313. As for the nature of people who are devoted to their own prudence and the nature of the people who have a prudence not their own and are therefore conscious of divine providence, this is described in the Word by Adam and his wife Eve in the garden of Eden where there were the two trees, one of life and the other of the knowledge of good and evil, and by their eating from this latter tree. You may see in 241 above that in the inner or spiritual meaning Adam and his wife Eve serve to denote and describe the earliest church of the Lord on our planet, one that was finer and more heavenly than the ones that followed it. As for the meaning of other elements of the story,

[2] the garden of Eden means the wisdom of the people of that church; the tree of life means the Lord in particular respect to divine providence; and the tree of knowledge means humanity, particularly in respect to our own prudence. The serpent means our sensory level and sense of autonomy, which is essentially our self-love and our pride in our own intelligence, and therefore the devil and Satan. Eating from the tree of knowledge means claiming what is good and true as our own, believing that they do not come from the Lord and therefore belong to the Lord, but come from us and therefore belong to us. Since what is good and what is true are elements of Divinity within us, goodness means everything that has to do with love, and truth means everything that has to do with wisdom. So if we claim these as our own, we cannot help but believe that we are like God. That is why the serpent said, "On the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). This is what people do who are in hell because of their self-love and consequent pride in their own intelligence.

[3] The curse imposed on the serpent means the curse of any love and intelligence we claim as our own; the curse imposed on Eve means the curse of our emotional sense of identity; and the curse imposed on Adam means the curse of our cognitive sense of identity. The thorns and thistles that the earth would sprout mean what is wholly false and evil; the expulsion from the garden means the loss of wisdom; the guarding of the way to the tree of life means the Lord's protection of the holy values of the Word and the church from any violation; the fig leaves that covered their nakedness mean moral truths that concealed the activities of their own love and pride; and the leather garments in which they were later clothed mean the appearances of truth that were all they had.

This is what these items mean on the spiritual level; but anyone who wants to do so may stay with the literal meaning. Just be aware that this is what it means in heaven.

241. 1. The wisest people of all, Adam and his wife, let themselves be led astray by the serpent, and God did not use his divine providence to prevent it. The reason for this is that Adam and his wife do not mean the first people created on earth but the people of the earliest church. It is their new creation or regeneration that is being described in this way, the actual new creation or regeneration by the creation of heaven and earth in the first chapter, their wisdom and intelligence by the Garden of Eden, and the end of that church by their eating of the tree of knowledge.

At heart, the Word is spiritual, containing secrets of divine wisdom; and in order to contain them it has been written entirely in symbolic and figurative language. We can therefore see that the people of that church--who were supremely wise at first, but who eventually became the worst because of their pride in their intelligence--were not misled by any serpent but by self-love. That is the head of the serpent that the seed of the woman, that is, the Lord, would eventually trample under foot.

[2] Can anyone fail to see on rational grounds that this means more than what is being said in the literal narrative? Can anyone take in the notion that the creation of the world happened the way it is described here? That is why scholars sweat to explain what it says in this opening chapter and finally say that they do not understand it.

Then there are the two trees in the garden or paradise, one of life and one of knowledge, with the second there to make problems; and there is the fact that simply eating from this tree is such an immense sin that not only Adam and Eve but the whole human race as well, as their descendants, became liable to damnation. There is the serpent's ability to mislead them, along with other matters; there is the creation of the wife from her husband's rib; there is their recognition of their nakedness after the fall and covering themselves with fig leaves; there is the provision of leather garments to cover their bodies; and there is the stationing of the cherub with a flaming sword to guard the path to the tree of life.

[3] These are all images used to describe the establishment of the earliest church, its state and its change, and eventually its demise. You may find explanation of the secrets of them all, secrets contained in that spiritual meaning that is in the details, in the volumes on Genesis and Exodus published in London under the title Secrets of Heaven.

We may conclude, then, that the tree of life in Genesis means the Lord as to his divine providence, and that the tree of knowledge means humanity as to its own prudence.