Even the love command fails to end enmity, only recasting it.

Evidence

Failing love, and love of the enemies, in particular, the enemies remain. Having generalized the notion of the enemy as the name of an analogy and of an inclusion, having made the neighbor and the object of Christian love into an enemy, Jesus may have failed to abolish the distinction between self and other, may have failed to put an end to enmity. But Jesus did succeed in creating a new kind of enemy by establishing a new zone of indistinguishability: the enemy as neighbor and the neighbor as enemy. More precisely put, with the commandment to love the enemy, the neighbor, the fellow man, becomes the enemy. With Jesus, then, we witness the becoming-enemy of the neighbor. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 151

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the genealogical link between Christian universal love and the persistence (even intensification) of enemy-construction — love and enmity as two sides of one coin.
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that a command to love one’s enemy does not abolish enmity but renames and generalizes it is dense enough to merit sitting with — it undermines the standard reading of neighbor-love as the triumph over hostility.