City of God - Augustine - XXVII - Book 14 concluded

Required reading
City of God by Augustine (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Conclude Book 14 by reading Chapters 13 to 28.

My summary
As we finish Book 14 we continue looking at the fall in the garden.

Firstly, Augustine teaches us that the evil will of pride preceded the evil act of eating the forbidden fruit.

Next we see that the retribution for the first sin was just and that 'the retribution for disobedience is simply disobedience itself.'

Then the chapter ends with a fairly lengthy discussion of lust at a general level and then at a sexual level.

What grabbed me
Good discussion of the evilness of pride in today's reading: 'Now, could anything but pride have been the start of the evil will?  For "pride is the start of every kind of sin."  And what is pride expect a longing for a perverse kind of exaltation?  For it is a perverse kind of exaltation to abandon the basis on which the mind should be firmly fixed, and to become, as it were, based on oneself, and so remain.  This happens when a man is too pleased with himself: and a man is self-complacent when he deserts that changeless Good in which, rather than in himself, he ought to have found his satisfaction.'

We ought to be satisfied with our position before God, not exalt ourselves to God's position.

Next week's reading
Commence Book 15 by reading Chapters 1 to 11.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.