The command to love one’s enemy collapses when the enemy is also God’s enemy.

Evidence

As Walter Bauer puts it: “In the concept ‘enemy’ there lies an obscurity from the beginning. One must love the enemy. Good. But when the enemy himself is at the same time the enemy of God, what then?” (Bauer, “Das Gebot der Feindesliebe und die alten Christen,” 48). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 889 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

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 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Paul holds the same people are simultaneously God’s enemies and his beloved; The Messiah who became the neighbor has also become the enemy; The love-enemy commandment turns the neighbor into an enemy to be loved (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Loving the enemy becomes impossible when that enemy is God’s enemy #corroborates (0.98) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 889
• Christianity creates a new enemy by collapsing neighbor into enemy #complicates (0.74) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 151