I have often wondered about the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Didn't Adam and Eve already have some knowledge of good and evil? They knew it was good to obey and bad to disobey. Upon eating the fruit they did gain some knowledge, such as knowing it was shameful to be naked, but did not gain all knowledge of good and evil. So how was the tree a tree of knowledge of good and evil if it didn't endow them with very much knowledge?
This morning while pondering that question, the Spirit revealed to me that it wasn't called the tree of knowledge of good and evil because eating the fruit would immediately endow them with that knowledge. Instead, eating the fruit would enable them to experience mortality and spiritual death and thereby learn for themselves what is good and what is evil. This life then became a probationary state where man would exercise his agency to choose between good and evil as he learned to discern between them.
Why must we be mortal to learn good from evil? We send our children away from home so that they may mature and learn to make decisions for themselves. So too, God sent us away to learn on our own.
But what role does a mortal body play in this?
