Did the tree of life have any supernatural qualities?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘The Creator and the Creation Stories’ (2001).

Among the trees in the garden was the tree of life. When man sinned, having disobeyed God and taken of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, chapter 3 of Genesis says:

Then the lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live for ever—’ therefore the lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. (3:22–23)

So, having sinned, God drove man out of the garden and, no longer having access to the tree of life, he began to deteriorate from that moment onwards. Though he lived for hundreds of years, he eventually died because he had no access to the tree of life. That raises a very interesting question indeed: did this tree of life have some supernatural qualities?

Well, not to quibble about a word, but it came from the hand of God, like all the other trees did. If this tree had supernatural qualities, it’s the same God, and I wouldn’t be quite sure what the word ‘supernatural’ in that context would mean. Starting with the plain text, what I myself take it to be is that the eating of that tree of life was necessary for the maintenance and perpetuation of human life, in such a way that if somebody were prevented from eating of that tree, they would begin to decline physically.

That raises a big doctrinal and theological question. When God made Adam and Eve in the garden, did they possess in themselves inherent physical immortality? In other words, could Adam just carry on and say, ‘I don’t care what God says or does; I have physical immortality and I shall live forever’? The Bible says that only God has immortality (see 1 Tim 6:16). I feel that the text implies that, if Adam was going to live for ever, because he didn’t have inherent immortality in himself it was necessary for him to eat of that tree of life. When he was precluded from it he began to physically decay and go down the path that would lead him back to the dust.

Now, far more learned expositors than I have felt that when God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever’ (see Gen 3:22), God hurried him out of the garden. They say, ‘Do you see that phrase, “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand . . . and eat”—doesn’t that imply that until then Adam had not thought to eat of that tree?’

He had permission to do so, of course, as God had said, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . . .’ (see 2:16–17). They feel that perhaps Adam hadn’t thought to eat of the tree of life, and so God said, ‘How fortunate—let’s hurry him out of the garden before he gets it into his head to eat of the tree, because if he eats of it he’ll live for ever’.

This implies that taking one bite of the fruit of the tree of life would have meant living forever. I think that’s not quite right. I don’t think it was a question of one bite of the fruit of the tree of life; it was a question of constantly eating it. Constant eating would have maintained Adam, and I think that he had probably eaten of it when he was in the garden. It was when he was shut out from it that he began decline.

One final thing that seems to support me in that view is that the tree of life is used subsequently in the New Testament as a symbol of our Lord. The book of Revelation says, ‘To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God’ (2:7). The word translated ‘paradise’ in this verse is the Greek word, paradeisos, which is how the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew translates the ‘garden of Eden’. It means a pleasure garden. And our Lord says, ‘To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God’. It’s a symbol of himself, of course. He is the tree of life; he is the source of life; in him is life.

If I were to put to you the idea that it’s enough for you to come and eat of Christ once (see John 6), and you don’t have to eat of him ever again, would you agree with me? In other words, having come to Christ and eaten of him once, could you rightly say, ‘Well, thank you, Lord. I now have eternal life, so I don’t need you anymore. I’ll go my own way and we shall probably never meet again because I don’t need you anymore’? You don’t hold that view, do you? I hope you don’t. We do not have life apart from Christ. It isn’t that a believer can lose his eternal life. What I’m saying is that we don’t have our private store of eternal life, ‘[Our] life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col 3:3). It is because we are united to him, constantly feed on him, draw our life from him and are inseparable from him, that we have spiritual eternal life.

So at the physical level, I think that the tree of life probably consisted of elements that the human body needs to maintain itself in continued life. Without those elements, the genes eventually go wonky and the body starts to decline.