“In the midst of collapsing culture, a North African Bishop named Augustine stood up to defend the faith. In His classic work The City of God Augustine attempted to vindicate the faith while providing the church with a more biblical understanding of her relationship to the world. Augustine reminded us that spiritual opposition drives history forward. According to Genesis 3:15, human history plays out the fundamental spiritual opposition between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. According to Augustine these two seeds are two contrasting cities:
Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord (City of God, Book 14:28).
These two cities are not divided by geography, culture, or even politics. Rather, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent grow up together like weeds in the midst of a field of wheat (Matt. 13: 24-30). Where then does the Kingdom of God find its antithesis with the world? The Biblical/Augustinian answer is that the contrast transcends the mundane realities of this life and divides men according to their most profound spiritual allegiance.”
W.H. Chellis
http://deregnochristi.org/2007/12/04/augustinian-antithesis/
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