<P> The cross of Christ is also referred to as the tree of life, and in the service books, Jesus is sometimes likened to a "divine cluster" of grapes hanging on the "Tree of the Cross" from which all partake in Holy Communion . </P> <P> This theme is also found in Western Christianity . By way of an archetypal example consider Bonaventure's "biography" of the second person of the Trinity, entitled "The Tree of Life ." (see Cousins, The Classics of Western Spirituality Series) </P> <P> In the City of God (xiii. 20 - 21), Augustine of Hippo offers great allowance for "spiritual" interpretations of the events in the garden, so long as such allegories do not rob the narrative of its historical reality . Enlightenment theologians (culminating perhaps in Brunner and Niebuhr in the twentieth century) sought for figurative interpretations because they had already dismissed the historical possibility of the story . </P> <P> Others sought very pragmatic understandings of the tree . In the Summa Theologica (Q97), Thomas Aquinas argued that the tree served to maintain Adam's biological processes for an extended earthly animal life . It did not provide immortality as such, for the tree, being finite, could not grant infinite life . Hence after a period of time, the man and woman would need to eat again from the tree or else be "transported to the spiritual life ." The common fruit trees of the garden were given to offset the effects of "loss of moisture" (note the doctrine of the humors at work), while the tree of life was intended to offset the inefficiencies of the body . Following Augustine in the City of God (xiv. 26), "man was furnished with food against hunger, with drink against thirst, and with the tree of life against the ravages of old age ." </P>

References to the tree of life in the bible