From her book “Spiritual Lightening”, M. Catherine Thomas shared:
Many have wondered if the events in the Garden of Eden cast women in an unfavorable light. For example, Paul wrote: “For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in transgression.” (1 Timothy 2:13-14.) In what way did Eve transgress? She transgressed that law that would have sustained her forever in a terrestrial world, and she set in motion telestializing processes. Yet evidently Eve knew she had to eat the fruit in order fulfill God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) and to have her hearts desire for children, as well as her own eventual exaltation. After all the name of her Hebrew name, “The mother of all living,” suggested what she came to earth to do.
Therefore, in what way might she have been deceived? As a background, remember that it was necessary that the spirit host waiting in the premortal world descend to a lower world, a mortal state, where evil could flourish. Brigham Young said: “Darkness and sin were permitted to come on this earth. Man partook of the fruit in accordance with a plan devised from eternity, that mankind might be brought into contact with the principles and powers of darkness, to enable them to receive light continually.” (JD7:158.)
On another occasion President Young said, “Mother Eve [partook] of the forbidden fruit. We should not have been here to-day if she had not; we could never have possessed wisdom and intelligence if she had not done it. It was all in the economy of heaven. . . . When I look at the economy of heaven my heart leaps for joy, and if I had the tongue of an angel, or the tongues of the whole human family combined, I would praise God in the highest for his great wisdom and condescension in suffering the children of men to fall into the very sin into which they had fallen, for he did it that they, like Jesus, might descend below all things and then press forward and rise above all.” (JD 13:145; emphasis added.) ~M. Catherine Thomas, Spiritual Lightening (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1996), 51-52
