modern preachers do it. The worst example that I recall was a sermon where the preacher was turning the 12 baskets of leftover bread (after Jesus fed the 5000) into an elaborate series of metaphors that were quite lovely, but had virtually no connection to the text.
In any case, here’s my down-and-dirty, short interpretation of the Tree of Life:
Genesis 1 represents creation as God’s temple. Mankind/adam is presented as the image of God, ruling as God’s representative. This is a kingly image. Genesis 2 represents Eden as the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence is manifested. Adam’s work in the garden is described in the same vocabulary as the priests’ service in the temple. This is a priestly image. (King and Priest. Hmmm. Who supremely fulfilled those roles?) At the end of Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden and banished from God’s presence.
What does the Tree of Life represent? Simply, eternal life is possible only in the presence of God. The Tree of Life is symbolically represented by the golden lampstand that stands outside the Holy Place in Israel’s tabernacle and later temple, and the tree reappears, as Christy noted, in the New Jerusalem, which shares the same cube-like dimensions as the Holy Place in the temple. God’s special presence will no longer be confined to one small part of the creation, but will fill the earth. We have eternal life because of the presence of the Holy Spirit within our hearts, and we are told that the church IS the temple. The New Jerusalem is not a literal city with a literal tree and literal leaves. The 12 fruits blossoming every month of the year (there’s that 12 again!) are not literal. The river of the water of life, again an image of Eden, is not literal. All of these things are symbols and metaphors.
The fact that we are separated from God is part of the problem of the hiddenness of God, which Eden also explains.
