Garden of Eden

Overview

• The Garden of Eden is the garden God planted for the first human beings — a place of communion with God, of abundance and unbroken life — from which Adam and Eve were exiled after the fall.
• The Fathers read Eden on two levels at once: as a real beginning, and as an image of Paradise and God's own dwelling — the life of communion that is lost in Adam and reopened in Christ.

Summary

Eden (from the Hebrew for "delight") is the garden in which God sets the first man "to cultivate and keep it," watered by four rivers and holding at its center the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2.8-17). It is not merely a pleasant landscape: St. John of Damascus describes it as God's own dwelling, a kingdom prepared for man and a "most holy temple" where man was made to live in the contemplation of God.[^1] When the first couple grasp at the forbidden tree, they are exiled, and the way back to the tree of life is barred by the cherubim and a fiery sword (Genesis 3.22-24). Yet the exile is not the last word: what is lost in the first Adam is reopened in the second, so that the whole story of salvation can be told as the closing and the reopening of the garden. This entry follows Eden through four movements — the garden God planted, its meaning as a temple, the two trees and the fall, and Paradise regained in Christ.

The Garden God Planted

Scripture places the garden "eastward, in Eden," and describes it with care: God makes to grow "every tree beautiful to the eye and good for food," sets "the tree of life in the midst of the garden," and beside it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and waters it by a river that parts into four heads — the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates (Genesis 2.8-14). Into this garden God places the man He has formed, "to cultivate and keep it," giving him the single commandment not to eat of the one tree (Genesis 2.15-17). St. John of Damascus gathers the whole picture into one image: before God fashioned man "to reign as king and ruler over all the earth," He first prepared for him "a kingdom in which he should live a life of happiness" — "the divine paradise, planted in Eden by the hands of God."[^1]

Eden as Temple

The garden is more than a place; it is God's own dwelling with man. St. John of Damascus calls man's home in Eden his "most holy temple," the place "where God makes His home, and where He wraps man about as with a glorious garment, and robes him in His grace."[^1] Scripture itself frames Eden this way: the prophet Ezekiel, lamenting the fallen king of Tyre, describes him as having been "in the delight of the paradise of God," set by God "on the holy mount of God" and "in the midst of the stones of fire" with the cherub (Ezekiel 28.13-14) — paradise, mountain, and sanctuary named together. This is why Fr. Stephen De Young argues that Eden is described not as a point to be found on a map but as the dwelling-place of God on the mountain of God, in the temple imagery of the ancient world: a walled garden, set apart from the world, where God comes down to walk with man.[^2]

The Two Trees

At the heart of the garden stand two trees, and everything turns on them. The tree of life is the tree of communion with God: to eat of it is to share in the divine life and so to live without end. St. John of Damascus reads it as participation in God Himself — "let participation in Me be the support of your own being; for in this way you will be immortal."[^1] The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is harder, and the Fathers are careful. The knowledge it offers is not an evil thing in itself: St. John of Damascus says the tree "is a good thing for those who are mature and advanced in divine contemplation," and "an evil thing to those still young… not firmly established" in the good.[^1] The danger lay in prematurity. As Fr. Stephen De Young puts it, "nothing God created is evil"; the very phrase "the knowledge of good and evil" is elsewhere in Scripture the mark of maturity, the discernment of the grown and royal mind, and the sin was to grasp it before Adam, so lately created, was ready to bear it.[^2] The commandment was not a trap but a warning — like a father telling a small child not to touch what he cannot yet handle — and the tempter's aim in urging it was precisely to hand a power to those unready for it, in order to destroy them.[^2]

The Fall and the Exile

Man was not made to seize by grasping what God meant to give in time. When Adam and Eve took the fruit, they gained a knowledge they could not yet carry, and the communion of the garden was broken. God cast them out, and "stationed the cherubs and the fiery sword that turns about to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3.22-24). The exile is real: the door to unbroken life is shut, and the turning sword is the sign that man can no longer simply walk back in — that fallen man should not now eat of the tree of life and live forever in his brokenness (Genesis 3.22).

Where Is Eden?

A natural question follows: is Eden a place still standing somewhere on the earth? The tradition does not answer with a map. St. John of Damascus holds that "the divine Paradise is twofold" — that man, "in whom we find both sense and mind blended together," was given a dwelling likewise both bodily and spiritual, a real place and, at once, the region "where God makes His home."[^1] Fr. Stephen De Young presses the same point from Scripture: because Eden is described as the garden on the mountain of God (Ezekiel 28.13-14), the effort to pin it to a modern location misreads what the text is doing.[^2] The Fathers are content to say that Eden was truly given and truly lost, without reducing it to mere geography.

Paradise Regained

The exile from Eden is not where the story ends, and this is the heart of the Orthodox reading. What was lost in the first Adam is reopened in the second. To the repentant thief on the cross Christ says, "today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23.43) — the garden is open again, and a crucified criminal is the first to enter. St. Paul speaks of being "caught up into Paradise" (2 Corinthians 12.4), and the Revelation ends where Genesis began, with "the tree of life" restored, its leaves "for the healing of the nations," granted "to him who overcomes" (Revelation 2.7; Revelation 22.2). The Fathers draw the two gardens together at the Cross: the tree of life planted in Eden, St. Justin Martyr writes, was a symbol of Christ, who "by being crucified on the tree… has redeemed us."[^3] The tree that brought death in Adam is answered by the tree that gives life in Christ; and through Him the believer becomes once more the place where God dwells — Paradise reopened even now. See Adam, Eve, The Church, Theosis, Typology in Scripture.

Sources

[^1]: St. John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book II, ch. 11 ("Concerning Paradise") — Eden as the kingdom and "most holy temple" prepared for man; the tree of life as participation in God and immortality; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as good in itself yet dangerous to the immature; Paradise as "twofold," bodily and spiritual. [^2]: Fr. Stephen De Young, The Whole Counsel of God (Genesis 2) — Eden as the dwelling-place of God on the mountain of God, framed in ancient temple imagery rather than as a map location (Ezekiel 28.13-14); the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as maturity grasped prematurely; "nothing God created is evil.". [^3]: St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 86 — the tree of life "planted in paradise" as a symbol of Christ, who "by being crucified on the tree… has redeemed us.".