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Tidejwe wrote:Sunday School Lesson Week 3: The Vision of the Tree of Life: 1Ne8-11; 12:16-18; 15

http://scriptures.LDS.org/en/1_ne/contents

This is supposed to be the lesson in Sunday School everyone studies this coming Sunday (Jan 20th) unless they had ward or stake Conference already this year in January.

Anyone have any thoughts on the matter? What would you bring up or ask a question on, and why?

Some Schmo wrote:You'll likely get more traction in the Celestial Kingdom. Us heathens don't care about this stuff.

Tidejwe wrote:For example: I expected someone in the Terrestrial forum here to bring up the point that Joseph Smith's FATHER had this SAME "Lehi's dream" many many years before Joseph ever wrote the Book of Mormon, or even had the First Vision If I recall correctly. Most non-LDS would say this shows Joseph stole the idea of the dream from his father, while Mormons would say that it means God simply inspires lots of people with this analogy or whatever. However, it's unlikely that MOST believers would bring that example up themselves.

Scottie wrote:What would you consider the "great and spacious" buildings of today?

Are the LDS acting at all like the people in the great and spacious building? Pointing fingers and laughing at others?

Is it at all possible to find the tree of life, even if you don't hold to the rod?

Could Lehi have just had a weird dream, and because he was so whacked out and thought he was a prophet, that every stupid dream he had meant something?

The Tree of Life, or Etz haChayim (עץ החיים) in Hebrew, is a mystical symbol within the Kabbalah of esoteric Judaism used to understand the nature of God and the manner in which He created the world ex nihilo (out of nothing). The Kabbalists developed this concept into a full model of reality, using the tree to depict a "map" of Creation. The tree of life has been called the "cosmology" of the Kabbalah. But the Tree of Life does not only speak of the origins of the physical universe out of the unimaginable, but also of man's place in the universe. Since man is invested with Mind, consciousness in the Kabbalah is thought of as the fruit of the physical world, through whom the original infinite energy can experience and express itself as a finite entity. After the energy of creation has condensed into matter it is thought to reverse its course back up the Tree until it is once again united with its true nature. Thus the Kabbalist seeks to know himself and the universe as an expression of God, and to make the journey of Return by stages charted by the Sephiroth, until he has come to the realisation he sought.

Some believe the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah corresponds to the Tree of Life mentioned in Genesis 2:9. This mystical concept was later adopted by some esoterically inclined Christians as well as Hermeticists.

The Tree of Life bears many similarities to the Christian Gnostic conception of the Pleroma, emanations from the ineffable and self-originating Divine Parent that offer the best possible means of describing God. Each emanation in the Pleroma is born from a more complex emanation before it. Most notably between these two allegories is the final Sephira on the Tree, Malkuth, and the last emanation in the Pleroma, Sophia, whose fall from grace resulted in the physical world.

Western Christianity
Until the Enlightenment, the Christian church generally gave biblical narratives of early Genesis the weight of historical narratives. 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. However, the allegorical meanings of the early and medieval church were of a different kind than those posed by Kant and the Enlightenment. Precritical theologians allegorized the genesis events in the service of pastoral devotion. 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.

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.”

John Calvin (Commentary on Genesis 2:8), following a different thread in Augustine (City of God, xiii.20), understood the tree in sacramental language. Given that humanity cannot exist except within a covenantal relationship with God, and all covenants use symbols to give us "the attestation of his grace", he gives the tree, "not because it could confer on man that life with which he had been previously endued, but in order that it might be a symbol and memorial of the life which he had received from God." God often uses symbols - He doesn’t transfer his power into these outward signs, but "by them He stretches out His hand to us, because, without assistance, we cannot ascend to Him." Thus he intends man, as often as he eats the fruit, to remember the source of his life, and acknowledge that he lives not by his own power, but by God’s kindness. Calvin denies (contra Aquinas and without mentioning his name) that the tree served as a biological defense again physical aging. This is the standing interpretation in modern Reformed theology as well.

Latter Day Saints

The Tree of Life from the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, Utah).The tree of life appears in the Book of Mormon in a revelation to Lehi (see 1 Nephi 8:10-12). It is symbolic of the love of God (see 1 Nephi 11:21-23) and sometimes understood as salvation and post-mortal existence.