In the third chapter of Genesis we read that one of the consequences of eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that Adam and Eve will have a life of hard toil.
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.
After announcing this consequence, Yahweh banishes them from the Garden of Eden.
In my youth I was taught, or perhaps just allowed to believe, that being barred from the Garden and not allowed to eat from the Tree of Life was part of their punishment. After all, he had already told them that they would return to the ground from which they were taken.
However, as I've thought more about the question I've come to the view that this may have been an act of mercy, not of judgement. Yahweh has finished pronouncing consequences and is now making provision for their wellbeing in the newly reconfigured world. What if, rather than punishing them, he was guarding the Tree of Life for their protection?
***
In Iain M. Banks' Culture novels it is possible for humans - and other creatures - to live forever. A fabulously advanced medical science means that their bodies don't decay, and if they are careful to back up their mental state then even if they are blown to smithereens on some adventure they can still be restored to life with only the briefest loss of memory.
Yet in these stories people rarely choose never-ending life. Some choose to go into stasis, storing their personality in giant memory banks, only to be revived and re-enfleshed in extreme circumstances.
Others don't even do that. In one of the books he describes a scene on a pleasure-boat in which someone is holding a party to mark the end of their life. They have fun with friends and at the appropriate moment they say their farewells and receive the lethal injection which will painlessly end their life. At this point, the person has lived for several hundred years and has simply had enough. The occasion is serious but not overflowing with grief. Everyone recognises that their friend has had a full life and it's time to depart. Far from being a burden mortality is a gift, saving people from a weary forever.
They do, however, have another option - they can transfer to another plane of existence, what is called 'sublime'. It is never clear precisely what this is, but it is a one-way journey. Individuals can choose to make it, and on occasion whole civilisations decide to do it collectively. The final Culture novel, written when Banks himself was suffering from terminal cancer, follows the story of one such civilisation. They party, bicker and politick right up until the last moment, then suddenly it is all over and they all disappear. What happens next? We don't know. Mystery abounds.
***
I've been thinking about this because I just read Simone de Beauvoir's All Men Are Mortal. De Beauvoir was a leading French existentialist and feminist, prominent in the middle years of the 20th century. All Men Are Mortal (Tous Les Hommes Sont Mortels) was first published in French in 1946, and translated into English in 1955. I was prompted to read it by an article (I forget where) in which the author said she wished this were the existentialist novel used in High School literature classes in preference to Albert Camus' The Outsider. Having now read both I'm not sure I agree but anyhow...
The novel describes the encounter between a young upcoming actress by the name of Regina and a man named Raimon Fosca who turns out to be immortal. Her first reaction is to stoke her narcissism - after all, if she makes an impression on an immortal man then she too, in a way, will live forever. However, as he unfolds his story things gradually change.
Fosca, it turns out, was originally the Count of Carmona, a (fictional) Italian city-state of the thirteenth century CE. During a crisis he discovers and drinks a potion which gives him immortality. He never ages and if he is is wounded, even mortally, he rapidly recovers. He dramatically demonstrates the point for Regina by cutting his own throat and she watches as the wound quickly heals, leaving him unscarred and none the worse for the experience within a few minutes.
He describes how at first he saw his immortality as a gift. He could plan long-term, establish Carmona as an impregnable city-state, dominate his Italian rivals. Yet his plans come to nothing and his grandson, for whom he plots and schemes, throws his life away in a dubious battle, despairing at the way his grandfather dominates his whole life and leaves him no risks to take.
As the story continues the same pattern keeps recurring. Fosca plays his part in the rise and failure of the Holy Roman Empire, the disastrous colonisation of South America, the European discovery of the Mississippi, the intrigues of 19th century French politics. Each time, knowledge of his true identity and nature drives his friends and lovers, and ultimately himself, to despair. Anyone who realises that the partner in their enterprise is immortal finds that life loses its lustre - there are no risks, no limits, no real challenges.
As time passes Fosca comes to see more and more that his immortality is a curse, not a gift. Without the possibility of death, the joy of life evaporates. Seen from the point of view of forever none of what we do matters, we will all die. Fosca finds himself looking into a distant future where the human species is extinct and the earth barren, but he continues on, unable to escape the dead planet. It is ultimate never-ending despair. At the end of his recital Regina reaches the same conclusion and howls in existential despair.
Those existentialists were always a cheery lot.
***
You might notice that in that short summary I purposefully avoided the word 'eternal'.
In the Bible we often read about 'eternal life' and also at times 'eternal punishment'. Due to the vagaries of translation we are used to reading this to mean 'everlasting', something which goes on forever and ever. However, there is considerable debate and controversy among Christian scholars about the precise meaning of the Greek word, aionion, from which it is drawn. It is clear that its meaning is more complex and evocative than something which simply goes on forever.
I'm hardly qualified to comment on this controversy in detail. Suffice to say that the word can be understood to convey a number of meanings including 'the life of the age (aeon) to come', 'the life of God's age' and 'the life that comes from God'. This is not simply life like our current life extended indefinitely, it is a qualitatively different kind of existence. It may indeed last forever (this point is contested) but that is far from its only feature.
Think of these words from Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.
The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
Certainly the resurrected body is imperishable but it is also honourable, glorious, spiritual. It is a different kind of body, a different kind of life, to the one that died. Indeed, death is necessary to bring about this life. As Jesus says in a different context:
Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Perhaps Raimon Fosca's difficulty came about because he did not go through this transformation. Instead he tried to take a short-cut, a magic potion. Instead of dying and rising to a new life, he enabled his old life to continue indefinitely. He achieved the very thing Yahweh was trying to prevent.
***
There is another story about a man who lived forever, the Greek legend of Tithonus. He was a lover of Eos, the Goddess of the Dawn, and as a gift of her love she asked Zeus to make him immortal. Unfortunately she forgot to ask for eternal youth, so Tithonus was instead handed the dubious gift of continuously growing older without ever dying.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a beautiful poem based on the story, told through the eyes of Tithonus (read it in full here).
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men, who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills,
And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me,
And tho' they could not end me, left me maim'd
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
It is not those who live forever who are happy, unless perhaps they themselves are gods. It is those who can die. Only thus can we rise again to a new, different, transformed life.
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