War is more than a contest to see who can kill the most bodies and thus gain strategic advantage over territory or natural resources. It may in part be this, but war is also, in fact, an imaginative enterprise through which a society works out a vision of who it is. No one saw this more clearly than Saint Augustine.
According to Augustine, there are two cities that coexist now on earth, the earthly city and the heavenly city, or city of God. The cities are distinguished by the objects of their love; the earthly city is marked by self-love, while the heavenly city loves God. As Augustine writes:
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