Claim. The tree of life in the Garden of Eden is a symbol for a man who has fully realized God’s ideal of creation — perfected Adam. The cherubim with flaming sword stationed to block its path after the fall (Gen 3:24) signify Adam’s failure to attain this perfection.
Elaboration. Per 1.1.1. The Tree of Life, the hope of fallen people throughout history is to approach the tree of life — Old Testament Israelites, Christians since Jesus, and faithful in every age. From this consistent trajectory DP infers that Adam’s hope before the fall was likewise the tree of life. His hope during immaturity was to “become a man who would realize God’s ideal of creation by growing to perfection without falling.”
The tree of life therefore symbolizes “a man who has fully realized the ideal of creation”: perfected Adam. The cherubim+sword guarding it after the fall signify that fallen Adam could no longer reach this completion of purpose-of-creation by his own efforts.
This atomic establishes the load-bearing symbolic key for the entire chapter: if “tree of life = perfected Adam,” then by structural parallel dp-tree-of-knowledge-symbolizes-perfected-eve follows, and the fall-as-eating-fruit motif resolves into the sexual-fall reading developed in §1.3–1.5. Without this symbolic reading, the literal-fruit interpretation collapses the chapter into incoherence (per DP’s argument: a loving Parent would not place a death-trap fruit within reach).
See also. dp-perfected-individuals-cannot-fall, dp-fall-occurred-at-top-of-growth-stage